my mom gave me an arduous task some days ago.

she asked me to translate a copy ad for 7-11 from english to tagalog. she might do the voiceover herself for a filipino radio program in hawaii (oh yes, she with the high-pitched voice would be invading the air waves soon. prepare for your ears to bleed. hahaha. love ya mommy!)

anyway, i had a hard time doing the translation.

my three-year absence in my homeland has made my tagalog rusty. my english is no good either, and so is my japanese. i suppose it was my stay in japan that made me a master of no language. 

often, i find myself groping for the right words to say when speaking in tagalog. my uncle michael, a caucasian who understands tagalog very well having lived almost half of his life with filipinos, told me while i was in hawaii that my tagalog sounded weird. and just the other day, i asked raj whether giri-giri (meaning the 11th hour in english) is tagalog or japanese. (japanese, he said).

translating the ad also made me realize how corrupted the tagalog language is. translating the whole thing into pure tagalog would sound odd and a bit unnatural. how else can you say flexible hours, benefit package or exciting team without using highfaluting tagalog words?

admit it or not, taglish has now replaced tagalog as the official language of the philippines. sad but true.