Discussion and improvement

 

After interviewing two Filipino domestic helpers and analyzing their answers, we are glad to observe that though they put emphasis on English and Cantonese in which the former provides them more opportunity to receive higher level education and convenience in working and the latter gives convenience when they are working in Hong Kong, they still pretty much cherish their native languages and culture. 

The reason that many languages are being abandoned and eventually become ‘extinct’ is their speakers give up their native language and learn a more dominant language which may be considered as able to lead them to a brighter and more prosperous future. (Harrison, 2007). To Filipinos, English is the dominant language that they have to learn to have better career pathway both in Philippines and in Hong Kong, which could have threatened the usage of their native languages if they give up using their native languages such as Tagalog and withdraw native language from their children’s education. However, the fact that they are willing to pass on their native language to the next generation ensure its inheritance and allow their native language to be resistant facing threat from English. We believe that if they continue to carry out these concepts, their native languages can be well preserved for more generations. 

 

However, we may not have a comprehensive view of attitudes of Filipino since we can only interview 2 Filipino domestic helpers given limited time and resources. The two of them may not represent view of all Filipino domestic helpers towards usage of languages. If time is available, we should conduct a questionnaire to collect more opinion for a larger sample size and interview domestic helpers who will pass on their native language to next generation and so do those who will not. In this way, we can obtain stance from more Filipino domestic helpers, analyze and understand opinion from both sides and have a more accurate and comprehensive conclusion on the issue.