I wish I can fluently speak tagalog and ilocano. I can speak lighweight tagalog, but has room for improvement. I can fully understand it though because my parents, aunties, and uncles spoke to me in Tagalog at times. Honestly growing up, speaking in tagalog wasn’t encourage nor I was not surrounded in an environment where tagalog was spoken. Fell into peer pressure of not speaking tagalog.

In high school, I took four years of Tagalog for my foreign language. Looking back, I took the class for granted. I didn’t realized how privilege we were to take Tagalog as a foreign language class.

Did you know there are not many high schools in CA and in the United States that offers Tagalog as a foreign language class. Although, I am Filipino, it doesn’t mean it guaranteed to me to an easy A. Even though I somehow knew how to speak tagalog, the class was challenging learning the language, writing in Tagalog, the past, present, and future tenses. 

A start for me to improve my tagalog skills is to speak Tagalog and Ilocano to my parents. Don’t be surprised if I bust out in Tagalog talking to Aunties and Uncles! haha