A history of the Tagalog language
June 14, 2008For a change, I would be posting at this blog on the English language to reach a wider audience. And if you are Filipino, you should be concerned that our culture, our languages are slowly being erased by the globalisation, the English language and the Filipino language itself, an artificial language, that is technically, made by the 1986 constitution. Being a controversial topic, and a very debatable one in the Philippine linguistic subculture, I would not be surprised if I’ll receive negative comments and opposition.
Commonwealth era
During the Commonwealth era, during the Philippine President Manuel L. Quezon, widely known as the “Father of the National Language” (Ama ng Wikang Pambansa), a government organisation known as the Surian ng Wikang Pambansa (National Language Institute) was created. This organisation, seeking to declare a national language for the newly established government, selected the Tagalog language as the national language of all the Philippines. This is due to the fact that the Tagalog language is the language of the Filipino revolutionaries (most revolutions occured in the Katagalugan, literaly “Tagalog land”, due to the fact that Manila was part of the Katagalugan, and is the Spanish capital), and the Tagalog language having the richest literature, and having the least variations through-out its dialects. Subsequently, Tagalog was renamed to Pilipino by Secretary of Education Jose Romero to give it a rather nationalistic feel, and avoid to give favour to the Tagalog ethnic group.
Opposition
The choice itself was not really much well received by other ethnoliguistic groups, especially the Cebuanos; this is due to the fact that Cebuano was historically the most spoken language in the Philippines, with Tagalog a minority compared to Cebuano, and remains until today as the Philippine language with the most number of native speakers. Although Tagalog today has the most number of speakers, mostly speakers treating Tagalog as a second language; this is mostly due to the fact that Cebuano is not even teached in public schools even by those in Cebu, where the language originated, and Filipino, a Tagalog-based artificial language, being taught at all public schools. This opposition grew more when the language was renamed. Ironically, instead of doing its goals of avoiding systemic bias to the Tagalogs, it rather worsened the situation since major ethnic groups, especially the Cebuanos, viewed it as an early form of Imperial Manila and/or Tagalog Imperialism, that is extreme favour towards the Tagalogs.
Purist era
During the 1960’s, a Filipino group of linguists sought a solution to solve the problem of extensive word-borrowing by the Tagalog language from foreign languages, especially from Spanish and English. The solution: purism. For those of you who do not have a clue what that is, purism is a linguistic ideology in which as much as possible only words of native origins are used. Tagalog is not really a language with a rich native vocabulary due to almost half a millenium of colonialisation, saturation from the colonisers’ languages, and gloablisation. That is why the purists of the 1960’s were forced to create new words from existing native words by appending affixes, which are mostly self-made, on them, and/or combining them. However in some case where a native word cannot be truly found, creative measures were done; that is creating radically new words. Some examples of the neologisms, which are to replace a range of words from the most used to the most complex, coined in this decade were kapnayan (chemistry), sipnayan (mathematics), initsigan (thermodynamics), hattinig (telephone), salipapaw (aeroplane) and most notably samlumpuwit (chair), literaly the “ass-catcher”. Most of these words are dead now, however a few are still in current use today; these are mostly linguistic terms like patinig (vowel), katinig (consonant), sugnay (clause) and pangngalan (noun).
Filipino: a new language to kill the Language
Since the newly named Pilipino language was not really popular, the language issue was again revived during the drafting of the new constitution in 1971. This time, in a goal not to have Tagalog as a national language but to have a language that will represent the whole Philippine archipelago to the whole world, the Filipino language was proposed. Like the purists of the 1960’s, advocators of Filipino also created rather a lot of neologisms, which are still in use today. Practically, those neologisms are just English words written in Tagalog orthography. Some examples are titser (teacher), kendi (candy), bolpen (ballpen), nowtbuk (notebook) and asaynment (assignment). However, unlike Pilipino, the Cebuanos were much pleased with this. Good as it may sound, technically, Filipino is still Tagalog with only a huge pinch of foreign-derived vocabulary since as said in the constitution Filipino is based on the predominant language.
Conclusion
That is why personally, I view Filipino only as a sad excuse for destroying the purity of the Tagalog language and its literature by replacing already existing native terms with Tagalicised loan words for I myself am a purist. This is further worsened by the fact that most Filipinos nowadays are multilinguals, at least even a Grade 1 student already nows how to speak English! I am not saying that multilingualism is bad for I myself am multilingual but due to the fact that colonial mentality is widely saturated in the minds of most Filipinos, Filipinos seem to prefer English-derived terms more and more just as Filipinos think that white skin is better! That’s why in almost any everyday Filipino sentence you can hear, you will hear an English word hence Taglish and Englog. And as if this situation cannot get any worse, it just did last year 2006 when the Philippine Department of Education mandated that all subjects, except history and Filipino, in schools in a predominantly Tagalog-Cebuano speaking country will be taught in English! For why should our own language not be taught in schools, and be replaced in preference of a foreign language? What? For modernisation and globalisation of a country in an Anglophone world? If yes, it is like you are saying that early on we should learn how to be slaves of corporate giants! That’s suicide! This is like doing your own death sentence! Filipinos are erasing their own languages and their own cultures in preference of a foreign one! If you’re a Filipino, would you rather be a carbon copy of a very progressive nation, or be progressive yourself?
“I prefer a country run like hell by Filipinos to a country run like heaven by Americans.” — Manuel L. Quezon
Wikimedia Pilipinas
Panimula
Bilang aking isa sa mga pinakaunang liham dito sa blog na ito, aking isusulat itong nagpapatungkol sa Wikimedia Pilipinas. Ito ay dahil isa akong matagal nang Wikipedista, at isang tagapangasiwa ng Tagalog na Wikipedia at Wiktionary. At ito pa nga ang ikinakagulat ko dahil mayroon pa ring ilang mga taong kahit kailan man ay hindi pa naririnig ang Wikipedia. At kung isa ka na riyon, ang Wikipedia ay isang malayang esiklopedyang pang-Internet na maaaring baguhin nino man. Para itong kagaya ng iyong mga Encarta at Encyclopædia Britanica na saksakan ng mahal, ngunit hindi kagaya niyon ito ay libre at maaaring mo pang baguhin, at sa karamihan ng pagkakataon, mas marami ka pang matutunan ditong totoo kaysa sa mga nasabing ensiklopedya.
Wikimedia Pilipinas
Matapos ang ilang taon, napagpasyahan ng mga Wikipedistang (mga taong tumutulong sa Wikipedya) gumawa ng isang sangay ng Wkimedia rito sa Pilipinas. Ito ay noon pang 2006. Nakakapagtaka nga at ngayon lamang bumilis ang proseso nang nalaman ng marami na malapit nang mabuo ang Wikimedia Indonesia; ngayon itinuturing na itong isang pakikipagkompetensya: ang kompetisyon kung ano ang magiging unang sangay ng Wikimedia sa Timog-Silangang Asya. Sa pagkakaalam ko, itinakda sa bandang Agosto ang ingkorporasyon bagaman maaari pa itong magbago.
Mas marami pang impormasyon ang makikita sa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Tambayan_Philippines.
Mabuhay sa aking kaunahang blog!
June 13, 2008Hahaha! Paumanhin at masyado pang pangit ang blog ko ngayon. Simpleng dahilan, ito ang kaunahan kong blog, gabi na at inaantok na ako.
