In the English-speaking world, knowing words from other European languages is often perceived as a mark of sophistication and education. D’Arcy Carden’s performance in The Good Place isn’t just unique, it’s sui generis (the Latin equivalent), per The Guardian‘s Lucy Mangan. The industry treats YA as a not-so-serious literary genre, but add enough prestige and you can call a story with the same beats a bildungsroman. Nearly half a million people agree that American actor Timothée Chalamet speaking Italian is incredibly attractive, but at 53 years of age, British rock legend Liam Gallagher apparently didn’t see the problem in randomly mocking Chinese tongues a few months ago. It’s evident that Asian languages are not afforded the same esteem as the likes of French.

When it comes to the languages of the Philippines, the Western media’s lack of regard shows at the most fundamental level: they won’t even bother to learn these languages’ names. The endless media buzz surrounding Magellan, the Philippines’ official entry for the upcoming Oscars, prominently illustrates this problem.

Jonathan Romney of Screen Daily, a British publication, wrote that Tagalog is the film’s “main language.” Here’s the thing: Tagalog derives from taga-ilog,  meaning from the riverside. Online Etymology Dictionary‘s entry for the term states that it refers to “people living near Manila in the Philippines, also their language, 1704, from Tagalog taga ‘native to’ + ilog “river.'” It is a very specific linguistic and ethnic term referring to a very specific language and ethnic group from, clearly, a very specific place of origin. Magellan takes place on the island of Mactan, Cebu in the Philippines’ Central Visayas region. The island’s natives are Cebuanos who speak Cebuano, locally known as Bisaya (which simply translates to Visayan in English).

The cast members themselves have stated that they spoke Cebuano in the film. In an interview with Rolling Stone Philippines‘ Lé Baltar, Hazel Orencio (Juana) explicitly mentioned that Bong Cabrera was chosen for the role of Kulambo in the film because he speaks Cebuano. She also shared that for the film, she worked hard to practise her Cebuano-speaking skills with assistant director Sanny Joaquin, a native speaker of the language.

Calling Magellan a film that’s mainly in Tagalog is like declaring that an English film is in French because “I heard a few French words like ‘façade’ peppered in there, and England is close enough to France, so the main language must be French.” Or insisting that someone born and raised in Liverpool is actually from London because “to me, all of England is London anyway.” It would be so nonsensical and offensive that most people would consider it laughable. But while those particular scenarios are unimaginable in real life, it’s the reality for pretty much every non-Tagalog Philippine film that gets any sort of Western attention.

“It wouldn’t make sense, historically speaking, for them to use Tagalog because they were Cebuano locals,” 24-year-old Yan points out. She’s Cebuano herself and watched the film when it arrived in Philippine cinemas last month. She’s also correct: Magellan takes place before Spanish colonisation created a unified “Philippines.”

That means that the natives of Mactan would have lived in an independent society, largely unconcerned with the Tagalogs who lived a sea away. The majority of Cebuanos in that era would not have known the Tagalog language; they might not have heard of it at all.

She confirms that the film mainly uses Cebuano, adding, “The usage of Cebuano is why most of the people I was with in the theatre, who were also Cebuanos, were so locked in because the characters spoke in our language.” The film’s dialogue contains very minimal Hiligaynon (a Western Visayan language) and Tagalog. Her Tagalog friend who also saw the film confirmed that most of it is in Cebuano, not Tagalog.

Likewise, X user @mercifuIl, another Cebuano who saw the film, says that it uses Cebuano, though he notes that the way they speak it in Magellan sounds a bit “anachronistic” with its minimal borrowing of Hiligaynon and Tagalog words. Again, before Spanish colonial rule unified the Philippines into a single country, the islands’ ethno-linguistic groups considered themselves separate societies and barely made contact with one another.

Chinese Cebuano filmmaker Lo Guan Liong (Adrian Lo) has experienced the same strange ignorance. Streaming platform Cinemata added his 2023 indie film Ang Dragon sa Capanganuran (The Dragon in the Clouds) to their catalogue and listed it as a Tagalog-language film. He says, “There’s Tagalog, but only at the very end, so it’s odd that Cinemata said that the film is [in] Tagalog.” In truth, Dragon far more heavily uses Cebuano, Spanish, Hokkien, Chavacano, and Hiligaynon.

“It’s like saying Cantonese is the main language of John Wick 4 because there are some Cantonese lines here and there,” he points out. It’s frustrating not just because it’s disrespectful (which it certainly is), but also because these languages are instrumental to understanding what these movies are even about. If you’re made to believe that all of it is Tagalog, you’re missing half of, if not most of, the story.

For instance, Netflix describes One Hit Wonder, which debuted on the platform on 21 August, as a “Filipino language” (a term used interchangeably with Tagalog) film. However, a good chunk of the dialogue (roughly about a third) is actually in Cebuano, which is a literal plot point.

The English subtitles and dub almost entirely scrub out the Cebuano from the dialogue, even just references to or context clues about the language being spoken. So when anyone unfamiliar with Philippine languages watches Wonder, the movie not only loses its plot, but also its depth. You’ll have no idea that Entoy’s father Ben, whom many viewers hail as the film’s emotional centre, is basically a foreigner in Tagalog-speaking Manila.

The main couple’s romance would feel much shallower because you wouldn’t know that Lorina, the Tagalog female lead, takes an active interest in learning Cebuano, the language spoken by Entoy’s family. You wouldn’t know that Lorina and Entoy later start calling each other “langga,” which means “beloved” in Cebuano, showing how much she cares about the culture of the man she loves.

In Filipinos’ fight for our work to be recognised, perhaps we should interrogate why we can’t be afforded the basic respect of having our languages be correctly identified. If a prestigious publication or film festival were to brand an Italian film as German-language, the public would see it as embarrassingly ignorant.

Yet when various festivals, including the New York Asian Film Festival, list Iti Mapukpukaw‘s language as simply Filipino or Tagalog even though it’s mainly in Ilocano (title included), nothing was said. Likewise, the film’s language on film review sites Letterboxd and Rotten Tomatoes are listed as “Tagalog” and “Filipino” respectively.

It is the same for every other non-Tagalog Philippine film on those sites such as Patay Na Si Hesus (Cebuano), John Denver Trending (Karay-a), Ari: My Life With a King (Kapampangan), and Gitling (Hiligaynon). One has to wonder how Westerners can even begin to understand these films on which they have such strong opinions if they don’t even know or acknowledge that they’re hearing not just Tagalog/Filipino being spoken onscreen.

In the case of Gitling, for instance, the film’s main character is a translator. Different languages are woven into the film; the multiplicity of language is the whole point. “You have to pay attention intently because these conversations would be conducted in five languages — English, Tagalog, Hiligaynon, Nihonggo and Jamie’s own invented language,” journalist Fred Hawson wrote in his review of the film, via ABS-CBN News. Indeed, how can one claim to enjoy or even comprehend the movie’s richness without acknowledging that Hiligaynon is spoken in it? 

When reaching out to the British Film Institute (BFI), they apologised and stated that they would fix it. However, as of writing (23 October), they have only removed “Tagalog” and never actually added “Cebuano” to the page. On 15 October, a representative sent a message explaining that the BFI were attempting to contact the producers and cannot add “Cebuano” without their approval. The fact that the production companies themselves mislabelled the film as a “Tagalog” one is a grim reminder that the media’s outright lack of care for Philippine languages is structural.

On the surface, it seems that the Western world is waking up to what the Philippines can offer. Correctly identifying the languages in our films is the barest of bare minimums, however. Western critics don’t even put in the effort to do so, yet they are upheld as the arbiters of taste, the authority on these films’ merits. But if you hear someone’s story and make no effort to recognise their language, do you truly understand any of it?