Taglish: Code Switching

Thesis Statement:
The negative effect of code switching has contributed confusion to the English speaking environment of the Philippines.

Outline:

I. What is Taglish
a. The definition of Taglish
b. How Taglish started
c. Negative effects of Taglish
d. Why Taglish leads to confusion
II. The English speaking environment of the Philippines
a. When and how long English has been taught in the Philippines
b. English in the business world


Taglish is the switching between two languages, namely Tagalog (from the Philippines) and English, the universal language of the world. Taglish is sometimes called code-switching in the English world. There are words in English that cannot be expressed in Tagalog, likewise for Tagalog. Taglish has evolved in the English speaking environment of the Philippines to say what they mean.
According to the business environment, Philippines rate three in the English speaking countries of the world. This is a good thing for the economy of the Philippines yet we still face the fact that we still code switch between English and Tagalog that leads to confusion. Taglish can cause confusion because we don’t know whether we are speaking in Tagalog or in English anymore. This is very important whenever talking to people who do not know one of the two languages. They will get confused.
Taglish has its benefits to the Filipino society by being able to say what they mean yet, whenever they get used to it too much, they use it whenever talking to people of different cultures as well. This is a bad thing to get used to because it makes other cultures look down on the way Filipinos speak and it makes us confused on whether we are speaking in Tagalog or in English anymore because of the mixing and code switching of various words to mean what we say.
Warped words and words that are grammatically incorrect makes it bad because it confuses the people. Confusion on the usage of words is a bad thing in the English speaking society of the Philippines. It murders our language and the English language as well by code switching and making it seem that this word belongs to the Tagalog language yet it is not. Yet fact remains that Taglish cannot be controlled. Taglish is quite annoying because of the slangness it brings to our asian influence. The westerners have been here and have brought their way of speaking as well to the English speaking community of the Philippines. Through this, it has evolved on us having our western influence which is a good thing for us in a way yet has negative effect on us too.
On my thoughts on Taglish, I need opinions of other people as well so I had asked some of my friends from school how they felt about Taglish. One of my friends said that Taglish is a very cheap way of speaking. It degrades our way of speaking. I agree with my friend on her thoughts about taglish, yet again we cannot change the fact that Filipinos do indeed code switch between languages.
English is taught here in the Philippines as a major subject. Philippines follow American and North American English in Grammar yet has a touch of asian influence. Thus this influence leads to taglish, otherwise known as konyo or (coño). Taglish or coño is the slangness brought about by mixing two of the languages that is present to our society. Hilarious examples I have heard from people are things like when they feel something bad in their stomachs they would say, “na-fa-fart ako” or meaning “I need to fart” or another coño expression I heard when I was still in highschool was “ I will make tusok tusok the fishballs okay ?” which means that he or she will just pierce the fishballs from the pot.
The school I am currently studying at is located in a business district with lots of call centers. I am lucky enough to have the opportunity of using these people as my experiments and carefully analyzing them. They truly speak good English and they sound American. Sure enough, these people are graduates of high school or college and they are well equipped with good conversational English yet they still have the problem of speaking in a cono way and using taglish.
Taglish cannot be totally expelled from the English speaking society of the Philippines but there are certain preventive measures. We can start using English everyday and focus on making our lecturers enforce straight English and straight Tagalog only to avoid code switching.



SOURCES
Virgilio S. Almario, ‘Wikang Taglish, Kamulatang Taglish’, 2008

Roger M. Thompson ‘Varieties of English Around the World’ , 2008