Road to JLPT N5 (Pt. 2)
My JLPT voucher came in the mail – the test is on July 3! I can’t believe it’s already less than two weeks away.
I can still remember the time when I was filling up the application for it. One of the questions was my native language and I was surprised to find that Ilocano was on the list of choices because most people outside the Philippines don’t know it.
One other surprising thing was that Ilocano, as I previously thought, is NOT my native language. It is actually English. 😧😧😧
When I meet foreigners in Japan, they usually think I am American, and some Japanese I’ve met thought that English is my native language; but I was always proud to say that Ilocano was my native language and I learned English as a second language.
It made me feel proud because it meant I got better in English only because of hard work. 😂😂 It also made me feel like I could be an example to my students as someone who can be fluent in English after learning it as a second language. 😝
It’s not terrible that English was the first language I learned, and my dad said that technically my first language is Englocano (English-Ilocano). 😂😂 It was still surprising though.