I tend to apologize in advance for my possible mistakes. I often reason that English isn’t my mother tongue—which is true, by the way; it’s not! But the validity of this excuse is starting to wear off! I could just polish my English thoroughly to avoid sounding like a broken record. Sounds logical, right? Right!

I’m not totally uncomfortable with English, to be quite honest. I use it casually! It’s hard to converse here without throwing in English words or phrases, especially when communicating with kids and professionals nowadays. I even find it kind of rare to hear a person here speak Filipino fluently (like your Francisco Balagtas professor in university-type fluent!) rather than Taglish (Tagalog + English), and I think that’s kind of hindered me in properly grasping the two languages.

When I started this blog, I knew that the language I would be using is English. Apart from being an outlet, I’m very vocal about my other reason: I want to improve my mediocre English skills. Continuously using this language is a great practice. I’m not completely clueless; almost everyone here knows how to communicate in English. English is one of our official languages and is taught at all educational levels. Most academic subjects are in English (though explained in Taglish; the books are still in English—so yeah, you’re pretty much screwed if you can’t comprehend!). As I said, even kids these days know it—so naturally, in fact—but my goal is to communicate efficiently. Though I think I’m nowhere near my objective based on personal assessment! Plus, internet lingo is just way too twisted to learn the rigid, correct way.

Honestly, I find typing in English a lot easier than typing in Filipino. Did you know how lengthy some Filipino words are? Lengthy! Too many syllables! I prefer speaking in Filipino/Taglish, but I am most comfortable typing in English, so it was a no-brainer that when it comes to blogging, English is the language to use!

Even though I do not aspire to become a popular blogger and don’t actively pursue a wide audience, I still want the people who stumble across my blog, whether accidentally or not, to at least understand my thoughts. And English is our lingua franca, so that’s another great reason to use it! There are just more pros than cons for me. Honestly, the proofreading part of my content is more taxing than expressing my thoughts in English (I usually miss out on my tenses and spelling, so aaaah~!!!) Yes, in that area, I have a lot of work to do (but I’m way too lazy to spend time on that task, ugh! I just type and type without even reading it sometimes). Ah, self, you never cease to amaze me with your slothfulness!

I really admire people who blog in their own language! I’ve come across a few, and they seem to be really excelling at it! I did try writing in Filipino before, and rereading it made me feel ashamed of how many mistakes it had! LOL. It’s very evident that I slipped in and out of the two languages too effortlessly, which sounded weird (I think that’s how I normally talk in real life, though I made a sad attempt to sound more Filipino-ish, if that’s even a word). So yeah, I prefer English as my blogging language! But I’m not closing the door on anything. I have already done it before, so who knows, I might write a blog post in Filipino again—or maybe I can finally write non-fragmented thoughts in another one…though don’t hold your breath, as my third language I’m wishing to master is still far from decent! LOL 日本語はそんなに難しいなぜ？でもがんばります！