We must preserve our regional languages!

For our special guest on Straight from the Sky, we're honored to have with us, Mr. Robert Kuan, the founder of the famous "Chowking" a Chinese fast food outlet that made him best known as Mr. Chowking. Actually, his family was already in the restaurant business, operating the famous "Lingnam" but Robert decided to make it on his own and decided that Chinese restaurants had to be redesigned and turned into a fast food outlet and thus "Chowking" is by far, the only Chinese fast food outlet in the country today.

But this business visionary sold the whole Chowking business to another food giant... Jollibee Foods. When I asked him why he did it, he simply said, "the offer was good and it was time to let go." So Mr. Kuan went on another field, in education and humanitarian work. While Chowking may have been his crowning achievement... today, he sits on the Board of Far Eastern University and Brent International School. He is also the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of St. Luke's Hospital... the country's most modern medical facility.

Our special thanks to Mrs. Nelia Sarcol of the Center of International Education for sharing with us Mr. Kuan so we can tell his wonderful success story to our televiewers and learn from him how God blesses those who love him. See Mr. Kuan on SkyCable's Channel 15 at 8:00 p.m.

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Last week, when we attended the Regional Consultation of the Consultative Commission (concom) to draft a new constitution, for a possible shift from our present Presidential/Unitary form of government into a Parliamentary/Federal form of government, I learned that it was easier to sell Federalism if you connected it with the issue on preserving our regional languages. Indeed, keeping one's own language is an issue that is just as passionate as religion or politics. But what of the so-called National Language?

Last week, we attended a two-day Seminar Workshop on Proactive Responses to Language issue in Philippine Education and Development at the University of the Philippines-Lahug Campus, sponsored by the Kalayaan College and National Commission on Culture and Arts (NCCA). Compared to the concom consultations, this group was a much smaller one, but with many regions represented... but the passions and the energy in protecting their own regional languages was very fierce and intense.

Let me point out that most Cebuanos I meet believe in preserving our language and culture, but only talk about it. If only they attended that seminar, they would have met first hand the people who belittled our Cebuano, Illonggo or Waray languages as "not Filipino". But when our group from the Save our Languages through Federalism (Solfed) confronted them, asking them if they did not consider us as Filipinos... they couldn't answer us!

Dr. Jose Abueva, Chairman of the concom was the opening speaker and in his speech, he talked about how he supported the idea of having a national language for many years, its objectives and purpose. But lately, he has experienced (my good friend, Lino Faelnar and this writer made sure that Abueva would see the light in respecting all the spoken languages in this country) a paradigm shift... that as a believer of a Federalized Philippines, he admitted that it is far easier for him to convince people that in a Federal system, the local language in that area would be the dominant language that would be taught in the various schools of each region.

Indeed, studies have shown that it is easier to teach kids using his native tongue as kids can absorb their subjects better than any other tongue. So why hasn't the Department of Education (DepEd) embarked on this? Clearly, it is because people refuse to change. In that two-day seminar, I quickly learned that teachers who taught Filipino, which you know is 99.9% Tagalog wanted the status quo. We learned that Cebuano, Illonggo or Waray teachers were scared of losing their jobs as Filipino teachers. But when we told them, not to be scared... that they can teach their in native languages, it alleviated their fears... and made them rethink their hardline positions.

Of course, the Tagalogs inside the DepEd fiercely insisted to keep Filipino, as this is our national language! But when you tell them that we haven't gone that far yet... they refuse to accept the truth! In fact, I learned later after seminar that NCCA officials were planning to use that workshop to torpedo the bill of Rep. Eduardo Gullas for promoting English in our schools... but thanks to Solfed's language activists, we blocked their plan!

What we need is a common language that would help us understand each other better, but not at the expense, the destruction or discrimination of our other spoken languages.

Hence many of us consider English as the "great leveler" as it doesn't make one ethnic language superior to the others, just like what Tagalog has done, making non-Tagalog speakers inferior to them.

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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