Why do Filipinos no longer speak Spanish?

Jerald Macachor

Why do Filipinos no longer speak Spanish?

I’m Filipino and well-versed in Philippine History though it isn’t my professional expertise or major in college.

If you can read this now, that is because I speak English and have done so since my young formative years.

Filipinos no longer speak Spanish because Spanish (and English) are not native to the Philippines.

There aren’t enough immigrants from those countries to make these languages as native. Contrast this with the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand where a majority of the population has British ancestry.

But then, how is it that I’m speaking writing to you in English?

The Philippine situation is similar to the French-speaking regions in Africa, English-speaking regions in Africa, and countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, India, etc. The ability of these regions to speak foreign (historically colonial) languages is through the education system and endorsement by the government.

In fact, your ability to speak the colonial tongue is sometimes used as a heuristic to determine your level of educational attainment, a proxy for your intelligence if you will. Whether that is good or bad is another matter.

During the American period, English replaced Spanish as the main language for education (though many schools were bilingual). Spanish was still widely spoken in the American period as many people were still educated by the old system. Generation by generation, the Spanish slowly died out.

For example, Aguinaldo, Quezon, Osmena, Roxas, Quirino, and Macapagal spoke Spanish, wrote, conversed, and made speeches in Spanish. As that generation died out, Spanish language continually lost its place.

By the time of President Magsaysay, Marcos, Aquino, Ramos, they could read and understand Spanish but did not make speeches in Spanish like their predecessors.

It is a lie that Spain never wanted Filipino indios to speak Spanish. They even set up public schools in the Philippines. They even set up Santo Tomas and San Carlos universities where many prominent Filipinos were educated. Its just that Spain was a poor country in imperialists standards compared with Britain and the US, so their budget for developing their colonies was not as substantial.

I also challenge the notion that Spanish was a language reserved for the elites. This half true. The real truth is that Spanish was the language of the educated (like English is in the Philippines today). Its simply that around the 1900s, not everybody was educated. Certainly, most if not all elites were educated, or Spanish born, and so they spoke Spanish. But many were not elite indios like Mabini, Bonifacio, Sakay for example. They were an educated middle class by that time’s standards in contrast to the more affluent Illustrados like Rizal and the Luna brothers.

Most non-European countries like the Philippines did not start to have true universal free public education until the 20th century. Even Latin American countries had large swaths of their indio populations unable to speak Spanish because they were uneducated. They spoke their native languages like Quecha (Peru), Nahuatl (Mexico), Guarani (Paraguay) and others. Today, the vast majority have at least a high school education all in Spanish.

It is highly conceivable that had the Philippines not been under American occupation, that Spanish would continued as the language of education, and when education became truly universal, Filipinos would speak Spanish widely as opposed to English today.

A Tagalog curriculum may have arisen in this alternate scenario, but remember Tagalog curriculum did not start to be implemented until the 1950s, so its not entirely convincing that Tagalog would have displaced Spanish.