Schwang-Schwang

Initially appeared on doktorko.com 3/12/2005.

Despite: 1. studying in private schools my whole life, 2. watching American movies and TV programming my whole life, and 3. having worked in the US for over eight months now, i STILL haven't gotten my nasal twang (derided as "scwhang-schwang" by some), down pat. My accent still quite frequently lapses into those weird low-timbred vowels, espcially when faced with the dreaded letter A (i.e. UHPOL vs. EPOL). It's at its worst when i'm post-call - i begin to lose my grip on my tongue and start sounding like those teachers we used to poke fun at in high school.

Early on i learned that i needed to speak English like the Americans do - i'm a doctor after all and need to make myself understood with crystalline clarity - but the moment i leave the hospital and start spending time with my wife and friends, the accent slips and you'd swear i never spoke a word of English in my life. Not exactly JOLOGS, but i try my best. Call me weird, but i just think it's unnatural to speak in a foreign tongue. Isn't that why they call it FOREIGN?

Which is why it p!sses me off so much when i hear kababayans speak FILIPINO in an AMERICAN accent. It just sounds extremely ABnormal.

Consider: how can you have lived in the Philippines your whole life, spoken _____ (insert local language here, but i myself speak TAGALOG/FILIPINO) your whole life, then move to the States, speak English for 1 or 2 years, then seem to COMPLETELY just lose the ability to speak _____ correctly?

I've had a couple of foreign-born-or-raised friends (wow, imported!) back home who tried their darndest best to speak Tagalog; true, many never got beyond the point of basic intelligibility, but some actually got quite good at it. Interestingly enough, regardless of how well they spoke Tagalog (even if they retained a slight schwang), they could always drop effortlessly back into their native English, and you'd think they never spoke any other language.

In fact, i've had a couple of bilingual friends who were brought up to speak BOTH languages. Enviably, they spoke English and Tagalog with nary a misstep. A few minor slips here (mostly with vocabulary) and there, but not much more than the usual; overall OK.

So why is it that many people I've met here who are so OBVIOUSLY Filipino who MANGLE the English language left and right with the hard tongue (matigas na dila) PERSIST in speaking English, claiming to have lost the ability to "think" in Tagalog? Why do they speak to their kabayans in the alien tongue? Worst of all, why do throw their schwangs around when they return to the motherland, as if it somehow makes them transcendent over their brown-skinned countrymen?

It's a mystery. Is it a lack of aptitude (i.e. KATANGAHAN) for retaining more than one language? Is it the pressure of living in a foreign land? Or is it colonial mentality - thinking single-mindedly that everything American (including the language) is just downright better than anything Filipino?

Whatever it is, it's just plain STUPID.