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| RANDY DAVID'S SPEECH AT U.P. LOS BANOS |
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| Yesterday, Prof. Randolf David of UP Diliman came to Los Baños as part of the 32nd anniversary celebrations of the College of Arts and Sciences. While his talk on GE or General Education was interesting and informative, I will not repeat it here. I mention him only because he unexpectedly mentioned our own Cabalen Ernie Turla of DILA, and the work he is doing for language, in his address, showing the deep impression Cabalen Ernie has made on Prof. David. The following is an attempt to reproduce his words from my notes (BTW, he delivered it mainly in English). "Sometimes, it is necessary to go abroad in order to truly appreciate the languages and cultures of the Philippines. For instance, I received a Kapampangan-English dictionary from Mr. Turla, who has been in the United States, for 50 years [sic]. I am truly amazed by this, this is something that we do not have here, a current dictionary in the language, and it took someone residing in the US to make an effort to publish it. Languages which we do not write in, we tend to forget, and unfortunately, that is increasingly the case for Kapampangan and other Philippine languages… "What is happening is that we are experiencing what has been called `MacDonaldization,' with the world becoming more and more uniform, and so many languages swallowed up and disappearing. We must resist this. Language, our mother tongue, is part of our identity, it not only determines how we see the world, but makes us a whole person. It is part of our personal history, and we cannot separate it from ourselves. In another country, Mr. Turla has worked hard to piece together the threads of his identity, recreate it, and make it whole again." In response to a question, phrased in the subdialect, on what role the subdialect should play in G.E. (which is something you would expect at UP, although, this being Los Baños, all other questions were in English), David (as expected from a member of the UP establishment speaking to a UP audience) echoed the usual UP platitudes on the "intellectualization of Filipino." What was totally unexpected was what he said at the end: "So much has been lost over the years because our languages are not used in school. And I am not referring only to Filipino but especially to our regional languages. And if we do not use them in the classroom, if we do not write in them, we may lose them completely." It seems that the work of DILA members, particularly Cabalen Ernie, is being noticed, even in Tagalista strongholds like UP Diliman! Edwin Camaya |
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