Learning Filipino or Tagalog about fostering family connections, exploring heritage

When Jay-R De Lara started teaching about Filipino language and culture at Holy Trinity Catholic High School in southeast Edmonton, he felt most of his students were there for an easy grade.

In the six years since, he's watched his program become an environment where a growing number of non-fluent students are learning Tagalog and connecting with the culture.

"I want to share that knowledge," De Lara said. Holy Trinity, in Mill Woods, has a significant population of Filipino students.

"If they continue to take these classes, they will hopefully retain that knowledge and pass it on to future generations," De Lara said.

In August, Statistics Canada released data about language as part of the 2021 census of population.

Data shows that a growing number of Albertans now know Filipino or Tagalog.

English and Filipino are the official languages of the Philippines. Filipino is based on Tagalog, the language of the Tagalog people.

In 2016, about 99,000 people in Alberta had Filipino or Tagalog as their first language. That number increased to nearly 108,400 in 2021.

Tagalog (Filipino included) is now the language most often spoken at home for more than 69,500 Alberta residents, compared to about 55,100 in 2016, Statistics Canada reported.

But the number of Albertans who know Filipino or Tagalog well enough to hold a conversation went up by more than 34,000 between 2016 and 2021 — increasing from about 138,400 people to about 172,600, data shows.

The Calgary and Edmonton census metropolitan areas have the largest populations of people who know Tagalog or Filipino. But the Brooks area, in southeastern Alberta, has the highest proportion of people who know either language — about one in 10 people, data shows.

For Aliyah Cabie, a Grade 12 student at Holy Trinity, learning Tagalog was a way to connect with her grandmother.

Cabie, who was taught Tagalog as a young child, was five years old when her family moved to Canada.

Now 17, she grew up speaking mostly English. She could still understand Tagalog when she heard it, but she could no longer hold a conversation in her first language.