Int’l Pupils in The Hague Sing “Bahay Kubo”

(Source: YouTube, Bahay Kubo Animated Philippine Folk Song (Awiting Pambata) with Lyrics)

THE HAGUE 05 October 2018 – The European School The Hague (ESTH) showcased the city’s multiculturalism as it invited various foreign missions in The Hague in its celebration of the “European Day of Languages” on 26 September 2018.

The Philippine Embassy in The Hague, together with more than a dozen embassies, participated in ESTH’s activity of “fun in learning a language” in its primary grade for children aged between six and 11 years old.

The Embassy’s Cultural Section took the lead in presenting to Grades 3 and 4 children the Filipino language using an animated video with lyrics of a popular children’s rhyme Bahay Kubo.

The National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) recommended Bahay Kubo, as singing a simple rhyme is the easiest way to learn a language. In having “fun learning Pilipino”, the Embassy explained to the children the meaning of the song, taught them pronunciation of every word or phrase in the song, and altogether sang the song, the children following its beat by tapping their fingers on their desks or moving their heads swaying to the music.

Apart from learning the Filipino language through song, the children were asked which words in the song they remembered and a flurry of hands went up, each one associating a Filipino word with a word from his or her own native language or country like mani for the Italian word for hand, luya for Finnnish word for fast, kalabasa for a kind of a Russian meat, and labanos for the country Lebanon.

It was an hour of learning more than a language as it was equally a worthy and “fun” hour of learning similarities—by association—of the world’s many languages.

The Embassy also learned that some of the students are already familiar with the Philippines, having a Filipino neighbor, a Filipino baby-sitter, and one proudly announcing traveling to Palawan this December for the family’s holidays. END

Third and fourth graders at the European School The Hague had fun learning Filipino in singing the popular children’s rhyme Bahay Kubo on the occasion of European Day of Languages on 26 September. (The Hague PE photos)

For more information, visit www.thehaguepe.dfa.gov.ph / https://www.facebook.com/PHinTheNetherlands/.