Taglish is very widespread in the Philippines and has become the de facto lingua franca among the urbanized and/or educated middle class.
[2][3][4] According to the linguist Maria Lourdes S. Bautista, there are two contrasting types of code-switching in the Philippines: deficiency-driven and proficiency-driven.
That is common among younger children, as in the example below given by Bautista:[2][4] Proficiency-driven code-switching, on the other hand, occurs when a person is fully competent in both languages being used and can switch between them easily.
There are also a wide range of strategies involved, including: the formation of bilingual verbs by the addition of prefixes, suffixes, and infixes (e.g. Nagse-sweat ako = "I was sweating"); switching at the morphological, word, phrasal, or clausal levels; and the use of system morphemes (like enclitics, conjunctions, etc.)
[4] According to Bautista, the reason for this type of code-switching is what she termed "communicative efficiency" in which a speaker can "convey meaning using the most accurate, expressive, or succinct lexical items available to them.
They are: "for precision, for transition, for comic effect, for atmosphere, to bridge or create social distance, for snob appeal, and for secrecy.
This is done by the addition of one or more prefixes or infixes and by the doubling of the first sound of the starting form of the noun or verb, consistent with Tagalog morphology but usually retaining English spelling for the roots.
[10][11][12][13] There are examples of modern books in Taglish: the adventure novel Bullet With A Name (2018) by Kirsten Nimwey,[14] the love novel Aeternum Dream (2018) by Harkin Deximire,[15][16] and more.
It is a form of slang that uses words and terms primarily from Philippine English, Tagalog/Filipino, and/or Cebuano and Hiligaynon, and occasionally as well as Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Sanskrit, or other languages.
Examples: Sometimes, Tagalog interjections such as ano, naman, pa, na (or nah), no (or noh), a (or ha), e (or eh), and o (or oh) are placed to add emphasis.
The perceived feminine sound of Coño English makes male speakers sometimes overuse the Tagalog: pare, lit.