Column: I grew up broke but bilingual – Here’s how

Just a rusty television, a VHS player that sometimes chewed the tape, and a father who believed that no Saturday was complete without singing Michael Learns to Rock at full volume.

That’s how it started, not with tutors or textbooks, but with scratchy karaoke tracks and a child’s stubborn attempt to match the subtitles with the voice coming out of the speakers.

So when people ask me, “How did you get so good at English?” I want to laugh. Not because it’s a ridiculous question, but because the real answer doesn’t sound impressive.

It sounds like a weekend in a small Filipino household, a Disney movie watched over and over until the tape gave up. A notebook filled with awkward sentences. A child reading shampoo bottles in the bathroom because there wasn’t much else to read.

So if you ask me? It’s not just talent. It’s immersion.

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In our house, nobody was trying to raise a fluent child. My parents just wanted some peace. Renting The Little Mermaid or The Lion King from the VHS tindahan down the road meant I’d be quiet for two hours.

They had no idea I was building the foundation of a second language.

And the songs, oh, the songs. I still remember the exact year my father came home from Puerto Princesa with a VCD player, 1997. It felt like a futuristic upgrade from the chunky VHS. The karaoke discs came soon after that.

And I sang lyrics I didn’t understand. I mimicked accents I couldn’t place on a map. I didn’t know what “25 Minutes Too Late” was about, I just liked how it felt to say it.

Before I entered first grade, I could read. Not fluently, but functionally.

Not because I was exceptional, but because I was exposed. That’s a word I wish we used more when talking about education in this country.

Exposure is underrated. We obsess over intelligence. We applaud raw talent. But what we often forget is that you can’t show what you’ve learned if you’ve never been shown anything.

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In third grade, I got called out by a teacher for speaking too simply. “The boy is handsome,” she said, mocking me in front of the class. “That’s all Hanna knows.”

I will always remember the silence more than the insult. That slow burn of embarrassment. And I remember the switch. I stopped talking to my seatmate. I stopped performing. I started paying closer attention, not out of inspiration, but out of fear.

That fear, strangely, pushed me. But it could’ve just as easily shut me down.

How many children in our schools get shamed into silence before they even get a chance to start?

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I did not grow up wealthy. We were renting a small house in Narra up until I was 5. My father didn’t even have a motorcycle back then, just a bicycle he used to get to work. And yet, I had just enough. A TV, some Disney tapes, a father who brought home karaoke discs from Puerto and encyclopedias bought in installment.

That pattern, as clumsy and inconsistent as it was, built something.

Today, parents are told they need apps, online subscriptions, imported phonics tools. But I’ve seen proof in my own life, and in the lives of so many kids from the province. You don’t need a lot to raise a fluent child. You just need to make learning part of the atmosphere, not a punishment.

Let them ask you what “confused” means. Let them mispronounce “vegetable” and laugh about it together. Let them hear the language, fail at it, and try again. That’s how it works. That’s how it always worked.

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Speaking English well doesn’t mean you’re smarter than anyone else. I’m the first to admit I can’t do math to save my life.

But fluency can be a tool. A bridge. A means to tell your story to more people, and understand more stories in return.

And that’s the bigger point. The bottomline is how we treat learning.

We are a country full of bright, observant children. What we often lack is faith in their process, and patience for their pace.

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If you’re a parent, a teacher, a tita or tito, don’t wait for a child to show brilliance. Just keep building the pattern.

Read with them. Watch with them. Listen, even when the grammar’s off. The goal isn’t perfection. It’s comfort. It’s confidence.

Because you never know what moment might stick.

What song, what sentence, what cartoon might be the reason a kid keeps going.

So don’t stress if your child isn’t topping English class. Let them listen. Let them ask. Let them sing the wrong lyrics until they get them right.

Don’t raise flawless speakers, raise curious ones.

And if they start with “The boy is handsome,” let them. Because that sentence just might lead to a whole career.