My name is Dinggay Gaston, I live in the UK with my partner Stephen and our daughter Isla. It never crossed my mind to think about and talk about what language we should bring up our daughter in because I thought it was a given that, living in the UK and both speaking English, that English will naturally be the obvious choice. When Isla was 2 months old I brought home a book I borrowed from the li
brary about speech development in babies and children. I never really intended to read it myself, I thought Steve could read and digest it for me! It was through reading a section of the book about bringing up children in a bilingual environment that Steve first brought up the topic of whether we should or could bring up Isla in more than just English. Because I also speak Tagalog, at first I thought it would be more sensible to choose it over Ilonggo purely because of the application, reach and practicality of speaking the national language of the Philippines over that of a dialect of a lesser language of Bisaya/Visaya. In the end, I just thought the choice wasn't about practicality but of identity. It soon became clear to me that I will not be able to teach and immerse her in Ilonggo by everyday communication and conversations alone, especially when I don't have family or fellow Ilonggos nearby in West Yorkshire. I felt that there is a clear lack of Ilonggo books and media that can help me with my efforts to impart Ilonggo to Isla, so I decided to create some myself and started Ilonggohanay to publish books in Ilonggo for bilingual Ilonggo families like mine around the world. is the first of a series of Ilonggo books for very young readers. I created it with clear visual imagery, simple sentences and everyday, familiar situations that the parents and children will find easy to relate to. I also hope parents will use the book beyond just as text contained in the pages and instead use it as a starting point to talk about the character(s), plot, objects drawn in the book, and unfamiliar words and as a consequence start to include more Ilonggo words in their daily life. Ilonggohanay, a word that loosely means "conversing in Ilonggo" was chosen as the name for the publisher because of my one simple goal - to encourage families who have chosen to be bilingual Ilonggo families to have conversations in Ilonggo.
