Do we really need a national language?

Okay, so the administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA) can now heave a sigh of relief that renegade Capt. Nicanor Faeldon has been recaptured; well at least that’s one for the books of our intelligence people… how to track down escaped prisoners. Although he vehemently denies it, Capt. Faeldon insists that he isn’t romantically involved with Capt. Candelaria Rivas of the Judge Advocate General’s Office (JAGO). Well, as the old saying goes, "Where there’s smoke, there’s fire!"

I’m just troubled by the statement of Capt. Rivas that she was sympathetic to the cause of the Magdalo. I find this quite disturbing because it reveals that the JAGO didn’t even check her background or sympathies. Therefore, it is quite providential that Capt. Faeldon took a hike from prison and all these things were eventually revealed to the Filipino people. Now I hope that the military can finally keep him locked up for their sakes!

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I gathered that House Bill 1563 filed in August 2004 by Bayan Muna party-list Reps. Satur Ocampo, Teodoro Casiño and Joel Virado with Anakpawis Reps. Crispin Beltran and Rafael Mariano and Gabriela’s Rep. Liza Maza, proposes to make Tagalog the national language of the Philippines. All I can say is, finally some people have realized and recognized the reality that there is no such thing as a national language as of yet. Why in heaven’s name would they come up with that bill in the first place if there were already a national language? But do we need a national language?

As we’ve said so many times before, too many people, including many in the academe, wrongly believe that "Pilipino" is already the national language and that comes from the Tagalog language. That is not yet true but in practice the "Pilipino" spoken today is, for all intents and purposes, a dialect of the Tagalog language. The bill of Satur Ocampo will nail down the reality that his proposal is an offering to the altar of Tagalog nationalism! Who cares about Filipino unity anyway! Who cares if all the other spoken languages in this country would someday disappear as we would all end up as a Tagalog-speaking people!

Our group, Save our Languages through Federalism (SOLFED), is the only NGO that supports an international movement to save endangered languages. As we’ve been saying for years, killing a language is killing people and their culture. Environmentalists go to great lengths to save the monkey-eating eagle, the blue whale, the spotted owl… we also espouse the same ideas, but we help ethnic people fight and preserve their languages. This is happening to the Choctaw, the Arapaho, the Comanche, the Apache, the Crow or the Pawnee, all Native American people (please don’t call them Indians because they’re not from India) whose descendants are trying to search for people who still speak their native tongues.

Just think… while Ferdinand Magellan and the Spanish Crown colonized this archipelago, on the other side of the world, Ponce del Leon was also sweeping throughout what is now Central and South America. Today, the people living there (except for Brazil which speaks Portuguese) speak Spanish… but they’re not Spaniards. Mexico had 120 languages before the Spanish came. They had those ancient great civilizations like the Incas’, the Aztecs’ or the Mayans’… all now lost to this new world. But in the Philippines, the only places where bastardized Spanish is spoken are in parts of Cavite and Zamboanga. No doubt, the people living in our islands refuse to abandon their spoken tongues… even to our new colonizers, the Tagalogs!

Incidentally, last Thursday’s editorial in The Philippine STAR entitled "Reversing the decline" dealt with the Filipino’s ability to speak English in the past and how we lost it 20 years ago because Tita Cory and her cohorts insisted on using Tagalog as the official language of the government. Thanks to people like former Cebu Governor Emilio "Lito" Osmeña who filed a case against the Cory administration to stop this nonsense.

Now there is a mad scramble to re-learn English in schools because we have belatedly realized that learning English can land Filipinos good-paying jobs in newly established call centers. Just to show you that despite our huge population, there is a huge demand for English speakers; just open our national dailies and see all those advertisements looking for English speakers. Mind you, these are jobs where the Pinoy doesn’t have to leave his family and his country to find work. But if you speak only our local languages and apply with a call center, you’d never get a job there!

But even if the Pinoy wants to work abroad, he or she must still learn to speak English. Hence, we must not waste time and start re-learning the English language as soon as humanly possible!

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Here’s an e-mailed response to our article on Manny Pacquiao:

"Like some other Pinoys who watched Pacman’s fight last Sunday, I also stood up triumphantly the moment Erik Morales fell on the floor for the second time in the 10th round. It was really a great fight of our boxing hero. He was the first man to knock Morales down to the floor.

"Yesterday, after reading your column, Pacquiao proved Pinoys can be united, I also came to think about Pacman’s victory vis-a-vis Philippine politics. I confronted some questions, two of them are as follows. On one hand, what does Pacman’s victory give us? On the other hand, what does our politics give us?

"Pacman’s victory over Erik ‘El Terrible’ Morales gives us Pinoys a great sense of pride. He showed that he could really go up to the height of legendary men. Indeed, in the world of boxing, the name Manny Pacquiao will be always remembered. Pacquiao’s triumph brings us to the halls of fame.

"Philippine politics, on the other hand, gives us Pinoys a great sense of humiliation, (bringing us) down to the depths of ignominy. Indeed, nowadays, in the world, Philippine governance (ranks second) in terms of graft and corruption. Philippine politics (has brought) us to the halls of shame. What Pacquiao’s triumph and Philippine politics give us may be formed into a couplet: Pacquiao’s triumph brings us to the halls of fame, Philippine politics brings us to the halls of shame… Emiliano de Catalina, [email protected].ph"

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.thefreeman.com. He also hosts a weekly talkshow, "Straight from the Sky," shown every Monday, at 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable.