The Making of Tagalog As National Language - by AURELIO AGCAOILI - Languages - http://maxpages.com/defender/Professor

Sun, 13 May 2007 00:53:55 -0700
From: "Manuel Faelnar"
To: dila@yahoogroups. com
Subject: From Prof. Agcaoili A Perfect Model for
Marginalization and manipulation: The Making of
Tagalog as National Language

A Perfect Model for Marginalization and Manipulation:
The Making of Tagalog as National Language
By Prof. Aurelio Agcaoili, University of Hawaii

The esteemed Bien Lumbera has said it at the 2006
Nakem Conference, with clarity of insight, that the
awarding of the National Artist for Literature-- a
shameless and embarrassing preserve of the English and
Tagalog writers--is an anomaly.

That, in my view of how the politics of culture and
language is in the Philippines, is a sentiment that
should awaken us all to the fact that in the cultural
and artisitic life of the homeland, someone--some
people--has shanghaied this honor and a cabal of
pretenders to serving as the givers of this honor to
whoever they pleased must be made accountable to this
injustice that has gone on and on for years and years.

In a plenary address by Lumbera at the Nakem and
published in "Essays on Ilokano and Amianan Life,
Culture, and History," he mentioned the stalwarts of
Bisayan, Hiligaynon, and Ilokano literature unable to
even get past the recognition of the selection
committee, a number of them given that token honor as
'finalist' or 'nominee' while the English and Tagalog
writers have lorded it over, with their brand of
aesthetics brokering what, in their own view, should
be the 'national literature.'

The anomaly is glaring--and one reason brought out by
Lumbera is the problem of access by the selection
committee to these works. A well-meaning but
uneducated solution proposed by many of the
monolingual scholars is for these 'regional' writers
to have their works translated to the languages the
members of the selection committee know.

Translation is in itself laudable. But if the duty to
translate what could be called part and parcel of the
body of national literature is on the 'region' where
these writers come from, what another form of anomaly
is this? What another form of creative burden? And
whose perspective is this demand to be seen? The lords
and masters of national life are again demanding from
us this servile, subservient, adipen-like, duty to
give them hook-line-and- sinker what they want.

There are two question needing answers here:

1. How is it that the members of the selection
committee are people who know only Tagalog and
English?
2. How is it that the burden of translating to Tagalog
and English is now in the hands of the producers of
that body of literature? How come that this same
burden is not asked of the Tagalog writers to
translate their works to say, Ilokano, Bisayan,
Tausog, Aklanon, or Maranao?

Again, we speak here of entitlements and privileges
accorded for all times to Tagalog and English. And
these entitlements and privileges, to say the least,
are not just and fair.

One argument put forward by an academic why he
advances the cause of Tagalog is that it is a language
with its dictionaries, advanced grammar, informed
scholars devoted to it, and its voluminous literary
production. But of course! Here again, the little
emperors say they have clothes but the light of day
tell us they are as naked as the day they were born!
Roy Aragon says of them: 'silalabus'. He has another
more interesting term: 'butobuto a silalabus'.

The academic, of course, has forgotten, that in 1937,
the major lingua francas particularly the first three
(Visaya/Sebuano, Ilokano, and Tagalog) were almost in
the same footing, with Visaya/Sebuano leading the pack
by a good edge.

It was in 1937 that Tagalog was 'selected' by a
language institute formed during the Commonwealth
administration of President Manuel Quezon, with that
language eventually declared as the 'national'
language. With 70 years of government backing,
support, and institutionalizatio n--not to mention the
taxes of non-Tagalogs to develop not their language
but the language of another, we wonder how much can we
push the argument of that academic who must have been
afflicted with the myopia of the victor, seeing only
himself with the lens of his eyes filled with the pus
of the wounds he inflicted on the other regions.

In this linguistic and cultural revolution-- a
revolution that should make us sit up and be serious
with our creative notion of what a 'nation' should
be--we are putting forward the idea that for 70 years,
this linguistic and cultural injustice has become the
staple of the Filipino minds from the basic education
to the university and only a few a making a whimper.

What is so sad is that even topnotch Bisayan and
Ilokano academics, scholars, and cultural leaders have
been hoodwinked into believing that this ambigiuous
Tagalog masking off as P/Filipino is indeed the
national language.

This cultural blackmail must be called as such--it is
a blackmail that rests on what Tagalog can offer at
this time after 70 years of getting all what the other
languages did not get--nunca, zilch, ibbung. My
grandmother has a way of saying about this: the other
langauges did not get anything, 'uray no lugit'.

To add insult to injury, a cursory auditing of the
topnotch linguists and writers of the country are
clearly a party to this systemic marginalization of
the languages of the Filipino peoples other than the
sanctified Tagalog.

If the same kind of support, institutionalizatio n, and
propping up were done to Bisaya and Ilokano and the
other lingua francas, could it have been possible that
they now have their own developed dictionaries,
literary writings, and grammar?

Despite the total absence of government support, with
only the commerial interests of media kingpins
providing some faux motive to cultural and literay
development and promotion, Ilokano, Bisaya, and
Hiligaynon have come to stay. The Bikolanos have,
during the past years, realized that they are dying
and now they have begun to go through the rite of
self-resuscitation, that through grace and gifts, have
come to their senses that the last spasms of death
need not happen.

One conceptual culprit is the continuing use of
"regional literature," a concept that is applicable to
all literatures but Tagalog and English. The Palanca
as an institution is guilty of this, with its token
recognition of the 'regional literary productions' in
Ilokano, Sebuano, and Hiligaynon, and the literary
work confined to the short story.

Something is wrong here. Tagalog is as regional as
Tausog and Ilokano and Ibanag.

The more applicable term is this: 'literature from the
region'--and this term applies to all, English
included.

For English is a regional preserve of the regionalist
we call academics, some better educated political
leaders, the priests and their allies, the elites,
some passable artistas with the penchant for some
cutesy-cutesy ways, the nuns in their mossy convents,
the colegialas with their pretensions to taking part
in the rigodon de honor and the polite society that
uses English among themselves and talks in Tagalog to
their househelps and modern-day slaves.

If there is something that we can deduce from all
these at this time, it is this: that veritably the
declaration of Tagalog as the basis of the national
language is a ruse, a lie, a manipulation and that
this isomorphism that holds that Tagalog-P/Filipino is
one sure way to our marginalization and then to our
cultural and linguistic death.

Ask the Ilokanos who are embarrassed to admit that
they are Ilokanos.

Ask the Ilokanos who say they only know English.

Ask the Ilokanos who claim they only know Tagalog.

A, these mistakes will go on and on and on.

A. Solver Agcaoili
UH Manoa/May 4-07

Posted by ariel at 12:23 AM 5 comments

--
Manuel Lino G. Faelnar

Ilokano as a National Language
by Aurelio Agcaoili

As is expected, the problem with many Ilokanos is themselves. Myopic and lobotomized, they cannot even appreciate the wisdom of their forefathers, this wisdom that is a product of the ages.

In my long years of research work, teaching, and community service, I have come across Ilokanos, in the Philippines, in the United States, and elsewhere who are not happy with their identity as Ilokanos.

One more sinister example is at the universities and colleges, in the Mainland US, Hawai`i or the Philippines where we have academics, who, in their convenient and comfortable ignorance, prefer to be dominated by that neocolonizing idea that Tagalog is the way to go to this dreamed-of 'isang bansa-isang diwa' delusion of grandeur that is as despotic as the Aryanists of the past, who, in their wild fantasies, of course, believe that purity and not pollution is the sure road to redemption. So we have Ilokano academics who would rather be known as someone else, members of some superior tribes somewhere who can lay easy claim to the illusions of a maharlikan civilization as Eddie Ilarde the historically compromised senator wanted us to believe in the 80's.

Some academics at these universities and colleges should have pushed for a clearer understanding of the roles of the multiple languages of the Philippines in the advancing of "Filipino" as defined by the 1987 Constitution but they did not. Sadly, some of them even had played hide-and-seek in their attempt to push for this Tagalogization of all Filipino minds, believing withou questioning that Tagalog has reached the pinnacle of its being P/Filipino without realizing that this thinking is schizophrenic.

We must also say at this point that many language educators are guilty of this wholesale and wanton destruction of Filipino minds mediated by the multiple languages of the country.

But how much are we going to hold the linguists and language policy makers accountable for this lie hoisted upon us for so long?

And since this lie has been repeated for a long time, it has stuck up in the consciousness until such time that now we can no longer think for ourselves. How much can we account them, these accomplices?

This is the problem of one commentator of a previous essay I wrote. This Ilokano does not believe that Ilokano deserves a chance to be recognized and become a national language. One even had the temerity to say that this push for Ilokano as a national language will only divide us further. He does not realize, of course, that this hoisting of Tagalog=P/Filipino has divided us for the longest time.

Let me riposte this 'inferiority complex' that has afflicted these Ilokanos.

This is a syndrome--always and always so--of people who have undergone colonization and neocolonization for a long time.

The colonized and neocolonized will always feel that he is not worth the 'superior' standard of the lord and master and thus, all his life, what he needs to do is make it sure that before the lord and master, his ways are in accord with this superior standard. He lives co conform, and thus, he does not live at all because he does not live his life.

In Hawai`i, for instance, as in the Ilokos based on the reports of academics, the Ilokanos are ashamed to speak Ilokano, believing that English is the primary ruler and Tagalog the secondary one. This report is not new: it had been this way since the 60's, moving on to Martial Law, and now.

Teachers who trained under me in several teacher training institutes that tried to inculcate the value of heritage understanding via Ilokano literature reported to me that their students cannot be caught reading Bannawag or other 'local' magazines that are in Ilokano. These teachers cannot be caught reading the local Ilokano magazines as well, saying, among others, that this is so 'working class,' 'so promdi,' 'so baduy.'

So here, the equation is this: evil/badness/inferiority=Ilokano.

If in the process of educating students we punish them when they are heard speaking in Ilokano in the school grounds and more so in the classrooms, then, the sad fact that students will never admit their being Ilokanos is a logical consequence. But even before we deal with these student issues, we need to deal with the teachers as well. How many of the language and literature teachers do have the pride to speak and read and teach in Ilokano?

Again, in the many training seminars that I helped organized and put up, you end up regretting having asked the question from teachers.

Yes, the teachers are agents as well of this continuing inferiority complex--and with the carrot dangled before the students who can speak English and Tagalog, the inferiority complex gets worse.

This leads me to the issue of the commentator about Ilokano as national language and his insistence that this will only foment regionalism. There is, of course, ignorance here, with that presumptuous presumption that says that Ilokano encourages regionalism.

The argument here is that Tagalog is no longer a 'regional' language but a 'national' language.

But there is nowhere in the fundamental law of the land that says that except in the illusions of the Tagalistas and the Ilokanos who are more Tagalog that the Tagalogs, Tagalog is P/Filipino. This is a blatant lie. It is base as well.

This is the genesis of the lie that we have all along swallowed hook -line-and sinker, the line that Tagalog is now P/Filipino.
And many academics have made us believe so. And many government educators made us believe so.

There is a rule in the theory of acts that says that ignorance does not exempt one from his obligation to tell the truth and that there maybe a modification of his responsibility if his action was done out of ignorance. The crucial part here is this: that even if one were ignorant, he is always held culpable. Modification is not equal to having no responsibility.

The Ilokanos who despise their being Ilokanos are many. All of them do not know the value of language as the instrument for translating into clearer concepts the meaning of social justice.

We have many of them, these Ilokano academics who would rather be called 'Ingliseros' and Tagalog-speaking because to be known as such would give them access to the community of academics and scholars who know what neocolonization and domination and oppression are but could not see themselves as colonized, dominated and subjugated, and oppressed.

This phenomenon is found among Ilokanos, and it has now become common and everyday.

This ability to 'spoking English' and to 'speak Tagalog' is now the rule of the neocolonization game.

But it is safe to say that this phenomenon is found as well among the Bikolanos, the Tausogs, the Maranaws, the Kapampangans, the Pangasinenses, the Bisayans, or the Ilonggos. Oh, well, our tragic lives are intertwined, and there is no redemption here except to say what the Ilokano sakadas in Hawai`i said to the lunas, the oppressive plantation bosses, "Enaf olredi!"

My take is this: If an Ilokano cannot admit to himself that he is an Ilokano, the least he can do is to not to stand in the way of the Ilokanos in their struggle to re-claim themseves, and the identity robbed of them because of this linguistic and cultural lobotomization.

We need clear minds in this struggle.

--
Manuel Lino G. Faelnar
Coordinator for Metro Manila
SOLFED (Save Our Languages Through Federalism Foundation, Inc)
"Without our language, we have no culture, we have no identity, we
are nothing." (By Ornolfor Thorsson, advisder to Iceland's President.)
"When you lose a language you lose a culture, intellectual wealth, a
work of art". (By Kenneth Hale, who taught linguistics at MIT).
"Words, if powerful enough, can transport people into a journey, real
or imagined, that either creates a fantasy or confirms reality." (
By Rachelle Arlin Credo, poet and writer).

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