Abstract
Filipino American elders are discouraging their youth from learning their heritage language, which in turn is causing Filipino youth to actively abandon their culture. Language is the strongest link to one‟s culture (Zentella, 1997), yet Filipino parents and grandparents are encouraging by their children to desert it and assimilate (Tuason, Taylor, Rollings, Harris, & Martin, 2007). Although other immigrant families try to teach their children their heritage language, limited amounts of Filipino American families attempt to, fearing their children will have a foreign accent (Nadal, 2009). When Filipino families deter from sharing their native tongue, Filipino youth learn to reject their culture and assimilate to American ways without learning their heritage. The researcher of this study interviewed six Filipino Americans of different generations to further understand how they feel about their Filipino American culture.