language bridges and barriers

this morning I had the opportunity to attend a breakfast meeting of the ISACC, the Institute for Studies in Asian Church and Culture. It was very informal and was brainstorming for the most part.

after the main agenda had been laid out and the meeting was adjourned, I noticed Dr. Melba Maggay broaching an interesting topic to a foreign ISACC member who was present. They were talking about the fact that English and not Filipino is the language used by Filipino intellectuals, and Melba was explaining why and how that came to be and how English persists as the idiom of the intelligentsia.

pinoy readers reading online or the old-skool newspaper will find intellectuals of such diverse political persuasions as Randy David, Bernie Villegas, Alex Magno, and other thinkers equal to the task, writing in the English sites and papers. The Filipino tabloids are viewed as crass ephemeral, unsophisticated. Melba also shared her perception that English was "the main language of reflection". For my part I felt that I didn't know whether to agree or disagree with her statement.

we also see a language divide in the churches (both Catholic and Protestant), which hold separate Tagalog and English services.

the real dilemma comes in the fact that, in the Philippines, for highly technical subjects such as nursing, medicine, computing, and calculus, English is still the preferred (and the only) medium for textbooks, teaching materials, communication, etc.

this goes back to the tradition of the Thomasites.

the Thomasites were a group of about 500 pioneer American teachers sent by the United States government to the Philippines to teach basic education and to train Filipino teachers. Arriving aboard the USS Thomas on August 12, 1901, they established a new public school system. Although the Philippines had a public school system since 1863, when a Spanish decree first introduced public elementary education in the Philippines, the Thomasites expanded and improved the public school system, and switched to English as the medium of instruction.

on the other hand, Filipino (first spelled "Pilipino") was constructed as the new national language in the Commonwealth period by the Surian ng Wikang Pambansa. The Surian was composed of President Quezon and six other members from various ethnic groups. Tagalog, due to its extensive literary tradition, was selected as the basis but words from other Philippine languages (Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Ilokano) were also included.

the obvious impact of globalization notwithstanding -- honest reflection is required of us and we should ask ourselves why when we talk to our friends in the vernacular, we use only the colloquial vernacular and we have difficulty speaking in straight Filipino.

what does it mean for the Filipinos to identify themselves in the sense of being a “modern” nation-state, all the more when they seem to have lost the capacity to express themselves purely in their native tongue?

that is not the question.

what the problem is-- is that for the young generation now coming up in life there are so many niches, and innumerable ways of expressing themselves. But sadly, there is no single language that unites them.