When Cristina Ting calls for her six-year-old son, she asks her “anak” to come. When someone leaves “paalam” – meaning goodbye – is what they'll hear. And when she's thankful she'll say “salamat.”
The 32-year-old Filipina and her husband have decided to continue to speak Tagalog while living in Innisfail. It's important to them their son retains his mother tongue.
“I want my son to be fluent in his first language,” she said. “Practice makes perfect.”
Out of the 7,865 non-institutional Innisfail residents surveyed by Statistics Canada in 2011, 115 reported their mother tongue as Tagalog, second only to English, at 7,235 people. French and German tied for third place with 60 people each.
Tagalog is also the second most prominent language spoken most often at home, with 70 respondents having indicated the Filipino language, following English with 7,575 speakers. Spanish and French tied for third with 20 speakers.
Ting says often conversations at their home will morph into a combination of English and Tagalog, or “Taglish” as she likes to call it. And even though she works with some others who speak Tagalog, she's happy for the chance to improve her English skills, as well.
“All the people here is so kind and very patient to listen and understand you,” she said. “You need to learn everything, from the people, the culture, to the language.”
The data was the last batch of crunched numbers to be released by Statistics Canada.
In Penhold 2,275 people indicated their mother tongue was English, with 25 marking French, 10 marking German and 10 marking Tagalog. English was the language spoken most often at home with only five marking French and 15 marking non-official languages. No one in Penhold spoke Tagalog most often at home at the time of the survey.
Just .63 per cent of Penhold's population said they spoke a non-official language most often at home, compared with 2.23 per cent in Innisfail.
