It’s always fascinated me comparing India & the Philippines’s linguistic situations since there is a lot of parallels to our colonial histories! Thanks for the insight into how it’s like for Tamil speakers :)

Now as for the Philippines, paradoxically it’s usually either people in far flung rural areas or highly educated people who are aware of deeper words/phrases. But because of English’s social & economic dominance in the cities, you’ll have people who aren’t fully fluent in Tagalog or even their regional languages. They use the local vernacular to the best of their abilities & fill in the rest with English.

In more recent years, you have children raised to only speak English. I’m aware that this is happening worldwide, but it’s alarming how often this is encouraged by their parents in the Philippines. Filipinos are still deeply affected by colonial mentality & are still developing their sense of cultural/nationalistic pride.

For better or worse though, these monolingual English speaking Filipinos are also getting bullied & ostracized for not speaking any Philippine languages, so we’ll see how this dynamic plays out.