A Case Study on Attitudes and Motivation among Filipino-Germans towards Language

Abstract

Acquiring two languages such as English and Cebuano during migration is an interesting challenge for nine young Filipino-German migrants living in Dumaguete City, Philippines which is dubbed as one of the best places to retire in the world. Attitudes and motivation play a significant part in learning the second language with the consequence of forgetting the mother tongue due to its non-use. The respondents are divided into short -term migrants who migrated less than five years and long-term migrants who moved to Dumaguete for more than five years and beyond. In the motivation and attitude study, only the short-term migrants answered neutral for attitude towards German people and attitude towards Filipino people. The rest of the categories yielded moderately agree answers. Finally, majority of the short-term migrants believed that speakers of other languages perceived them as German speakers while people in the community thought that long-term migrants speak Cebuano, English fluently but actually attrited in their native language.