SILENCED LANGUAGES - Languages - http://maxpages.com/defender/silence

I've just seen the movie, "Two Brothers", a family film with a heart-warming story about two Bengal tigers who got separated and then later reunited after each had an adventure of his own. It reminded me of a story I read a long time ago, "Androcleus and the Lion", where the two characters still recognized each other when brought together in an arena after a long separation. At its ending it said something like, "There used to be 100 thousand tigers roaming in the wild. Now there are only around 5 thousand. Let's protect our endangered wildlife, especially this beautiful and bravest of all creatures."

It made me think of these endangered animals as akin to our endangered languages. It also made me recall that article I wrote a few years ago entitled "How To Save The Tiger That Is Pampanga". Why I compared Pampanga to a tiger emanated from a saying dating back to the golden age of the zarzuela and moro-moro (comedia). My boyhood recollection would center around the swashbuckling hero who would always holler the popular line, "Qng leon o tigre e cu tatacut, queca pa?" (To either a lion or tiger, afraid I am not, so the more I won't be afraid of you!)
It was what the boastful, Christian Pampangan in the Spanish navy would address the Moro warrior when they confronted each other in far Zamboanga. Or what a Castilian would say to a Moor during the Crusades or during the last days of Granada.

Then I also recalled that other article I wrote entitled Defenders of Indigenous Languages of the Archipelago and which is now housed in the DILA website
our friend, Tim Harvey, maintains. In one paragraph, it mentions the shape of things to come with regard to our languages. It envisions something really cold and bleak,
including the death of our languages and the comparison made on them to animal trophies nailed on the cabin wall by a heartless hunter and taxidermist.

Now I'm reviving the same scenery as I see it with my clairvoyant mind. Since our indigenous languages are in much the same situation as these endangered animals
we're trying to protect, they can be seen together as one. At least in our mind, that is.

So, come along with me on a field trip to a museum in Manila. Remember, this is just a castle in the air and don't take every word literally. For sometimes I can be like the great Rolando Carbonell, the poet (he is presently in Tibet or India for his annual visit there in connection with his quest for spiritual upliftment).

We, inside the museum, that's how we see us (ourselves). We see ourselves climbing up the steps of this grand, marble edifice. (Hey, this is kind of picturesque, isn't it? Like a Washington Irving anecdote!) We get our admission tickets and go inside. It's not a guided tour, since there are actually only three rooms to see. So we are just there on our own, free to see everything, like at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. (I've been there, have you?)

Okay, we've just entered the first room. A scenery shown on a giant, panoramic wide screen depicts numerous animals that roam freely in the wild. Although quite different from our own fauna, they remind us of how it was with our own animals during the Spanish times as well as before it.

Now, we are about to enter the second room. We see a sign at the entrance that says,"The Zoo". Like in the first auditorium, what we find here is just another picture presentation. A scenery in cinemascope is showing a menagerie in which the same animals lost their freedom and are now languishing in captivity. They are all securely confined in cages. Except for one gorilla that is on the loose, and horsing around as it mimicks the sounds of its fellow animals therein. This must be a show on the condition of the present time, President Quezon to President Gloria Arroyo's era.

And now, we are on to the third one. It is a spacious gallery. And it seems to be a little dim inside. For special effects, we suppose.. On the top of its door is the label projected in neon lights, "The Silence of the Lambs", underneath it on which in smaller size is written, "The Defiant Ones". There is also the sign "no flash bulbs" on one side as cameras are not permitted.

As we enter this special room we see a miniature spacecraft. This must be a scene on something a century from now, we say to ourselves. Something futuristic! (Hey, Flash Gordon, where are you? And Buck Rogers, Brick Bradford!)

Now let us start observing. What is in this room is not just two-dimensional as in the first two. The animals on display are life-like in size and in 3-D. But the stillness of this scenery is eerie. It's like being amidst an Edgar Allan Poe's setting, "once upon a midnight dreary." Like a dead poets society! For although they are the same animals we have seen in the other rooms, they look so much different! They are cold and lifeless! ("Fallen, cold and dead, Walt Whitman would have exclaimed.) Their eyes are looking blankly into the distance, into space, into the future - a time they never got to see. As if saying, "Why did they have to do this to us? Why is the world so unkind?" So appalling! It could make Benjie Pepito puke if he has come along!

After sometime we get mesmerized by what we are seeing. For soon we suddenly find ourselves hooked on a reverie. We are not ourselves anymore! Or if we are, we are at a different time. We see ourselves as gorillas looking at these stuffed animals all around. With us are fellow gorillas (like those in Planet of the Apes), many of whom have notebooks and clipboards in their hairy hands. They must be scholars and researchers, we say to ourselves. They must be doing research on their fellow animals that have died and become extinct over the years.

"Why did they let themselves die?" one of them asks. One proud gorilla quickly replies, "They were idiots. They did not know where to find food." Another gorilla said, "No, I think some large meteors from the sky hit them, but because our forefathers were wise, they knew where to hide." Then I overhear one remark on the
other side, "Aren't we glad that we gorillas survived!"

If they only know! But we are not about to share such knowledge. What they don't know wouldn't hurt them! But on second thought, we don't even think, it would hurt them. This is today, and yesterday is gone. "Let the dead past bury its dead." (Longfellow)

We start looking at the stuffed animals more closely. They are not lambs but why are they labeled altogether as lambs, we muse in unison and with that questioning look. Our wandering minds start to wonder. Some further thinking on our part enables us to solve the enigma. Lambs are a symbol of peace and quiet, as well as a symbol of anything that poses no opposition, complaint or objection. It is a trademark for docility and meekness. Hence, silence. Silence is what we get from meek lambs. We snap our fingers and say, "Eureka!"

Now at long last, it is all quiet, all the other gorillas having left the room all to ourselves. Now we can start viewing the animals one by one along with their "scientific names" which are in fine print. And yes, also the year when they became extinct. We have to put on our gorilla glasses to see them clearly. Starting from the left and on to the right and going around in full circle, all 160 of them:

Kapampangan tiger,
Ilonggo/Hiligaynon lion,
Pangasinan panther,
Cebuano elephant,
Naga Bicol black bear,
Rinconada Bicol bufallo bull,
Ilocano leopard,
Chabacano cheetah,
Waray jaguar,
Maguindanao alligator,
Aklanon hyena,
Maranao rhino,
Sambal jackal,
Ibanag stag,
Kara-ya cougar,
Mangyan condor,
Tagbanua timberwolf,
Bogobo komoda dragon,
Tausug falcon,
Igorot mountain goat,
Tinggian lynx,
Ivatan bat,
Asi civet cat,
Badjao badger,
Kankaney coyote,
Rombl......

As we go about inspecting these poor stuffed animals and pondering over their fate, a group of gorillas suddenly arrive! "Hail, hail, the gang's all here!" one of them sings with glee and with that gorilla accent. Then we all start conversing happily with one another in the gorilla language we've all been born with. It seems that one has just written a book entitled "A Planet of Our Own" and is showing it to everybody. As is the rule in the museum, each gorilla has to have a name tag. And the names of all authorized visitors appear on the screen for security reason. I see my own name, Ernie Turla, followed by CXVII. I must have had a junior, and there must have been an Ernie III, and an Ernie IV, and so on! How many generations have passed by, I wonder! Old familiar names also appear brightly on the screen:
David Martinez, CXVII
Lino Faelnar, CXVII
Jed Penzar, CXVI
Herb Mantawe, CXVI
Dindo Generoso, CXVI
Diego Bonifacio, CXVI
Augusto Tolen Reyes, CXV
Edwin Camaya, CXV
Sonny Villapena, CXV
Harvey Fiji, CXV

Hey, is this a convention among descendants, we joke to ourselves!

Wasn't Lino of Las Pinas an elephant? But look at Lino CXVII. He is now a gorilla!
Jed of Butuan was a cougar, as far as we remember. Yet his great, great grandson is now also a gorilla! Sonny, the panther, well his great, great grandson is now also a gorilla, and a die-hard gorilla at that! It's only Lynn's great, great grandson, Augusto, who is able to retain his heritage by still being a gorilla after all these years! So amazing!

Then, all of a sudden, the lights are out! Just for a few seconds though perhaps. So don't panic! Just a little technical difficulty despite the advanced technology of the time!

And now, everybody is cheering gladly as it seems that the lights are on again. But
no sooner have they been on when they start blinking of and on sporadically to the annoyance of everyone. (Is this a discotheque, one jokes) Then, oh my God and for heaven's sake, the beasts appear to be aliveI They start glowering on us, they roar, they growl, they show their claws and fangs! What unfolds is so frightening that we all scamper in different directions for safety. But the beasts jump from their platforms and start running after us. (Like in Westworld, remember, when the robots in a resort got out of control?)

Fortunately for us, we are saved by the bell! A psychiatrist who had earlier put us to sleep must have just clapped his hands. For we all wake up from a trance. :) Now it's time to leave the museum, pop out the air castle and go back to our time, the present.

Epilogue:

There is a long task ahead of us. We have to remove the gorilla in us, the gorilla of over-acted nationalism, so as to protect the tiger, the lion, the leopard, the elephant, the jaguar, the panther, the black bear and the other animals, along of course, with the languages they speak.

Ernie C. Turla

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Page Updated Fri Oct 8, 2004 10:38pm EDT