Misadventures in Pilipino
I didn’t learn Pilipino in school. Where and when I went for my education, I had my lowest grades in Balarila (grammar) and Panitikan (literature). Tagalog, as we called it then, was so alien, it might as well have been Greek or Russian. Pilipino was definitely not my native language. I didn’t think or dream in it. It was not the language of my heart.
I grew up speaking English at home. And in school, my classmates and I were fined for speaking Tagalog. It was to be spoken only in the classroom during Tagalog grammar and literature lessons. We struggled through readings in local literature and tried to write the required compositions, but most of us were so inept in the language, one teacher allowed us to use English words in quotation marks! Tagalog was the subject we most feared and liked least.
But I could get by in Tagalog when I played with neighbors and cousins, communicated with the household help and bought stuff at the sari-sari store. And one of my secret pleasures was watching with Inay, our mayordoma, Tagalog movies that starred my favorite actress, Gloria Romero.
We didn’t have any Filipino subjects in college, although at the time, we were required by law to take 24 units of Spanish.
As a young reporter at the Manila Chronicle (now defunct), I was a roaming feature writer who was sent to cover stories that fell between the cracks of the formal beats. One of my earliest assignments was to cover a meeting on the national language (wikang pambansa) called by a government agency. I’ve forgotten the topic of the meeting but it was held entirely in Pilipino. After my story was published, the paper received a rejoinder from the director saying I got it all wrong! I thought my budding career in journalism was over. But my editor was kind, and he never sent this miseducated colegiala on a similar assignment again.
Journalism brought me to the streets and campuses of Manila covering the student beat. I listened to the heated debates among activists, deciphered their slogans and statements, and reported on their fiery rhetoric, which were mostly in Pilipino. Soon, I began to pick up on their language and even learned to appreciate their revolutionary songs, poems, and plays.
In the process, I discovered how feelings could be more strongly expressed in Pilipino than the language I grew up in. In what other language is a friend called kaibigan (someone you share love with)? I now speak in Pilipino more naturally. I can actually confidently give a short talk in the national language.
I like hearing Pilipino being spoken and performed. It is a rich and expressive language that paints graphic pictures in my imagination. I truly admire President Noynoy Aquino for speaking to our people in Pilipino, even when the audience is international, and just issuing translations for foreigners to appreciate.
I think Bien Lumbera’s prose and poetry and Rolando Tinio’s Pilipino translations of classic plays and pop songs are just brilliant. I am amazed that my brother Jim, who grew up the way I did, could actually write songs in Pilipino using a word like tigang to describe a feeling of parched emptiness. And I am awed at how Randy David, a non-Tagalog speaker, learned to speak the language so fluently, he sounded like a native on his television show, Public Forum.
But my regret is, I have not learned to read in Pilipino. Some years back, at an awarding ceremony where I had sat as a judge, I was assigned to read the citation for one of the awardees, in Pilipino. I bravely soldiered on, stumbling over multi-syllabic words until I got to the end of the mercifully short paragraph. To my eternal shame, after the program, President Cory Aquino chided me gently about how badly I read in the national language.
My children also grew up speaking English that they learned from watching Sesame Street and Electric Company. But I didn’t hear them complain about their Pilipino subjects in school. It must have been because they had the benefit of nationalist teachers who made them aware of their Filipino-ness. They read Jose Rizal’s novels, Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo (albeit in English) in high school. They also got to know Andres Bonifacio and his beautiful poem about love for the homeland, Pagibig sa Tinubuang Lupa, and the protest songs of the ’70s and ’80s.
But that was another time. The present generation is growing up in a borderless, globalized world. While this should be an advantage, our youth have been dumbed down by popular media resulting in their inability to express themselves, and their resistance to actual reading, analyzing and writing.
Most of our young people do not know the classics. They speak and write poorly, more in jejemon, gay-talk or gangsta rap, than in Pilipino or English. Access to the Internet has made them cut-and-paste artists who submit school essays plagiarized from Wikipedia.
Comes now, the current debate about the removal of Filipino from required subjects in college. The Commission on Higher Education has decided that, with the K+12 program adding two more years to the high school curriculum, the requirement for Pilipino in college under the General Education Curriculum can be accommodated in senior high school.
This way, Communications Secretary Sonny Coloma explained on TV, the college curriculum can focus on interdisciplinary courses. The professors may, however, opt to use Pilipino in teaching the core subjects. The question must be asked, will this make them better college students?
On one level, it makes some sense. I have heard of college professors in the sciences who despair over the poor grades their otherwise brilliant students get in their Pilipino subjects, affecting their scholarships and honors standing.
But on another level, the opportunity is lost to deepen the appreciation among students of their Filipino-ness through Pilipino language and literature. When taught imaginatively and well, Pilipino, of which everyone has at least a working knowledge, can be their gateway back to literacy — and being Filipino.
