I spent a few days playing with Samoan and Tagalog, trying to see what came up out of the deep parts of the brain. Of course my Tagalog is not really atrophied. I regularly watch soap operas and news in Tagalog, pretty much every day. My wife and I speak Tagalog to each other regulary. I looked up some of the music from back in the '80s in the Philippines. It was a big decade. There was a revolution, where a dicatator was driven out, and then there were multiple military coups, and attacks from communist guerillas, a huge earthquake, and a huge volcano erruption to start the next deccade. And I fell in love with my wife during this. A great decade. There was a lot of emotion during this decade and a lot of music.
When old fuddy-duddies tell you about how great the music was in the old days, probably they are talking about how great their memories associated with the music are. I made a playlist a couple of days ago, and as we were heading out for a family trip, and I started the playlist with my wife and daughter in the car. I was sort of shocked. I realized that my comprehension of sung Tagalog is much better than the old days; I could mostly just follow along with the songs. I was also surprised at my wife's reaction. After the first song or so, she started singing along. She said that the songs were giving her goosebumps. She got all teary eyed at one point. LIke a lot of people back in the crazy, street-fighting days, she mostly kept her head down, but I guess it all meant a lot to her. Passionate, dangerous days.
One of the albums by the group Asin reminded me that I had actually met one of the "stars" from those strange days in the Philippines. Back in the day, I had a "celebrity crush" on Lolita Carbon. She was a part of the musical group Asin, and had one of those absolutely wonderful flexible voices, hoarse whisper, operatic trumpet, rock n roll scream and growl. And she was a very lovely young woman. (Now she is a lovely older woman). There was a big charity concert by the folk/rock group Asin at the refugee camp in Bataan where I worked (I think Asin was calling itself Lokal Brown at that time). I, and a few friends, had put in a little money to get the concert going, and Asin/Lokal Brown worked for free because they recorded the concert for a possible live album. We had maybe 10,000-15,000 people at the concert, refugees, poor folks from the province, and a few folks from Manila and Olognapo (where the big US naval base was). I had about 25 guests from Olongapo who were there. I invited everybody in a bar in Olongapo to come to the concert, and all of the women seemed to have shown up. Sailors couldn't come because our province was considered to be under Communist control after dark, but everybody's girlfriend and or wife, or random Olongapo pool player in the bar came. What a joy, I had my own fleet of tricycles and bangka full of friends during the whole evening. Great fun.
Anyway, after the concert, I randomly wound up pushed into a corner with Lolita Carbon at the party. I managed to say that I had enjoyed the concert and we started talking. I was impressed that she seemed to be completely normal. She was smart, and kind, and seemed like she would make a good friend. We both opened up to each other a lot, the way that strangers drinking beer will. We talked for a couple of hours; she got into the band bus to Manila, and I collected my 25 guests from the party to head home and try to figure out where everybody was going to sleep. (Let's see, 25 guests, one bed, hmmn... I guess we're all on mats on the floor)
Now, what does this have to do with language learning?
Sometimes you will hear that Tagalog is dying, that in a few years it will be gone. You will also hear people, sometimes Filipinos get this attitude too, that it is worthless, that anything that could be done itn Tagalog would be better in English. Some idiot foreigners even say things that imply that there really isn't any native culture left in the Philippines. I think these things could only be said by someone that doesn't really have any connection into the culture at all. If you don't speak Tagalog (or another Filipino language) in the Philippines, you will always have only a superficial understanding of what is going on. Now, Spain and the United States did great damage to the self image of Filipinos, but there is still a vibrant native culture there, several actually. As Lokal Brown sang about the Philippines at one point that night long ago,
"This is not America.
This is not the USA.
This is one of the places
That try to make it feel that way."
When I got a chance to talk to Lolita Carbon, I think our conversation would have been completely different if I couldn't speak Tagalog. Not because she couldn't speak English, heck, her English is as good as mine, but because speaking Tagalog gives you a context for what people are saying. Learning a language opens up a new world for you. No translator app can do this for you. You learn a lot more than vocabulary and grammar when you learn a language. A language can open up a whole world.
I've been so lucky and so blessed to have learned the languages I've learned and to have had the adventures I have had.