Why is English not a native language for Filipinos?

 By Carlo Nazareno

 am now an adult, struggling in college. I respond with respect (except for obvious homework questions), as long as the question or the response is with respect.

It took only 200 years for English to almost completely replace Irish Gaelic, but that is because British policies on language were much more restrictive compared to the Americans.

Before the Commonwealth period, Americans did not ban the use of regional and native languages, and when the Commonwealth Republic started in 1935, it was actually at the advice of the Americans to designate Filipino (Manila-based dialect of Tagalog) as one of the official languages of the country.

English is not a native because it was only officially learned in schools by only at the last century. For English to completely replace the language of millions of speakers of 100+ different languages will take a very long time. Personally, I do not like that, but if it had to then so be it.