Purism and Tagalism

“It is recognised by the KWF that “purism” and “Tagalism” are hindrances on the development of the national language.”

— Comission on the Filipino Language

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It is recognised by the Comission on the Filipino Language (KWF) that Purism and Tagalism are hindrances on the development of the Filipino language. You can very well see that! But it must be remembered that “it is recognised that the Filipino language and the Comission on the Filipino Language are hindrances on the devevelopment of the languages of the nation“.

That quote is the result of two great idiocies:

1. that Purism and Tagalism are the same

2. and that the nation only has one langauge, and that Cebuano, Bikol Central, Tausug and others are dialects.

And because those are idiocies, those are also wrong. And why is that? Firstly, Purism and Tagalism are not the same; Purism is the preference of using native terms rather than using its foreign-derived counterparts while Tagalism is the belief that the Tagalog people are the superior and/or the belief that Tagalog is the only language, the only one that should be spoken and/or is the most developed language of the Philippines. This is comparable to Hitler’s belief that the Aryans or Germans are the most superior and modern race, and are those who must rule over the entire human race. Secondly, it is a common mistake that the native languages of the Philippines besides Tagalog are only dialects of Tagalog and/or Filipino. Wrong! Those are absolutely languages. If those are dialects, then it means that the speakers of the Iloko, Tagalog and Waray languages understand one another; and that is not happening.

I also wrote this post to inform you all that the Philippine languages are dying, and the culprit, the Filipino language. On the Tagalog language, the murder by the Filipino language can be seen there on the wave of foreign-derived terms in the Tagalog language, death of the native counterparts of those, and the idiocy of the speakers on their own language where a native Tagalog is even more knowledgeable of the English language than one’s own language. While in other Philippine languages, the damage is even bigger. See a direct quote from http://pnlpfaq.pbwiki.com/Q61.

The Philippine National Language Policy is killing our non-Tagalog languages. While in 1948 only 18% of Filipinos spoke Tagalog as a first language, by 1995 this had gone up to 29.29% or one third of the population. On the other hand, while in 1948, 25% of Flipinos spoke Cebuano, by 1995 this had gone down to 21.17%. In 1948 13% of Filipinos spoke Ilocano and another 13% spoke Ilonggo. By 1995 the percentage of Filipinos speaking these two languages had gone down to 9.31% and 9.1%% respectively.

 

In 1948, Bicol was spoken by 8% of the population. By 1995 this was down to 5.69%. Waray was spoken by 6% of Filipinos in 1948. By 1995 only 3.81% of Flipinos spoke Waray. Pampangan or Kapampangan was spoken by 3% of Filipinos in 1948. By 1995 this had gone down to 2.9%. Pangasinense suffered the biggest loss. in 1948, 3% of Filipinos spoke Pangasinense. By 1995 this had gone down to a miserable 1%. The biggest lose of speakers were for Waray, Bicol and Pangasinense but all non-Tagalog languages suffered tremensdous losses.

If the above trends continue our non-Tagalog languages will either disappear from the face of the earth or be rendered extremely marginal in just 100 years, some in 50 years.

And that is true! Our languages are dying! Being killed by English and the Filipino language! What’s that national language of yours? Is it not that “national” means “for the nation”? Is this “national”? Does “national” mean murder of the languages, murder of our literature, murder of our culture, murder of our history, murder of our individuality?

And, even more surprising there is, like what I have been saying all along, that the Tagalog language was chosen as the basis of the Filipino language because it was allegedly the most used language of the Philippines but look at that: there are more speaker of Cebuano before the promulgation of the Filipino language, and, even now, the Visayans are the largest ethnic group of the Philippines; Visayans compose 40% of the Philippine population, and the Tagalogs are only second in numbers. Fortunately, it seems that the Kapampangan language was not damaged that much, and the number of their speakers still remains. Do not worry, I will still write posts about linguicide (language murder).