What Determines Your Language Choice?

I have always wished I could go to a comedy show because I love to laugh. My closest friends know that I tend to lose control sometimes when I find something a little too funny. But I do know how to crack some jokes of my own. And I’ve come to realize that the kind of jokes I tell can change depending on where I’m at and who I’m with. For instance, the funny stories I tell my friends in school aren’t the stories I would be telling my elders at gatherings. And that’s what it’s like with Filipino youth and their choice of language. They vary depending on the people they talk to and places they go to.

Our study found that when Filipino youth are with family, Filipino is a language preferred at homes by most. This aligns with their early exposure to Filipino during childhood, as parents play a significant role in their language development. For the minority of Filipino youth who said English was more preferred at home, this was because they grew up with English being the more preferred language at home, or their family being of mixed ethnicities and or constantly migrating.

In Nelson Tana’s study on the language perception and proficiency of Filipino students, he found that their language patterns are shaped by the individuals they regularly interact with, which not only includes their parents, but also peers. When it comes to Filipino youth with friends, we’ve found the preference between English and Filipino is barely split down the middle as there are slightly more Filipino youth who prefer to converse in their native language than in English. School is where they spend most time with friends rather than family, so this too plays a pivotal role in shaping their choice of language.

Some Philippine educators highlighted in an article from TeacherPH, that English is a language more suited for formal settings such as schools, offices, seminars, and the judiciary court compared to Filipino. Our study confirms this to be true for youth as we’ve found that while in casual settings, Filipino youth tend to speak more in Filipino than English, in formal settings, English takes the lead.

Filipino youth may feel more comfortable expressing themselves casually in Filipino, but they find more comfort communicating in English for professional and formal situations. In a professional context, English is a language favored more by youth for reading, writing, listening, and speaking, mainly because Filipino can be challenging to understand with words that are too deep, grammar too hard to comprehend, and limited words which can only be said in English.

Ultimately, the language choices of Filipino youth boil down to the people they’ve been with and the places they’ve encountered throughout their lives. Choosing whether to use English or Filipino depends on one’s comfort level in the language and the given situation. With this understanding of what determines Filipino youth’s choice of language, we can now explore what influences their language preference.