when i first learn in twitter about this article from a certain James Soriano, student from AdMU that he was sort of bashing our Filipino language, i was kinda 'who is this guy?!' but ofcourse you have to see for yourself on 'what's all the big fuss', the next day it took me about 15minutes to search for the link (thanks to google!) because of the sudden spurt of attention, its not James' link that would come first on your search engine, its the people's uproar and outcry of foulness.
as i take time to read the whole article up to the last dot, my first take was "yeah, truth hurts". lets face it, somehow James has a point. the article talks about his relationship towards our language. that he considers it as a secondary language, way of survival in conversing with people on the outside world. quoted "it was not the language of learning. It was the language we used to speak to the people who washed our dishes." "it was how you spoke to the tindera when you went to the tindahan, what you used to tell your katulong that you had an utos, and how you texted manong when you needed “sundo na.”- the context might have been a bit absurd on delivering the facts but that's his. he dealt on it on such a way that he could understand it. but it may have been pity on his part that he was not able to expound the language. as mentioned to his article, it was always been English, he reads, speaks, understands English, he breathes it. he was not given the chance to see the depth of our language. lets slip Francisco Baltazar, he was our Shakespeare. his epic works shows proof that we can totally build the bridges in conversing. he gives justice to 'Filipino' language that as for James, it was a mere 'street language'.
he may have deliver it in a vigorous way but then again one way or another its the reality of we have. we Filipinos tend to feel that we are being insulted in issues like this when in fact we only deny and escape the real story. we live in a democratic country. we say whatever we think is right or wrong. its either we get commended for doing a good job or get shot on the head for talking that much. with this man's case, he received criticism for the insulting part of his writing. that as for me this is a wake up call for everyone. with the marginal jump of our colonial mentality,and transition of modern technology, this is part of the chain reaction that we are dealing right now.
end of the day, lets not put the blame on one persons' point of view. lets not be reactive hence reflect on our own view. we dont need another James to make us realize what was missing.
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Language, learning, identity, privilege
Ithink
By JAMES SORIANO
August 24, 2011, 4:06am
August 24, 2011, 4:06am
MANILA, Philippines — English is the language of learning. I’ve known this since before I could go to school. As a toddler, my first study materials were a set of flash cards that my mother used to teach me the English alphabet.
is this james soriano when he was in high school?
My mother made home conducive to learning English: all my storybooks and coloring books were in English, and so were the cartoons I watched and the music I listened to. She required me to speak English at home. She even hired tutors to help me learn to read and write in English.
In school I learned to think in English. We used English to learn about numbers, equations and variables. With it we learned about observation and inference, the moon and the stars, monsoons and photosynthesis. With it we learned about shapes and colors, about meter and rhythm. I learned about God in English, and I prayed to Him in English.
Filipino, on the other hand, was always the ‘other’ subject — almost a special subject like PE or Home Economics, except that it was graded the same way as Science, Math, Religion, and English. My classmates and I used to complain about Filipino all the time. Filipino was a chore, like washing the dishes; it was not the language of learning. It was the language we used to speak to the people who washed our dishes.
We used to think learning Filipino was important because it was practical: Filipino was the language of the world outside the classroom. It was the language of the streets: it was how you spoke to the tindera when you went to the tindahan, what you used to tell your katulong that you had an utos, and how you texted manong when you needed “sundo na.”
These skills were required to survive in the outside world, because we are forced to relate with the tinderas and the manongs and the katulongs of this world. If we wanted to communicate to these people — or otherwise avoid being mugged on the jeepney — we needed to learn Filipino.
That being said though, I was proud of my proficiency with the language. Filipino was the language I used to speak with my cousins and uncles and grandparents in the province, so I never had much trouble reciting.
It was the reading and writing that was tedious and difficult. I spoke Filipino, but only when I was in a different world like the streets or the province; it did not come naturally to me. English was more natural; I read, wrote and thought in English. And so, in much of the same way that I learned German later on, I learned Filipino in terms of English. In this way I survived Filipino in high school, albeit with too many sentences that had the preposition ‘ay.’
It was really only in university that I began to grasp Filipino in terms of language and not just dialect. Filipino was not merely a peculiar variety of language, derived and continuously borrowing from the English and Spanish alphabets; it was its own system, with its own grammar, semantics, sounds, even symbols.
But more significantly, it was its own way of reading, writing, and thinking. There are ideas and concepts unique to Filipino that can never be translated into another. Try translating bayanihan, tagay, kilig or diskarte.
Only recently have I begun to grasp Filipino as the language of identity: the language of emotion, experience, and even of learning. And with this comes the realization that I do, in fact, smell worse than a malansang isda. My own language is foreign to me: I speak, think, read and write primarily in English. To borrow the terminology of Fr. Bulatao, I am a split-level Filipino.
But perhaps this is not so bad in a society of rotten beef and stinking fish. For while Filipino may be the language of identity, it is the language of the streets. It might have the capacity to be the language of learning, but it is not the language of the learned.
It is neither the language of the classroom and the laboratory, nor the language of the boardroom, the court room, or the operating room. It is not the language of privilege. I may be disconnected from my being Filipino, but with a tongue of privilege I will always have my connections.
So I have my education to thank for making English my mother language.
