Teaching My Husband Tagalog

I'm not going out of my way to teach him Tagalog but he picks up a lot from me. It's just funny to hear him pretend he's speaking it and if I didn't know better some of the "sentences" he says sound just like it.

Mani

First let me say that the word "peanuts" in Tagalog seems to have two spellings" mani and mane with a caret over the "e" (it doesn't help that "caret" phonetically has about 5 variations).

Second, "hiya" means shame, therefore "walang hiya" means no shame. "Hiya" I believe, is what fuels Filipinos, I guess it can be equated to the Greeks (mythologically speaking) view of "honor". Pronounced hee-ya, it can be used for peer pressure as well as a morality check.

Growing up I heard a lot of "pahiyain mo kami" from my parents, roughly translated "you want to shame us" or "you bring shame to us". It was a way for them to keep me in line, to let me know that my actions not only make me look bad but also brings embarrassment to my family. With that comes the shyness (also another meaning to hiya) of talking about personal problems. It's difficult to discuss personal problems to a stranger especially when you're brought up that it's a shameful thing to do (better to keep it in) and second that family is first, so any issues should be brought up with the family or not at all.

I know that when you have to explain it, the joke isn't so funny, but I also know that some of my viewers are not intimate with Filipino culture, so just a background...

Taglish

My parents spoke 'Taglish' at home. This combination of Tagalog and English was so common that in my younger years of grade school I would speak it automatically, interchanging Tagalog words with English words.

What's Up With 'Ano'?