Word Fiesta - Filipino

Word Fiesta will be at West HQ Rooty Hill for the Filipino Festival between 12-4pm on these dates:
• Sunday, 21st June 2026
• Sunday, 28th June 2026

Look for my booth, I’ll be selling Flashcards and have free activities for kids ☺️

Ps. Daughter was a bit cranky in the photo coz she didn’t want to go home 😅

Over the weekend, we’ve seen so many Filipino events across the globe celebrating the 128th Philippine Independence Day 🇵🇭 In Western Sydney alone there was the Liwanag Festival at Nurragingy, the Filipino festival at WestHQ and other events at St Marys, Blacktown Markets and at Granville.

I had the privilege of emceeing the Liwanag Festival again this year with my co-host Don . Blacktown City Council have really supported Filipinos in allowing us to celebrate important occasions to our community such as this.

Despite being migrants, we’re so lucky to have the Freedom to share the beauty of our culture, our passions and our stories with fellow Aussies. We don’t choose being Filipino over being Australian nor the other way around, we are simply both and I think that’s amazing.

Let’s continue to support each other in these events and share with the next generation the importance of community.

Photo credit: Lisa Honeydieu

🕊️Losing your family’s language can feel like an inevitable side effect of immigration, Kat Chow writes for The Atlantic, but it’s one she wants to prevent.

Chow’s parents migrated to the United States from China in the late 1960s and 1970s. Her parents spoke Cantonese and Taishanese but were also fluent in English. When Chow’s older sister Steph was in kindergarten, she requested that their parents speak only in English, and her parents acquiesced. Over time, Chow's ability to speak Cantonese faded.

Chow’s parents migrated to the United States from China in the late 1960s and 1970s. Her parents spoke Cantonese and Taishanese but were also fluent in English. When Chow’s older sister Steph was in kindergarten, she requested that their parents speak only in English, and her parents acquiesced.

What Chow and her sisters experienced is called language attrition: the forgetting of a language by a once-proficient speaker and a family’s subsequent intergenerational dilution of the skill. Reversing language attrition is “really about ‘time’ with that language—and ‘high-quality’ time,” Krista Byers-Heinlein, a psychology professor who studies infant development and language acquisition, told Chow. Byers-Heinlein estimates that children need between 20 to 25 percent of their waking time with high-quality interactions in order to learn a language.

“The parents I spoke with who taught their children a heritage language that they themselves didn’t speak fluently had essentially organized their own lives around the effort,” Chow continues. Betty Choi taught her kids their heritage languages, Chinese and Korean, as she was learning them herself. She cycled through different methods: enrolling herself in language classes; seeking out multilingual child-care providers; and exposing her children to books, songs, and videos in those languages, before she ended up creating her own curriculum.

Another parent Chow spoke with, Hieu Truong, is slowly introducing her son to Vietnamese while being realistic about the ease of bilingualism: “I want him, when he talks to his older relatives, to know how to properly greet them—know how to say ‘Thank you.’”

“This is what I want for any potential children of mine, too,” Chow continues. “I don’t desire fluency for them merely to compensate for what I lost as a kid. Rather, I yearn for them to have a closeness to the culture and the little joys of everyday life that such proximity can reveal.”

Full essay in the comments.

I got to share my story with icon of The Pinoy Expat ☺️ it was a privilege to share the inspiration and motivation behind Word Fiesta - Filipino 🇵🇭

The Pinoy Expat 2 likes. "Lumaki sa Australia pero mahusay mag-Tagalog?! | Pinoy migrant story | The Pinoy Expat"

April is Filipino Food Month 🇵🇭✨

Food is such a big part of who we are as Filipinos—it brings people together, sparks conversation, and keeps our traditions alive across generations.

Check out the food featured on our flashcards—little glimpses of the flavours we all know and love - from ulam to desserts.

What’s your favourite Filipino 🇵🇭 food?

Designed with intention—not just to teach words, but to help kids connect 🤍
When characters feel familiar, kids engage more and learning becomes easier.

Plus, it’s a simple way to introduce Filipino culture alongside the language—because you really can’t have one without the other.

💛 What do you recognise?