Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

Why I write in English. Jose Dalisay Jr., a Filipino novelist, writes, "Like many of us, I had to learn English to move up in life. Within a few years of my birth in Romblon in central Philippines, we moved to Manila, where I grew up learning and using English in a private school, which my parents could afford only by sacrificing the education of my younger siblings. They made it very clear to me, their first-born, that a good education—including a command of English—was going to be our ticket out of poverty. And so I studied English like my life depended on it—because I thought it really did."