Absolutely, Pia!

The strong connection between English and making money is a big part of why people prefer it. Having tough talks about how we see languages is crucial to changing these ideas. Sadly, in the Philippines, English is seen as the key to wealth, especially with the influence of global trends like neoliberalism. This even affects our government policies. To fix this, we, as a multilingual country, should encourage using all Filipino languages, not just Tagalog. Learning from how multilingual countries in Europe handle this could give us some useful ideas.

Excited for more good talks!

I agree with your point, Mavis, that the view of English = profit is an important reason for this monolingual English bias and practices that support it. This is precisely what Dan Gonzales said during the brief Q&A after his presentation. I think having these conversations about language practices and ideologies, although difficult and disheartening some times, is an important first step toward revising views about the value of languages.

Thanks for engaging with the post. Were you at the NGL Conference, too? 🙂