A foreigner interested in your culture has a question: Why do so many people online mix English words, and even entire sentences, into their Philippine language (Tagalog, Cebuano, etc.)? Is it only like that online, or do Filipinos talk this way in real life too? (Example screenshots below)
Code-switching is common in multilingual societies and communities.
Yeah, people do that in real life too. Some words (especially technical terms) have no direct Filipino equivalent, and sometimes it's just easier and faster to say it in English (fewer syllables).
This is normal. It even has a name: Taglish (Tagalog + English). Most Filipinos know both Tagalog and English. Some things are easier to say in Tagalog and others in English, so they just mix them. In provinces that speak other languages, people mix in those languages too.
Anyway, as long as you can make your cheverlu understood, waay problema keni (no problem here).
People really do talk like that in person too. It's a subculture, and there have been a few studies on it. This article sums it up well. https://www.globalizationpartners.com/2024/11/27/taglish-linguistic-blend-filipino-identity/ It's a combination of being an American colony for half a century and having English forced on us as the language of instruction, which Spain, who colonized us for 333 years, didn't do. And we blended that with our identity. Also, highly educated people from regions that don't speak Tagalog often know English better than Tagalog. Filipino (Tagalog) is taught in school, but it's not really used in daily life, while English is everywhere because of Western media (movies, books, TV, etc.). So these days it's become the common language among people from different regions.
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