Meet a Canadian Who Spent 10 Years Learning Ilocano

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]But also, I just have learned from how generous Filipinos are. Even when they have one small little fish, they're eating lunch of you walk by an acquaintance and they're just eating this one small one small fish. They say, "Oh, kayan." They invite you, they join, and then they share this little fish with you. Filipinos don't wait until they're millionaires before they're generous. They're generous from day one regardless of what what their socioeconomic level is. And that's something I've I've rubbed off on me.

[00:00:24]Meet my new friend FTH. Although he's Canadian, the Philippines has become a very special place for FTH and his entire family over the past 10 years.

[00:00:33]FTH is a passionate advocate for minority languages and has worked with local Philippine governments to support the official recognition of Ilocano, one of five languages he has learned to speak. We had a very interesting conversation about some of the key differences between Tagalog and Iloilano, how he learned the language, his experience adapting to Filipino culture as a Canadian, and so much more.

[00:00:56]I hope you guys enjoy the video. I think that like you're one of very few people that I've interviewed on my channel that I've actually met in real life.

[00:01:05]>> Yeah, >> most of the time it's someone from online. The funny thing is is I emailed you years ago not knowing that we were somehow connected that I that I knew your partner.

[00:01:16]>> Yeah, that's the weird thing too. Like when my wife met you and you guys started hanging out, she mentioned something about your connection to the Philippines and I was like, "Oh, that's interesting. I didn't know about that.

[00:01:25]Let me send him a message." And that's when I found your original email, >> which was like from 2 years before or something.

[00:01:32]>> Sorry about that. You know, I'm just getting back to you now, I guess, 2 years later. But I'm glad we're able to have this chat at least.

[00:01:38]>> It's funny how we had the same thought to connect with each other just two years apart. Yeah. Little did I know that I was working with your partner and now wife and we were we were close. I know we're well.

[00:01:49]>> Yeah. Exactly. Cuz the your email was sitting in my inbox and we had hung out.

[00:01:53]I met you in person while I was sitting there. So >> that is so funny. We didn't put two and two together until much later. I mean to be fair it's one of those things too like you know I learned to speak a long time ago but looking at me people don't assume that right and so and you also have experience with Filipino languages and so like you know looking at us you might not guess it >> yeah yeah I reached out to you cuz I thought oh cool it's not usual to meet another foreigner who speaks a Filipino language or or more I just wanted to touch base with you and and potentially collab yeah and then we had that very close personal connection.

[00:02:27]>> Yeah. Exactly. So, it's funny how it's all kind of worked out. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. I mean, where are you from originally? Are you from Vancouver?

[00:02:34]>> I'm from Canada. I was born in uh Ontario. Uh but I left Canada when I was three. And then I moved to different countries around the world because of my parents' work.

[00:02:43]>> So, where have you spent the most time in your life?

[00:02:46]>> Philippines. Actually, the first time I moved to the Philippines was when I was 24. And I basically lived in the Philippines from 24 to 33, almost 10 years. And then during co I was in Colombia. Then I started uh graduate school in Canada and now I'm back in the Philippines.

[00:03:01]>> Oh, interesting. I didn't realize that you had spent that much time there. Cuz you're in the Philippines right now, right?

[00:03:06]>> Yes. So while I was working in the Philippines, my parents were looking for a place to retire. They tried Canada.

[00:03:11]They said, "No, it's too cold." They tried the US, too expensive. They tried Grenada in the Caribbean, but after about a day on the island, you've seen everything. And they got kind of bored.

[00:03:21]And then they came and visited me in the Philippines, and they fell in love with it. So they decided to move here and they've been living here now for 10 years.

[00:03:28]>> Oh wow. So your whole family basically has a connection to the Philippines.

[00:03:32]>> Yeah. The last three months, five of my brothers and sisters have come to visit.

[00:03:36]Uh so we had >> Wow. Big family.

[00:03:38]>> Yeah. We had uh we're we're seven and we had uh kind of a family reunion. Just a revolving door of of siblings coming to visit. Going to waterfalls, beaches, snorkeling, scuba diving, eating a lot of different kinds of food. For us English speakers, learning tagalog can be a real challenge. Trust me, I've been there. That is exactly why I decided to create my beginners tagalog course. With over 10 years of experience speaking Tagalog, I made sure that each and every video lesson is jam-packed with only the most useful information. When it comes to this course, the only thing I regret is not having it when I first started learning Tagalog. Ready to learn? Click the first link in the video description below to get started. Now, back to the video. Cuz where are you in the Philippines right now?

[00:04:28]>> Puerto Gallera. Menuro.

[00:04:30]>> Menuro. Ah, interesting. Okay. I've heard of that island. I don't know a lot about it. I think I've probably just talked to people who have told me that they're from there. But it's actually a pretty big place, right?

[00:04:40]>> Yeah, it's a big island. It's bigger than the biggest Hawaiian island.

[00:04:45]probably takes about at least 12 hours to go around in a circumnavigate by car or motorcycle. It's a mountainous province and it's not really populated.

[00:04:54]Most of the interior is just settled by a few mangan communities, indigenous communities and then the coastal areas are where the kind of Tagalogs live. And Portugal is uh considered or it's designated as one of the most beautiful bays in the world by this associ international association called most beautiful bays in the world. Pretty specific.

[00:05:15]>> Yeah. Yeah. It's it's pretty fair. I mean has all these beautiful coes and coral reefs. It's it's the center of the coral triangle or it's one of the hot spots in the coral triangle, meaning it's a biodiversity hot spot. So there's about 500 species of uh corals um in this area. So it has unparalleled diving and and snorkeling.

[00:05:35]>> That's super cool. So like out of the 10 years that you've been in the Philippines, has it mostly been in Muro or have you been in other places as well?

[00:05:42]>> Uh no, I have lived 5 years in Laon. Uh that was the first place I lived in and I also worked about 3 years in in Manila. So Lon, Manila and Muro.

[00:05:53]>> So what was it that like first brought you to the Philippines on the very first trip?

[00:05:57]>> I had just graduated from Harvard University as an undergrad. I worked for a sustainability NGO called Sustainable Cities based in Vancouver and they had connections with cities around the world. It would send young Canadian professionals to to basically intern or be project officers in city governments in Tanzania, Kenya, Philippines, Mexico, uh various countries and then we just sort of were immersed in whatever existing sustainability projects the the city was pushing. So I was sent to San Fernando Loon and I was working in the city environment and natural resources office and we were doing mostly sanitation and uh septage waste management. The city was updating a sanitation code. It had just built a uh septage treatment facility. It was trying to improve its system of septage collection, you know, wastewater collection. Yeah. I was the intern doing whatever they wanted me to do. That was for the first year. I was only actually only supposed to be here for six months and I ended up staying 10 years. Yeah.

[00:07:01]And from environmental work, I thought, hey, there's a lot more to sustainability than just the environment. And what about culture?

[00:07:08]What about language? And I had fallen in love with the Ilocano language. All my office mates uh spoke ilano. Uh but I also noticed that the my office mates spoke ilocano to me and spoke ilocano to each other, but to the kids, they spoke mainly Talog or Taglish. And I thought, damn, in another generation, if this is the the common habit, then uh in another generation or two, people won't know how to speak ilano anymore, even ilocano people. So that got me thinking, why is this the case? And people would tell me, well, parents would tell me when we were kids, we were fined for speaking ilocano in classrooms, you know, uh kids were penalized for speaking ilano. They would have to sweep the classroom at the end of the day if they were heard speaking in Locano or they would have to pay a peso or 10 centavos or whatever the rate was at the time for every word where they spoke. And I thought, damn, this this is something that we did in Canada to indigenous languages. And we we penalize children for speaking their indigenous languages. And those indigenous languages have been decimated. Many people have or families have have had their connection to their language and their culture broken by state policies, government policies in Canada and in many other parts of the world. And it's sort of a black mark on on our Canadian history. And the government has partially apologized for what they've done to indigenous uh peoples and and and languages. But I don't think, you know, the Canadian government is doing enough. They could do a lot more. But here I was in a new country and similar policies were still in place. And it wasn't just a page in the history books. This was people's everyday lived experience. This discrimination against local languages and systemic exclusion. So that's what got me thinking about the importance of um minority languages in the Philippines. The amazing diversity, the importance of education policies, government policies that are inclusive.

[00:08:55]A lot of people think of Philippines just they think to think of Filipino.

[00:09:00]And when you as a foreigner, if you're looking up as a tourist, oh, let me learn the language. And they go to a place like Glon or Iloilano speaking province or Sabano speaking province and here they are busting out while everyone around them is actually that's not their mother tongue. It's still appreciated that you're making an effort, but there's very little orientation to to to foreigners of the diversity of the Philippines and that there are more than 150 languages spoken across more than 7,000 islands, which Filipinos often refer to as dialects, but from a linguistic perspective, they are indeed separate languages because they are mutually unintelligible. You know, a Talid person can't understand unless he learns it. Uh, which means they are independent languages >> like that. There are some quote unquote dialects, you know, maybe in like the Bisayas, like you could say like, you know, Bisaya and Sebuano. I think those might be considered dialects of each other because they are mutually intelligible, but so many languages are not, you know, Iloilano, maybe even I mean like Yeah, they're completely different.

[00:10:06]Yeah. I don't know how that got started in the Philippines, but it is very common for Phil Filipino people to say dialects, right? and and I am aware that they are not but sometimes uh that's even impacted the way that I use those words you know I'll say like you know because it's just more understandable that's what people use that's what they say but yeah it's not it's not actually technically right in in most cases >> there is definitely a political connotation to a dialect so a standardized form of a language which appeared in an education system was called a language anything spoken in rural areas in an informal context, not printed in books, was called a dialect.

[00:10:46]But now, you know, 100 years later, that's that's not the distinction.

[00:10:50]That's not the definition of dialect and language. Whether or not a language is written or spoken, whether it is spoken in an informal context or a formal context, whether it has a 10,000-year history or a 200-year history, it's still language. I give examples like ilocano and Tagalog are languages. But within Ilocano, there are varieties. And within Tagalog there are varieties.

[00:11:12]Those are called dialects. So within the Iloilano language you have locos which has their own dialect versus has their own dialect. That's why inlo you would say for like so that would be but in you'd say so the e because the and those are dialectical differences.

[00:11:36]But ino from Iloilos and inlo from Lian still understand each other because despite the fact that they have different accents, different dialects, they both speak the same language because so much is in English, a lot of these kind of, you know, formal materials uh didn't have the chance to develop, right? And so in so many different Filipino languages, you can't find curriculum to learn them as a foreigner or even as someone who's Filipino but maybe wants to learn a different language or reconnect with their heritage or something like that because so much of the academic environments are just like English, English, English. And even in Tagalog, I mean like people that watch my videos know that I complain all the time about not having quality resources to learn Tagalog, but for Iloilano, oh my god, it would be 10 times harder or um, you know, other languages that are, you know, are smaller, like more minority languages. How did you learn Ilocano?

[00:12:29]What was that process like for you? And did you find it difficult to find good materials?

[00:12:33]>> Yes, very difficult to find materials.

[00:12:35]At first, I didn't find any materials.

[00:12:37]So I was just learning orally conversationally practice making mistakes with my office mates with my friends going to the market etc. Eventually I found materials but by the time I found materials those basic materials were not very helpful because I already knew what those materials contained. Uh for example the I eventually discovered a module by peacecore. Peacecore had this module given to their volunteers to learn a bit of ilano if they were positioned in an ilano speaking province. Peace cores are American volunteers who work um for two years in a particular place less economically developed countries Philippines and around the world. The Peace Corp has been really good about uh giving language trainings contextualized localized language training to American volunteers who who come to the Philippines. Yeah, I I I found that module. It's only given exclusively to Peacecore volunteers. So I kind of smuggled it from a Peacecore volunteer and I got an illegal photo copy of it.

[00:13:34]Yeah. because it's not in general distribution. But yeah, they do exist.

[00:13:38]It's hard. But throughout the 10 years of my living or coming back and forth to loon, I slowly developed a collection of newspaper articles, a few books. I would go to I became a member of Gungli, which means association of of Ilocana writers, and I would attend some of those meetings. And sometimes they have a little booth with three or four Ilocano books usually written by people who attended these meetings. Ilocano writers, enthusiasts who are part of the association. Um I encountered a few dictionaries. My my first environmental job. I ended up working for the provincial government on language focusing on Iloilano language and education and government policy around ilocano language. And I researched a bunch of different ilocano dictionaries that existed around the world and ordered hundreds for the provincial government and also schools and important establishments around province. So they they do exist but it it took quite a lot of effort to find those resources.

[00:14:39]>> What is your level of Iloano like now?

[00:14:41]>> I'm conversational. I I speak ilocano with my okano friends. I I used Ilocano for the majority of time while while working in the provincial government of Lon. I gave speeches in Ilukano. So, it's been about 7 years since I've been immersed in an iloc speaking environment. So, there's been some attrition in terms of my vocabulary or and also just my um what's what's that called? Short short-term memory cuz here in Portugal I speak the galog and then in lono and then I have a bunch of friends online call them daily you know because of I lived in Colombia and have also visited Mexico and I'm in Dominican Republic and I have a bunch of Spanish friends. So sometimes I will start speaking language and then remind myself, oh crap, I'm supposed to be speaking another language and and then there's a a kind of a bumpy ride for what could be a minute in a conversation or it could be days depending on how long you've been in that language. I think people don't talk about that a lot like switching between languages especially if they have a similar pronunciation like Spanish and Tagalog have a lot of similarities but it is challenging you know and when you're in the environment you're only speaking that language it's fine but when you're switching between them sometimes it can be challenging true especially when especially when you're drunk when when I'm drunk and someone says oh how do you say this in I'll be like ah or how do you say that in Spanish and just goes out the window whereas I I find a lot of Filipinos they become more confident and like some some Filipinos I know don't necessarily use much English when I'm speaking to them. You know, normally you speak ilano or you speak Tagalog, but then when they're drunk, it's like they stay in English and I'll I'll keep speaking Tagalog or Iloilo to them.

[00:16:19]They'll keep replying to like I guess maybe the social anxiety that some people have about speaking a second language or third language goes out the window when when they're drunk and they become suddenly an Englisher or an Englishera. But but for me that's not the case.

[00:16:34]>> How is your tagalog in comparison to your ilocano? Uh >> it's pretty good. My iloc is a bit better.

[00:16:39]>> So how many languages do you speak in total then?

[00:16:41]>> Um five.

[00:16:43]>> Okay. So English, Iloilano, Tagalog, >> Spanish, Spanish and Arabic.

[00:16:48]>> Arabic too. Wow. That's a that's a ton of languages.

[00:16:51]>> Yeah. Different language families too except for Tagalog and Ilano which are both Astronesian.

[00:16:56]>> Yeah. That makes it like more difficult because you don't have any carryover from the other language. I I learned iloano first before Tagalog, which I think made it a bit easier to learn Tagalog because Tagalog has a bit more resources and also you hear it in TV when you travel to other parts of the Philippines. There's a lot of pop culture music uh with with Tagalog. So, I feel like the bigger hurdle was Iano.

[00:17:19]So, I'm kind of glad that I learned Iano first because it made Tagalog easier. I mean from like the Talog perspective if I hear someone speaking like let's say Bisaya I can guess maybe like 50% of it maybe a little bit more I can understand some of it but when I hear ilukano it seems so different when you look at how sentences are constructed I mean like the example that I always use is like in Tagalog you say salat and in bisaya you say salat and you go okay there those are the same words in that particular case and then you go okay well how do you say that ino and it's Ayama and it's like whoa what completely different. So I've always been kind of intimidated to even like try to learn any ilocano because it just seems so radically different.

[00:18:01]>> Yeah cuz the Philippine languages are linguists have categorized Philippine languages and and there are three or four clusters of languages. They're on different branches of the language tree and ilocano and therefore more grammatical and lexical differences differences of vocabulary and grammar.

[00:18:17]So for example in iloano you have the duel whereas in dalog you just have the first person singular like for example I will go and then if it's were in a group you would say first person plural and exclusive kami that means we are going but not all of us and then that's first person plural inclusive right but has one more than that we have the map that's I will go is first person singular mapan we will go but that's excluding you that's all of us first person plural inclusive of you but then there's also the dual if it's just me and you not a third person not a fourth person so you have singular dual and plural in Iloano whereas in Tagalog you just have singular and plural you don't have dual that's an example of a grammatical difference but then lexical differences we can think of so much in Tagalog water is too big in ilano dum ocean is in Iloano but tag in Tagalog they don't sound at all alike.

[00:19:17]>> And that I mean you see that in Bisaya too, right? Like okay salad is the same but like the other words are completely different you know so you can't always rely on that either. Sometimes there's like false friends as well. Really mixes you up.

[00:19:29]>> Like uh Okay. So the uh you know you know what bh means in Tagalog?

[00:19:38]>> There's a couple meanings but yeah >> like like bone. Exactly. Bone. Ilocano.

[00:19:44]It's the male reproductive organ.

[00:19:46]>> Well, it can be that in Tagalog, too.

[00:19:48]>> Oh, really? Okay. I don't know.

[00:19:49]>> It's like slang though. It's slang.

[00:19:51]Could you say something in ilocano?

[00:19:54]introduce yourself or something, whatever.

[00:19:57]What do you want me to say? But you just answered that question. Do you want me to introduce yourself? Okay. Uh first let me see if I understood with my only Tagalog knowledge. My name is FTH. I'm from Canada. I'm on the island of Muro.

[00:20:28]I have been here for five something.

[00:20:31]>> All right. I worked in Lion for five years. So, >> okay. I worked in Lun for five years. I love speaking ilocano and I love the Philippines.

[00:20:38]>> Pretty close. Yeah, pretty damn close. I I I love the Ilano language. I love the Ilocano culture and I love the Philippines.

[00:20:43]>> Yeah, there's actually surprising. I'm surprised that there are some words that I understand in that.

[00:20:46]>> I think also I because of some Spanish loan words like that that helps fill fill in some gaps.

[00:20:54]>> But that's also used in Tagalog, right?

[00:20:56]>> Yeah. I I find that the the greatest similarities between Philippine languages sometimes are their joint Spanish loan words, you know, like and to andor and plateau and that set of vocabulary is quite common almost universally across Philippine languages at least all the areas that were had Spanish administration. There are some parts of Mindanao like Marano and Mindanao have very few Spanish loan words because they weren't really conquered. Say something in Tagalog.

[00:21:28]That's the translation of that.

[00:21:32]Did you understand that?

[00:21:33]>> No, I got nothing that nothing there.

[00:21:35]>> I want to go to the beach later.

[00:21:38]>> Uhhuh. Okay. Yeah. You were talking about the difference between and what is the other one? Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

[00:21:42]>> Bye-bye. Yeah. Yeah. Or how about this?

[00:21:47]>> Something about the weather.

[00:21:48]>> Oh, yeah. Panorn.

[00:21:51]>> Yeah.

[00:21:52]>> But I don't know. Maybe hot. Knowing the Philippines is probably man. It's hot.

[00:21:58]>> Yep. That's what I said.

[00:22:01]>> You have too much cultural knowledge.

[00:22:02]You You can guess the meaning even without knowing the words.

[00:22:06]>> Yeah. Filipino languages are fascinating to me. They feel like they almost couldn't be more different than English in so many different ways. And so it's hard to explain grammatical things because a lot of times we just don't have the words in English. like you have to really talk around it and be like in this particular case this is what things are doing or this is what how verbs are interacting with each other but um yeah I appreciate you explaining some some things about ilocano as well because it's a language I know very little about and so um that's super cool like I know that you've spent 10 years in the Philippines I'm I'm sure you're very accustomed to it now but what about when you first arrived did you have any like kind of first impressions of the country >> my my very first impression was wow this is a really diverse country because I arrived in the Manila airport. I was picked up by the San Fernando city government and taken 5 6 hours by car to Laon. I was asking questions about Okay, so they speak to Galok in Manila. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we we went to an hour and a half out of Manila and we were passing Pampanga and Helis city and they said, "Oh, this is we're not in Manila anymore. Where are we? We're in Pampanga." And they said, "They are kapang here." Kapangan. Where the Kapang? Oh, they speak Kapangan. Wow. We just left Manila. And then an hour later we were going through Pangasan or an hour and a half later and they said, "Oh, here they speak Pangasan." What?

[00:23:20]Another language? And then we arrived in Laon and they spoke. So within a 5-hour trip, we went through four different language regions. Um, which was incredible. You can you can drive 10,000 km in Canada and the towns still look the same. The people still sound the same. They're still speaking English.

[00:23:38]You just don't have that diversity in in so many other parts of the world. So, I thought that this is incredibly special.

[00:23:44]And moreover, they don't fight over it.

[00:23:46]Filipinos are so chill. They're so tolerant. They're so multilingual.

[00:23:49]They're so flexible. You know, they learn each other's languages or they move abroad. They learn language. I've met Filipinos who who know Thai. I was watching a a tennis tournament in Bangkok. These Filipinos were behind me and they were moving in and out between Tagalog and Thai. And then I've also met Filipinos who speak Arabic, German, Spanish. They're really good with languages. And I think one of the reasons why Filipinos are good languages is because they have so many languages here in their own country. They grow up in a multilingual environment. Most Filipinos know three languages. That that's something that really impressed me. And their tolerance, you know, despite Filipinos often being quite religious, most are Catholic, etc. They never had a problem with with who I was with my religion or the fact that they didn't have one. They they accept differences and diversity. They're more curious. You know, in in some countries when people ask you a lot of questions, it's because they want to sell you something or something. They have an ulterior motive. But Filipinos, they just they ask you questions and they're curious. They want to make friends. It's really easy to make friends in the Philippines cuz they always invite you here. Oh, join us for lunch, join us for dinner, come to have coffee with us. Um, and then you meet the whole family and they're good listeners. So, and you can tell that they're good listeners because they always echo back what you have just told them, meaning that they've heard what you've said and they acknowledge it. So for example they'll be like they'll be like oh where you from or Canada what's your religion religion religion often in these introductory conversation I I'm hearing myself twice but I love it cuz it means that they're really engaged. Yeah, that's that's that's one cool thing. And then also, yeah, there always have celebrations in the Philippines. Really funloving people in my experience, you know, you always have birthdays and baptisms and graduations, promotions, you know, party, you know, birthday whatever you'll be invited.

[00:25:55]very close and they're just everyone knows what's going on. Um whereas in Canada sometimes you don't even know it's like really sad. And in the Philippines with with these celebrations or birthdays, Filipinos don't expect anything from from guests. Whereas in Canada, if it's your birthday, the expectation is, oh, someone will give me a gift, someone will sponsor my dinner, like, you know, they'll treat me because it's my birthday. In the Philippines, the opposite birthday for the food, for the drinks, for the karaoke machine, everything. And guests just come and enjoy, which means parties are very well attended in the Philippines, you know, in in Canada.

[00:26:50]It is a big financial hit to have a party in the Philippines when it's my birthday. You know, I splurge and spend a lot of money, but it's only once a year and the rest of the year I can attend to so many social gatherings, meet people and definitely, you know, comes full circle and I I like it because it's birthdays and celebrations are less selfish, I think, here in the Philippines. It's more of a opportunity to give thanks to the people in your life. It's my birthday. I want to give thanks to the people in my life, to my friends, to my family, and show my appreciation to them. Therefore, I don't, you know, expect to pay for anything. Whereas in North America, it's a bit more, you know, self- serving.

[00:27:24]>> Yeah. Look at me. It's my birthday.

[00:27:25]Isn't that awesome?

[00:27:27]Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, there is that idea in the Philippines of like Lico, right? You and I, let's go and do something, but I'll be the one paying for it. The idea that that is expressed before you go out is also something that I think we kind of lack in English. Like we might say like let's go for some drinks my treat. People do say that but it's not like super common parliament where in the Philippines right that's pretty common and you see that in um in Spanish too. Right. Right. That means that I'm I invite you but that also means I'm going to be paying for whatever we're doing. And so yeah it's interesting how they do that.

[00:28:04]>> The the thing about like expectations around who pays for going out. That's a cultural shock that I had uh when I first came to the Philippines. I just didn't know about it. But I suggested to some friends, I think office friends or I said, "Hey, let's go to a club tonight." They said, "Sure." They came and then we were at the entrance and I paid for my entrance. And then I waited on the other side and I was like, "Okay, are you guys coming in or not?" And they're like, "Uh, we didn't bring any money." And they were like I was like, "What? We're but we we're going out. You didn't bring any money." And they're like, "No, you invited us." I like, "Oh, wait. So I pay." And then they're like, "Yeah." Yeah. And then I realized Oh, yeah. Cuz in the Philippines, if you invite someone to have dinner or whatever, if there's a common understanding that the person doing the inviting is the person paying, no questions asked. You don't need to. It's already understood. Whereas in Canada, if you invite someone to go out, you have to explicitly say, "Let's go out my treat," then you know that person is going to pay. But if they just say, "Let's go out." The common understanding in Canada is that everyone pays for themselves, which is the understanding I brought to the Philipp. But uh I quickly changed that. So, you know, of course, when I invited people after that, I I I would pay and it was the I think the culturally responsible thing to to do.

[00:29:15]It's presumptuous of me to assume that people invites have the money to afford going out or to, you know, to drink or to eat or whatever. From their cultural perception, if they accept an invite, they're they're in safe hands. They're they're going to be treated. So, I don't they don't have to worry about money. So uh gi g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g given given that assumption, it is it is important to treat the people you in invite out uh um in the Philippines particularly if there is a a difference in power or difference in financial ability, capability, you know, uh like a businessman in the Philippines is never going to invite their their helper out for a meal and then expect their helper to pay his share or her share. You know, in in the Philippines, they're they're quite conscious of of people's financial capacities, and whoever has more capacity, whoever is the boss or a better job or whatever is usually expected to pay and will gladly pay and and no questions asked. I >> I think it might also stem from kind of the Philippines being more hierarchal.

[00:30:14]It's it's more clear on like who the boss is, like kind of where you are in terms of social status. I think that's a a very big thing in Asia in general, but also in the Philippines. you you really do see that and people talk differently to people depending on where they are kind of in that social strata. And so yeah, that that can be a bit of a culture shock for me as a Canadian because in in Canada we're not really like that. We don't focus too much on hierarchies. Like obviously you could have a boss or a manager or something like that. But I think most people try to kind of treat people the same and the same goes for elderly people. I mean, if you talk to your grandma, yeah, you talk a little bit different, but in the Philippines, it's mano and po and like there's there's a lot of respect that's put on everything that you do and say with that person, you might even call someone else like, you know, like Lola, even if they're not your grandma, right?

[00:31:05]You might call them that just to be respectful. Yeah. But all through the ages, right? Ate, ta, lola, like depending how old they are, you would just change it. But there's always kind of like a recognition of like you are a higher like in a higher hierarchy than I am because of your age or you would also use you would use way more of that with your boss, right? Like you're never going to call your boss by their name in the Philippines where you would do that here.

[00:31:27]>> Yeah. Also in Iloano you'd say manong manang and then instead of po they have inlo.

[00:31:33]>> What I know what I love about Iloilano as well is that they also have the the other one right they have adding for a a younger. Yeah. Which doesn't have. I think that's very interesting.

[00:31:43]>> Yes, you know in you can say buno for the youngest child but not what do you say for all the other younger children whereas adding is is universal younger sibling. There's also a word for the final child burid. Burid means the last like buno ad is the general younger brother or younger sister. One interesting difference between ilocano is you know uh tagalogs will put po in almost everything. You can hear sometimes three po in one sentence. In ilocano appleo is used more sparingly.

[00:32:11]You might use it in a formal speech. You might use it when a group arrives at your house and you're welcoming everyone or saying good morning to a group.

[00:32:24]It sounds hyper like very formal and very polite. So if you want to be super polite, you say apple. But you don't need to put apple in every sentence in order to sound polite. Like you can be polite without using apple. And then apple just takes it to another level.

[00:32:37]Whereas in the it's almost obligatory to sample. In order to sample it, you have to sprinkle your sentences with B.

[00:32:43]>> And there's different reasons for it too. You know, like if you're in a customer service role, you're always going to use po with the clients, right?

[00:32:49]Like if you go to a restaurant, the waiter or waitress is always going to be like using every sentence with po as much as they possibly can or younger people with older people. You can also use uh po to be like kind of flirty, you know, like you if you use it more, it can especially from girls to guys. I think in that particular case, it can come across as kind of flirty because you're adding on an extra layer and stuff. So, there's there can be some like contextual meanings even within, you know, those respect particles. What about um uh Filipino food?

[00:33:18]>> Oh my god, I'm glad you asked this question. I love Filipino food. I wasn't super impressed with Filipino food when I first arrived because I had already like had lots of experience with Indian food and Thai food and just those are really diverse cuisines and you can find a lot of vegetarian options in those cuisines particularly Indian food all sorts of spices. So when I came to the Philippines my first impression was that oh you know there's a lot of meat not many vegetables when you go to a restaurant and you look at the meat section and the vegetable section you think vegetables are vegetarian because they have those two sections. meat dishes were pretty much all meat. The vegetable dishes still had meat in them like pans or or chopsi. There would still be pieces of chicken in it. So, there aren't really that many vegetarian options in the Philippines. I'm not a vegetarian. I I eat I eat anything. But I do love vegetables. I found that particularly in Manila like canteen food, there wasn't a lot of um uh vegetable dishes. But then in Ilocos, there are actually a lot of vegetables uh and vegetable based dishes. Like ding ding is is mostly vegetables. Spinagmet has a lot of vegetables and then you have all sorts of kind of like partially cooked ilocano salads. Some of the vegetables are partially cooked, some of them are fresh and they have marai and tong saluyot kabasa utong kudai raanos tabongo kangong. Uh there's just a lot of vegetables in the Ilocano provinces.

[00:34:39]Um and I love them. Uh but sometimes you'll have like amazing vegetables and then ruin it with a bunch of bagong which is really which is >> that's like shrimp paste, right?

[00:34:52]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And really salty bong took me a while to get used to and I use a lot of it like a lot of it. So uh that was definitely like a slowly acquired taste and to this day I I I try and like just use a little bit of it instead of a lot of it. And um Dakan, which is a like a pork's ear and face chopped up with creamy.

[00:35:16]>> Yeah. With creamy brain fat.

[00:35:19]>> The fake ones like the dinak dakan that non-ilocanos make are has mayonnaise, but the real dinak dakan has brain fat like brain the white is not mayonnaise.

[00:35:29]It's it's comes from brain paste. Um, but it's actually really good. And then uh dinar dan, which is the version of dugu an I grew to like that. At first I was like, "Oh my god, you know, pork in a stew of pork blood." That is more of a psychological thing, like, "Oh my god, I can't eat this." But then I taste it.

[00:35:47]It's actually pretty good. The one I ilo dish to this day I still can't appreciate is pinapan.

[00:35:54]>> The chicken one.

[00:35:56]No, it's uh it's goat. It's really bitter because it has goat bile in it. It's like a It's in a green brownie.

[00:36:05]>> Okay. Okay. But bile sauce which tastes so bitter and smelly like you're eating feces or something. It's very nod like a weird goat smelling smell. However, the okconos always tell me, "Oh, but if you cook it right, it doesn't smell like that." So, I've yet to discover a pining which tastes like good for me. But all the rest I I I really like. And of course, I also love other Filipino dishes from other places. Kare inola sinigang. Those are kind of my favorite go-to restaurant uh dishes that you can find pretty much around the Philippines.

[00:36:40]And I even cook those at home when I'm in Canada or Colombia, I cook Filipino dishes to remember the Philippines and make me feel closer to home.

[00:36:50]>> Yeah. I mean, you said that out of all the countries you've been to, and there there are quite a few, the Philippines is where you spent the most time. Um, how do you feel like that's changed you as a person?

[00:36:58]>> Good question. I it is irrevocably changed me. You know I speak more languages now. I which have been really essential to my social life, to my ways of thinking and to my work. My my work is often involved these various languages. We really am passionate about Philippine languages and and helped the provincial government create this law that made ilogano an official language.

[00:37:21]The first province to do that for a local language in the Philippines. And then also I was involved in the advocacy group which uh supported the department of education in their mother tongue multilingual policy where a lot of at least 19 uh Philippine languages were included in the education system starting in 2013. And so yeah, it's been really fundamental to my being and to my personality of the languages of the Philippines and my work. But also like from a social standpoint, I feel I'm more sensitive to to to people's needs.

[00:37:51]In Canada, you'll be like, "Oh, I'm thirsty." and you pop into the 7-Eleven and you bring come out with a water.

[00:37:56]That's not okay in the Philippines. If you go into the 7-Eleven and you're with a group of friends, come out with three waters, four waters for your friends. Or if you're going to get yourself ice cream, get ice cream for your companions. You know, it's a much more communal. Filipinos have made me more aware of my surroundings and considerate of other people. I also used to be really stingy and now I'm I'm much more generous. Like people frequently ask me, "Oh, can you loan me this or can my mom's, you know, in the hospital, can I can you assist uh you know, financial?"

[00:38:33]I I'm I'm much more willing to say yes.

[00:38:35]Now, part of the reason is I'm in a better uh situation and you know, financially in my my personal life, but also I just have learned from how generous Filipinos are. Even when they have one small little fish, they're eating lunch of you walk by an acquaintance and they're just eating this one small little fish. They say, "Oh, can they invite you, they join, and then you share this little fish with you." Filipinos don't wait until they're millionaires before they're generous.

[00:38:57]They're generous from day one, regardless of what what their socioeconomic level is. And that's something I've I've rubbed off on me. I always had the North American mentality of like, oh, you know, I'm not rich enough or I need to save this or I someone's always richer than than than me and and I was more parsimmonious with with my finances. But the Filipinos have have set a different standard, a different example and I have this less less of a greedy attachment to money.

[00:39:25]Yeah, it is it is very impressive how Filipinos give. Like you assume again like from, you know, the Canadian perspective that you do need to have a lot of things to give, but Filipinos, you know, maybe some people don't have a lot, but they're still very generous with what they have. Yeah. Which is very very commendable. Yeah. Like we're kind of suspicious of people we don't know. I think we think people are going to take advantage of us or something. And it could be financially or it could be in other ways too. Like we just don't we don't open up to people in the same way that Filipinos do. you know, this is the culture that I grew up in and so for me, you know, it was normal. You I was very familiar with Filipino culture before I went there for the first time. So, I kind of knew how it was. But it reinforced to me how people will embrace you. Like I went there as a foreigner for the first time in the Philippines and I never felt like I was alone. Like if I needed something, there was always people around me and they they were extremely helpful and extremely curious of me and like I was recording videos when I was there. They couldn't have been more helpful, you know, coming over. Hey, let me be in your video. Hey, what's your YouTube channel? Shout out to this or shout out to that. And it made me feel bad because I think Filipinos coming to Canada wouldn't get that experience.

[00:40:31]>> Yeah. True. And in some other countries, they know if you ask for people for directions, they'll say the direction, but actually it's the wrong direction.

[00:40:41]Where in the Philippines, not only they give you the right directions, they will go with you to the location. They will escort you. Yeah. They'll take you there. I'd like to end my interviews with some kind of rapid fire questions.

[00:40:52]Uh, is it okay if we do that?

[00:40:53]>> Yeah, go for it. Game now.

[00:40:55]>> What do you prefer? Grab or move it?

[00:40:58]>> Grab.

[00:40:58]>> Jeep or trike?

[00:40:59]>> Jeep.

[00:41:00]>> City or provincial?

[00:41:02]>> Proincia.

[00:41:03]>> Beer or Jen?

[00:41:04]>> Jen.

[00:41:19]Ah, okay.

[00:41:21]Um, >> I didn't pay for it because that's how generous Filipinos are. Someone offered something free, so I didn't know. I didn't know it was cheap. Karaoke or basketball?

[00:41:29]>> Ooh, karaoke.

[00:41:31]>> Halo halo or lechiflan?

[00:41:32]>> Halo halalo.

[00:41:33]>> Dagat or bundok?

[00:41:35]>> Ah, that's so hard. I love both. Dagat and bundok. I love that. Actually, right now I'm on a bund overlooking the dagat.

[00:41:42]So, best of both worlds.

[00:41:45]>> Tag init or tug. Um, an >> tagulan.

[00:41:49]>> OPM or K-pop?

[00:41:51]>> OPM.

[00:41:51]>> ABS CBN or GMA?

[00:41:54]>> Probably ABS CBN because they use more local languages like ABS CBN has news, Helo News, Warai News in their different provinces. Well, at least before they were shut down. So, I feel like they're a bit more on diversity.

[00:42:09]Adobo or Sinigang?

[00:42:10]>> Sinigang.

[00:42:11]>> Pansit or Lubia?

[00:42:13]>> Panit.

[00:42:13]>> Jollibee or Makto?

[00:42:16]probably jollbe >> Canadian food or Filipino food. I guess Canadian food is like western food.

[00:42:22]Let's say >> Filipino food. With Philippines, if you try hard enough and you visit enough islands, you could make a fantastic group of dishes, a diverse, you could make a really good highass restaurant with Filipino food if you do your research.

[00:42:34]>> Borakai or Palawan?

[00:42:36]>> Palawan and Bhul.

[00:42:38]>> Okay. Orul. Yeah, >> I love. Okay, those were all the questions I had for you. Thank you.

[00:42:43]>> Nice. Thank you for for this conversation. HEAT. HEAT.