Buwan ng Wika reflections
People who were born in the last century like me grew up with the celebration of “Linggo ng Wika” in grade school. Today it is “Buwan ng Wika.” I don’t know how English is taught in K-12 classrooms today, but in the last century, “Linggo ng Wika” was memorable for me, because it was the only time in the school year when we could speak in Tagalog (Filipino) outside of Pilipino class, without fear of being reported and fined. In those days, English instruction and practice were enforced by a system of snitches, the classmates who secretly recorded the number of Filipino words spoken by others in the cafeteria or playground and reported these to the teacher. There was a 10-centavo fine for every Filipino word blurted out, including “aray!” Pain suffered during accidents or games was not soothed by “ouch!” In time, we learned to bear: bruises, cuts, and scratches in silence.
In August 1988, then President Corazon Aquino issued Executive Order No. 335, “enjoining all … instrumentalities of the government to take such steps [toward] using Filipino language in official transactions, communications, and correspondence.” The EO ordered translation into Filipino of the “Oath of Office,” the names of offices, buildings, public offices, and signboards. And “if so desired, imprint below in smaller letters the English text.” Every government office had a person in charge of communications and correspondence in Filipino. I found it amusing that an EO on the national language was in English!
The 1988 Aquino EO superseded EO 187 issued by former President Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr. on Aug. 6, 1969, titled “NAG-AATAS SA LAHAT NANG KAGAWARAN, KAWANIHAN, TANGGAPAN AT IBA PANG SANGAY NG PAMAHALAAN NA GAMITIN ANG WIKANG PILIPINO HANGGA’T MAAARI SA LINGGO NG WIKANG PAMBANSA AT PAGKARAAN NITO, SA LAHAT NANG OPISYAL NA KOMUNIKASYON AT TRANSAKSYON NG PAMAHALAAN.”
What is the status of the development and acceptance of the national language today? That we need to celebrate Buwan ng Wika every year proves that we are so far from forging and accepting a national language. A witness in the current impeachment trial, a retired government employee, claims she cannot understand questions in Filipino during cross-examination by the prosecution. Unbelievable. More so, that she was able to reply to questions in Filipino during an investigation by the Lower House, but feigned ignorance of “malalim na Filipino” in the Senate. Official government correspondence continues in English. In some places outside the National Capital Region, people flaunt their narrow-minded regionalism by refusing to sing the National Anthem in Filipino and insist on a translation in their language. To preserve regional languages, Filipino is often framed as the enemy, inspiring resistance to Filipino language and literature instruction in K-12.
My mother tongue was English, literally, because my mother insisted we speak English at home. I learned Filipino formally in grade school, informally with my playmates in kindergarten. Children in a playground understand each other naturally, making me wonder when language begins to divide rather than unite. Sent to Pampanga during vacation, everyone thought I would encourage English, speaking among my cousins, but to my mother’s horror I learned Kapampangan instead. Learning a new language naturally, painlessly at play rather than from a classroom armed me for life. Kapampangan developed into a bond with my father in his later years, a secret language between us that my mother did not understand.
Filipinos are naturally multilingual; they grow up with a mother tongue, then learn both English and Filipino in school. If parents come from two different regions and speak to their children in their languages, then the child grows up with two mother tongues, plus English and Filipino in K-12. Add to all these a foreign language learned in college. A pity that the generation that had 12-15 units of Spanish did not learn to appreciate or communicate in it because time was wasted on conjugation rather than speaking and literature. Spanish should come naturally because Filipino has more loan words in Spanish than English. We use it in daily conversation: enero, febrero, marso … lunes, martes, miercoles, mesa, cuchara, tenedor, etc.
In grade school, we learned English through “SRA” textbooks from blonde and blue-eyed children who ate apples rather than mangoes, played hide-and-seek rather than “tumbang preso.” There was a disconnect there, but then that was the way of the world. My generation was the guinea pig for the experiment in bilingualism that started with English, then shifted to an emphasis on Filipino, before finally returning to English. As a result, many lost facility in both languages, leading to the rise of “Taglish” or “Engalog.” Tolerable in informal speech, atrocious when written. In my line of work, I have seen “research” turn into “saliksik,” then “riserts”!
From my experience, language was learned by usage, at work or play, and through film, social media, and gaming. How are English and Filipino taught in K-12 today? Are we turning out students proficient in both languages? Fluent in one? Or mediocre in both?
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Comments are welcome at ambeth.ocampo@inquirer.net
