Filipinos are Emotional?
For news on Mariannet Amper : visit my entries at Suicide, Media and Mariannet Amper and Childhood and Adolescent Suicide Deaths in the Philippines
One of my proudest primetime adventure is speaking in a dialect that I am not fluent in TV or radio interviews. Though raised a Cebuana, my first language has always been English. My parents often spoke in Tagalog between themselves. I learned to understand basic tagalog but never spoke it at home. Same with Cebuano. I have been skirting from a certain radio station mainly because I just cannot speak tagalog properly. How will I ever explain grief as pagdadalamhati without getting my tongue all twisted up in knots? How does one translate the word denial in Tagalog? Or Depression?
Do you want to talk to my husband?, I bargained. He speaks fluent Tagalog.
The executive producer pursued “It’s alright to speak in English”. Yeah right, English is fine. The listeners will understand but what will they think of me? But I remembered that I am in an advocacy and I needed to hurdle my speech limitations at all cost. I asked for the guide questions and with the help of my husband, I praticed the tagalog definitions of most grief terminologies including pronouncing the tongue twisting pag-da-da-lam-ha-ti. The good news was I can do the interview via phone patch which meant that I can have a cheat list in front of me. Goodee. I clapped my hands.