International Living, Marriage & Travel

It used to be that Spanish was the third language of Filipinos. Our grandparents speak Spanish and Spanish subject is included in college courses. However, my generation did not cultivate that advantage until the department of education decided to make Spanish an optional subject instead of a requirement. Now the Spanish speakers in the Philippines have greatly diminished in number and even I have already forgotten what I had learned in school. As an advice to those with a third language, cultivate your knowledge by using the language.

When I first started going to the Philippines years ago I noticed that a lot of the Filipino words were based in Spanish. A lot of the cities and provinces have Spanish names also.

I think when a second or third language is not required to be learned in school, students started to focus on learning other academic subjects but not that language anymore. Here, in my country (Malaysia), we are required to learn our national language (Malay language) and English. Chinese is not required, some Chinese chose not to learn that language though there are still some Chinese chose to learn.

Over here in America, taking a foreign language is only required in high school and sometimes in college. That is one of the main reasons that most naturally born Americans can only speak English. Even if they did learn a little bit of another language in high school, they would forget most of it a few years later.