Articles of loathing

Whatever happened to articles in Philippine English? You know the ones I mean. I’m talking about "the," "a" and sometimes "an." Filipinos, it seems, don’t much like using these articles, a useful way of introducing and modifying the subject of a sentence. Or maybe they have become prone to misplacing them

Here’s an example. Every day (and please note: it’s two words, not "everyday"), I pass a road sign posted for public viewing by the MMDA – a pink sign, of course, that reads: "CLEAN CITY IS A HEALTHY CITY."

What happened, I find myself asking, to the letter "A" in this construction?

After all, it’s right there before "HEALTHY CITY," so the writer of this slogan must have known, on some level, that the subject should be introduced by an article.

I’m willing to believe that the sign writer simply ran out of space on the little rectangle he had allotted for this particular message. But why cut off the first "A" and not the second? No, there’s really no good, grammatically sound reason for it

Nor is there any good reason for lopping off the "a" or "the" before the word "majority" in sentences. Yet it’s done all the time here. Maybe starting a sentence with a bold word like "majority" just seems more forceful than a wimpy "a" or "the." Again, I’m just speculating here.

"Government," too, seems to get along nicely here without corresponding articles. "Government said today…" As if "Government" were a sometimes grumpy but usually reliable source for a quote.

Let’s be clear: there is a government in the Philippines. When we refer to it as a subject or object in a sentence, it is the government. (Thus we’re not referring to some Platonic ideal of government that resides in the perfect abstract imagination.) These tiny but significant articles thus restrict the reference, making it clear which government we’re talking about. And those little articles seem to take a lot of snoozes here in the Philippines.

Of course, the opposite happens a lot as well, as Butch Dalisay recently pointed out in his column, "Penman." Some words acquire articles without rhyme or reason. "Family ties are important to the Filipinos," he gives as an example. Properly speaking, this reference doesn’t need "the," because you are the only Filipinos in question. Yet "the Philippines" does require an article, perhaps because it refers to a group of islands, therefore it is plural

Sometimes the "the" is removed from its place preceding one noun and transplanted to another place, leading to funny constructions like the following: "President Arroyo welcomed yesterday latest survey results showing the Filipinos’ openness to pay more taxes."

My tongue drags when I recite sentences like these. It stumbles. It wants a nice little article to carry me from one part of the sentence to the next – from verb to direct object or indirect object – but no relief is in sight.

It may seem like a little thing, this article business. But it has some important jobs to do: it serves as a marker, signaling a noun is in sight; and it functions as an adjective, modifying the noun by telling us something of its quantity or specific nature.

Take "Suspects were brought to the city jail," another of Butch Dalisay’s examples. Yes, you must specify which suspects were taken into custody with "the," or else you risk referring to every single suspect in history

Another word that seems to repel articles like Baygon is "such." "I never made such remark," claimed the congressman. What he probably meant is he never made such a remark, unless he was referring to a whole bunch of statements he allegedly made, in which case he could say, "I never made such remarks." (Though it’s a fair bet that he did.)

Another clunky example – "We believe that such joint session will make a good forum" – suggests the writer is using "such" as an article, as if it were equivalent to "a" or "the." But this needs a little more precision, since "such" refers to a wider species of nouns than "a" or "the." Anyway, this is just the kind of article-ectomy that I’ve come to deplore in no-good, such-and-such writers

One possible reason for all the lopping of articles is a fondness for military-speak and legalese here. There must be a mandatory course that teaches military men and legal eagles to speak and write in imponderable English. These two varieties of speech, usually expressed in "memo" form, have a clipped, underwritten quality, as if using too many words were unmanly, and a waste of precious time. Thus you read statements like: "Effective immediately, field commanders shall intensify campaign against loose firearms and dismantling and arrest of private armed groups, unauthorized bodyguards and goons." No wussy little articles to be found there

Lawyers, too, like to do away with their articles, and this kind of stripped-down language often makes its way into media reports: "Plaintiff’s suit was dismissed due to lack of basis." That’s barely a sentence – it reads more like a headline – but this is the way lawyers like to put things, apparently

Now it appears the government wants to come to the rescue of articles. The Civil Service Commission recently issued a memo calling on government employees to use gender-free articles in their official correspondence. What this means is no more references to "mankind" (it’ll be replaced with "humankind") and "sportsmanship" (now to be rendered as "highest ideals of fair play"). And as for the gender-specific "his," it’s to be replaced by "a, an or the." So that’s some progress.

I have another objection to the excising of articles in our midst: it reduces everything to caveman-speak. Imagine, for instance, this well-known passage from John 14:6 – "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." – shed of all its articles:

"I am way and truth and life. No one comes to Father except through me."

Not quite as effective, is it?