IN OUR family, language has always been both discipline and delight. I’m an English teacher, so when my children were growing up, I would often correct their grammar and spelling. Wrong spelling? Wrong! In our family group chat, every message had to be in a complete sentence; no abbreviations, no shortcuts. My husband, meanwhile, was the pronunciation police.
Together, we raised our children with the conviction that words matter. Early on, we encouraged them to use either pure English or pure Filipino, believing that clarity and consistency would strengthen their linguistic foundation. It was not easy, but as a homeschooling family, we believed training them in clarity was worth the effort.
Speaking in Many Tongues
One day, while we were living in Malaysia, an American friend overheard me telling my daughter: “Mag-wash ka na ng hands mo doon sa sink.” She was amused that I had spoken in three languages at once: English, Tagalog, and Cebuano.
I hadn’t even noticed until she pointed it out. That moment made me realize the importance of speaking in one language at a time, so our children could build a strong foundation in their first tongue. I didn’t want them to be jacks of all languages but masters of none.
Our family has been shaped by movement. Each time we moved to a new country, we made an effort to learn the local language. Over time, our children became natural language learners. They picked up Chinese, Bahasa, Thai, and, one summer, French.
Our children learned to easily switch to another language depending on who they were speaking to, and so now that they have a strong grasp of their first language, we can drop the rule and speak to them in mixed languages.
Technically, it’s called code-switching. Studies say that it happens naturally when people speak more than one language. My husband and I usually speak Cebuano to each other, but when we need to keep a conversation private, we switch to one of the foreign languages we know.
Shared Experience
Over breakfast one morning, my daughter’s fiancé remarked, “I’m just so glad I don’t need to adjust to another language with you.” He found it easy to communicate with our family because we speak the same way as he does with his family.
What my daughter’s fiancé observed reflects a larger reality: multilingual families are no longer rare. Many families today share the same experience, shaped by intermarriages, travels, migration, and social media.
With technology making us globally connected, younger generations have learned languages almost effortlessly. Social media, streaming platforms, and online communities expose them to multiple tongues daily. So much code-switching is happening everywhere, sometimes unnoticed, sometimes celebrated. What once seemed unusual is now ordinary: children shifting between languages depending on context, parents blending dialects at the dinner table, and families carrying multiple linguistic identities at once.
Message Over Structure
Multilingualism has become a quiet norm in many households, a reflection of how interconnected our world has become. I happened to watch actor Luis Manzano on social media this afternoon.
He was talking to his daughter Peanut, in Taglish, a combination of Tagalog and English, which is also called conyo. I remember it was popularized when Kris Aquino came back from Boston in the late 80s and was a frequent guest on TV shows.
Davao Conyo is another unique way of speaking. It’s a combination of Tagalog and Bisaya, and sometimes with some English words. And it has become a dialect on its own, spoken by the younger generation like my nieces and nephews and their children. I didn’t like the idea at first, but I didn’t realize I had also been a conyo speaker myself.
Love in Many Languages
Thinking about multilingual households brings me back to a simple line in a children’s song we used to sing in Sunday School: “Love in any language, straight from the heart.” The words were childlike, but the truth was profound. Love, expressed in English, Tagalog, Cebuano, or any other tongue, carries the same meaning when spoken sincerely.
Many years ago, while training to teach English in China. I asked my TESOL trainer, “What kind of English should I teach, British or American? She smiled and said, “You teach English that communicates.” It was a simple but profound reminder: the message is more important than the structure. Language is not about perfection; it’s more about sincerity and connection.
That is why, even as we correct grammar and pronunciation, we remind ourselves that language is not just about rules, and that learning it is not the ultimate goal. It is only our tool to build relationships and to connect to people.
Apostle Paul wrote: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Corinthians 13:1). Language, after all, is not just about words; it is about speaking in love. The heart of communication is not structure but love. And in our family, whether in English, Tagalog, Cebuano, or a mix of all three, love is the language that matters most, and it is the language of love that binds families together.
Ruth Sitchon Morales is a full-time instructor at a state university in Mindanao, specializing in foreign language education. She is a resource speaker, freelance writer, and textbook author, and is currently pursuing doctoral studies in applied linguistics. Along with her husband and their three children, Ruth served as a cross-cultural worker and as an ESL teacher and in China, Malaysia, Thailand, and Africa. Her formal studies in foreign languages, enriched by immersion in diverse foreign and local cultures, have given her a broad perspective on life and a wealth of stories to share with her readers.
