Kapuso Mo, Jessica Soho (KMJS), a news magazine television show on GMA Network, recently featured a Canadian national who speaks one of our native languages, Ilocano, like it’s his mother tongue.
According to an interview on KMJS, Firth McEachern is from Canada who is here in the Philippines to help the provincial government of La Union to preserve the Ilocano language. McEachern has been living in La Union for five years now. He learned Ilocano through practice. He said he had a hard time learning the language but with practice, he eventually learned to speak it fluently.
He added that he got interested with the language because he noticed that when he was just new in the Philippines, he noticed that the Ilocano language and other native languages are slowly disappearing, which he wanted to prevent from happening. He also became a professor teaching Ilocano in a local university.
Watch as he and show host Jessica Soho played Pinoy Henyo Ilocano Edition.
Watch the full interview on KMJS below.
McEachern graduated from Harvard University with Magna Cum Laude distinction. He got a double major in Earth and Planetary Science, and Astronomy and Astrophysics.
When asked what he was doing in the Philippines if he can be working for multinational companies in the US, he said he doesn’t think that that’s his destiny. He added that he has friends making lots of money but have a miserable life because they are working all the time. He jokingly said that in the Philippines it’s very nice because here at 10AM you have snacks then lunch for an hour then snacks again in the afternoon.
He said that he is pure Canadian but his heart is Ilocano.
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