The Hyphen Between: An Observation on Cultural Disconnect and Language of Second Generation Filipino Americans
“I hope the next time you come to the Philippines, you know how to speak Tagalog,” Those words hung in the air, like a melancholy star that would listen to all your wishful thoughts—the silence right before my response which was only mere seconds turned into minutes. My family and I had returned to the Philippines for my sister’s wedding and to visit our relatives. The last time I visited was nearly seven years ago. Since then, the language barrier has only become more prominent between my family and I. While I could communicate in English for most of our interactions, my younger cousin, Tan-Tan was struggling to explain something he wanted to say. I was never made to feel like a burden for my lack of fluency. Yet, I couldn’t help but feel like one every time they translated something or re-explained things in English. I couldn’t shake the sinking disappointment in their eyes whenever I shook my head in response to being asked if I could speak Tagalog. I’m certain Tan-Tan had no ill intention for his words. If anything I felt it come from a place of longing to connect with me in the way that he does with the rest of our family. Being able to share the laughter and joy around the dinner table without pause. Hearing stories from my Tito’s and Tita’s, Being able to crack jokes with my cousins like they do with their friends. To be a part of the conversation was a connection I longed for too. While the experience itself is very personal, as one of 52% of Filipino Americans born in the US (Pew Research Center), I knew that the feeling likely wasn’t unique.
While I had always known and taken pride in my Filipino identity, my recent trip back encouraged me to look into it in a way that I never really had before. Through my reflection, I became curious about why many second-generation Filipino Americans were unable to speak Tagalog. I wondered if they shared that same struggle to connect with family back home. Is language the sole barrier to our disconnect or are there other factors to consider? And how do these barriers affect the Filipino heritage, Filipino-American Identity, and our relationship with the Mainland? To understand this question, I think it’s imperative to take a look at Filipino Migration, specifically analyzing the movement of the language as well as the possible reasons Filipino Americans left the country.
The Philippines has a long history of migration stemming back to the beginning of its 300 years of being under colonial rule (Paik, Choe & Witenstein, 143). However, it wasn’t until the American Annexation of the Philippines, following the end of the Spanish-American War, that the steady immigration of Filipinos began. This deemed the Philippines an American territory, which granted Filipinos the status of being American Nationals. Although they were still under colonial rule, this annexation exempted them from a lot of the early immigration laws that limited many Asian Immigrants from entering the US. This in turn paved out many opportunities for Filipinos, encouraging them to seek better ways to support their families outside of the mainland. Many of the Filipinos who migrated at this time worked various agricultural and labor jobs in places such as California and Hawaii. However, the opportunity for education is what influenced the major migrations later in history.
The first instance of this was the Pensionado Act of 1903. As a solution to help Filipinos better assimilate into American culture and ideals, the US government subsidized the post-secondary education of qualified Filipino students with the agreement of contractual work for the Philippine government. About 14,000 students took advantage of this program, later returning to the Philippines and assisting in the teaching of English and American culture in the Philippine school system (Paik, Choe & Witenstein, 144). Even though the Pensionado Act lasted until 1939, the pensionados inspired many Filipino students to seek out educational opportunities in the US. The power of this ‘word of mouth’ is demonstrated in first-generation Filipino immigrants, A.B and Juanita Santos. In “Filipino American Lives” by Yen Le Espiritu they explain their reasons for leaving for the US. A.B Santos states “I had heard from the Americans and the other Filipinos that there were many opportunities there. I had an American teacher who used to tell our class that in the United States, as long as you are willing to work and you are not weak, you can survive very well,” adding that this kind of information is what encouraged them to leave the Philippines. Many of these self-supporting students remained in the US even after their studies, often filling shortages in the American workforce (Paik, Choe & Witenstein, 146). Additionally, these overseas workers often sent money back to the Philippines to support their families. This transnational exchange is referred to as remittances. With nearly 10% of the Filipino population living abroad, these remittances helped boost the Philippine economy, accounting for 10% of the Philippine’s Gross Domestic Product (Williams, 4). The added income of remittance could explain how the Philippine educational system was influenced in order to encourage more students to work abroad.
Following the enactment of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 is what’s considered to be the largest scale migration of Filipinos with the Filipino-American population starting at around 343,060 in 1970 and doubling twice to about 1,406,770 by 1990. The impact of the pensionados and encouragement of American teachers became clearer at this point in time as many immigrating Filipinies were considered “highly trained professionals primarily recruited to fulfill shortages in fields such as healthcare, science, and engineering”(Paik, Choe & Witenstein, 146). This shows how receptive Filipinos became to the value of education and assimilating into American culture. And through utilizing their own school systems they would prepare themselves for the workforce abroad. Even today “English has continued to be the language of instruction in Philippine high schools and colleges” (Bankston,181).
Through understanding how education has influenced the migration of Filipinos from the mainland we can infer how Filipinos may have drawn the connection between speaking English and success. If you can speak English, you are able to get a better education. If you get a better education, you will be able to find better work in America. If you can get a good job in America, you’re able to make more money to provide a better life for your family. However, it isn’t as simple as being able to speak English either. Many immigrants who join the American workforce struggle to assimilate into American culture due to their accent immediately categorizing them as an outsider. According to a Filipino psychologist “It is commonplace for second-generation Filipino Americans to not speak Tagalog (or the native languages of their parents) because their
parents wanted them to assimilate to American society and avoid speaking with a Filipino accent” (Osalbo, 2). Some Filipinos were also made to believe that teaching their children Tagalog would set them up for failure as Juanita Santos recalls about the church she was a part of. “The sisters told me that if he did not speak English, he would be put in the retarded classes. Gee, I didn’t want him to be put in the retarded classes, so we only spoke English to him. So now he does not know how to speak our language,”. This not only explains why some second-generation Filipino-Americans may not learn Tagalog but why their first-generation parents may have intentionally chosen not to teach it to them.
So what does this mean for the second-generation Filipino American? Well I think it might be helpful to examine how not learning the language might affect their connection to the Philippines and Filipino Identity. Jennifer Guiang Osalbo, a master’s student studying at the University of California Davis, conducted a series of interviews for her thesis on “Filipino American Identity Development And Its Relation to Heritage Language Loss”. For her study, she interviewed various generations of Filipino-Americans. Osalbo observed that Petra and Ryan, the only second-generation interviewees, were the only ones to express negative views on Filipinos stating “We hate Filipinos,” and “I just don’t like Filipinos, okay?!”. Osalbo believed that Ryan, in particular, was suffering from some degree of Colonial Mentality, which is an internal belief that a colonizer’s culture is superior to one’s own culture. Osalbo believes that this belief is possibly rooted in “his parent’s discouragement of learning the Philippine culture” (Osalbo, 60). This resulted in Ryan now devaluing “his own Filipino identity” and refusing “to learn or attach himself to anything related to it.” (Osalbo, 61).
Other Filipino-Americans expressed disconnection from the People or culture. In a study that interviewed Philippine-born Filipino Americans and U.S.-born Filipino-Americans, Teresa G. Tuason explores the various ways that ethnic identity is manifested between the two groups. She found that some Philippine-born Filipino Americans believed that their American identity was purely “circumstantial” and that they were “mainly Filipino” (Tuason, 7), with one participant stating that they were a “ Filipino who happens to be in America”. Another participant described one of the characteristics of a Philippine-born Filipino American as being someone who is “able to speak Tagalog” (Tuason, 7). Through these interviews, many similarities in responses came from having been raised in the Philippines for some time.
Additionally, being raised in the Philippines means that you likely grew up being able to communicate in Tagalog. This may be why they report being more closely connected to their Filipino Identity compared to the U.S.-born participants. This also might explain why Tuason found that it was “rare for Philippine-born participants to express identity confusion” (Tuason, 8).
In a poem titled Diaspora Blues, poet Ijeoma Umebinyuo writes “So, here you are / too foreign for home / too foreign for here. / Never enough for both.”. I feel the poem captures the struggle with identity confusion in a way that relates to the second-generation Filipino American. As a second-generation Filipino American myself, I often feel “less Filipino” for not sharing common cultural characteristics with my cousin. I couldn’t speak Tagalog nor have I ever lived
in the Philippines outside of vacation. Yet it didn’t feel right to call myself just “American” as I believed my Filipino identity still held a significant role in the way I walk through life. This sentiment is shared by other second-generation Filipino-Americans, with one sharing that “I feel like I’ve missed out on what I should know because I wasn’t brought up in the Philippines,” (Tuason, 6) and another, “I don’t know. (I am) so Americanized, but I can’t see myself being born into a white family” (Tuason, 6). Others speak of disconnection from the Philippines stating their reason for not engaging in their Filipino heritage was that they felt “more like a tourist visiting a vacation spot” (Osalbo, 51). Some even recall ill experiences in trying to engage with the culture. Petra recalls, “It wasn’t positively reinforced growing up. I would get made fun of by my family for speaking Tagalog,” (Osalbo, 46)”.
Another interesting perspective directly correlates this lack of connection to the inability to speak the native language “I think things would be different if they had taught me the language, but they had reasons for not doing so. They thought we would get confused. If I got that connection, you know, the language, then maybe it would be different” (Osalbo, 52). Upon further questioning, his reasoning for wanting to be able to speak his native language was to be able to communicate with his grandma with dementia and both of his parents as he believed that “they will be like that when they get older, only speaking Tagalog and us kids not being able to communicate with them,”(Osalbo, 60). In comparison to first-generation Filipino-Americans, we can see how the Filipino identity can waver greatly amongst the second generation. However, I discovered that while the proportion of identity confusion was much higher for the second generation, there also appeared to be overwhelming security in one’s dual identity.
In the Tuason study, many of the U.S.-born Filipino-Americans stated that being Filipino-American meant combining both Filipino and American cultures. “I am cognizant of the fact that..I am not just one part. I am both Asian and American,” (Tuason, 6) one participant states, alongside another who adds “I’m just American. I also recognize that I’m Filipino…it’s very important that I’m both,” (Tuason, 6). While the native language fluency of these participants is unknown, I believe it’s important to note that being Filipino doesn’t stop existing for those born outside of the mainland. If anything, it seemed to be an essential part of the Filipino-American identity.
Reading through these interviews made me remember a Filipino word I heard from my parents growing up. Remedyo is a word that describes the ability to be resourceful. To paraphrase my parents, “If you can’t do something, find a different way to do it,”. While not being able to speak the native language of your family makes the connection much harder, it does not inhibit you from connecting at all.
Writer’s Memo
I initially chose this topic because of my experience as a Filipino American. I became interested in it, partly because of what my cousin said but also because of my sister who is a Filipino American born in the Philippines (and fluent in Tagalog and Illocano). My topic started off about the Philippine Diaspora, which I soon came to realize was a huge topic on its own. So huge that to be completely straightforward and honest, I fell behind. I felt overwhelmed by the many directions my essay seemed to go in and I underestimated the amount of time it would take to produce an informative essay that I felt was of enough quality to turn in. However in doing so, I learned a lot about why I wanted to do this topic in the first place.
My initial solution to this was to keep writing and to see where I ended up. For the most part, that left me with paragraphs of information, facts, and quoted interviews with no real point to what I was trying to say. At many times, I contemplated changing topics, but I simply felt I was in too deep to do so. My process involved a lot of rewriting of both paragraphs and purpose statements. The answer didn’t really seem to come to me until I reflected on my answers to “Why does this matter”. Before I had tried to come up with triumphant answers such as “to keep the Filipino heritage alive” and “to encourage Fil-Am’s to be strong in their identity”. It wasn’t after a long writing session, I realized that I was simply just curious. I wanted to learn more about what it meant to be Filipino-American, but I also wanted to see if I was alone in my struggles. It was almost as if the audience I was writing to was myself. So I included quotes that I related to, like the Diaspora Blues quotes. I even used interviews to try and capture what it was that I felt in that same paragraph. Things like “feeling americanized” or that you’ve “missed out on what you should know” felt like they hit a little too close to home. Which is what I believe I led with in writing this essay.
As a result of my unpreparedness, however, I believe that there are sections that would have furthered by discovery in this essay. I would have loved to include sections expanding on other ways Fil-Am’s connect as well as how the cultural disconnect affects the longevity of the Filipino heritage. However I think that the conclusions that I chose have its own charm of leaving interpretation to the audience. It also means a lot connecting it to a value that my parents grew up with and emphasized to me. It leaves a sense of hope within me that there is always another way, something that I hoped to leave to my audience.
—Samantha Angella Aguilar Cayton
Instructor: John Mulvihill
James T. Lewis Prize Winner 2025
