Wikang Pambansa
Where is it headed?
Published in the print and online edition of the Philippine Panorama of the Manila Bulletin.
http://2016.mb.com.ph/2016/08/14/wikang-pambansa/
THE POWER OF language in society is unparalleled. In a very vibrant democracy like the Philippines, language is both a weapon and a medicine, which can build or ruin careers, make or break anyone, divide or unite society.
This coming Buwan ng Wika, we ponder: Where is Filipino, the national language of the Philippines, now? What developments have transpired that have transformed Filipino? Where is it headed, and what will be in store for its speakers?
The way looks bright for Filipino, according to Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (KWF) chairman and National Artist for Literature Virgilio Almario, who believes that huge developments have been made in developing Filipino in mass media and schools, compared to the ’70s to ’80s, as well as 97 percent of Filipinos who either speak Filipino as a primary or secondary language.
“In TV programs today, in broadcast media, on TV and radio, Filipino is used. Before, seldom did you hear Filipino on TV, you’d only hear it during special programs,” Almario said.
“That started in the 1970s. Now, the tables have turned—you only hear English in special programs, and most of primetime hours are in Filipino. Before, schools also prohibited speaking in Tagalog or else you’d be fined. But that is highly an affront to the constitution, which provides that English and Filipino be the media of instruction, and not only one language,” he said.
Almario, author of the Diksyonaryong Filipino, believes that mainstreaming Filipino onto mass media is one of the few conscious efforts of Filipinos to promote and preserve the national language.
Engineering the National Language
It has been exactly 80 years since then President Manuel L. Quezon ratified the establishment of the Institute of National Language (INL), the predecessor of the current KWF, in 1936, with the goal of creating a national language for the Philippines.
It has also been almost 30 years since the ratification of the 1987 Constitution, with provisions for the development, preservation, and propagation of Filipino.
The establishment of the INL in the 1930s for the creation of a national language, and the ratification of the 1987 Constitution with set goals on Filipino, are examples of a linguistic doctrine and study known as Language Engineering.
“There’s a concept called ‘language planning’ or ‘language engineering’ in Linguistics, and there have been many languages of the world that have been developed because of this modern concept, like the Scandinavian languages, that used to be primarily German, but because of language planning that was headed by their governments, the Scandinavians managed to create and develop their own language from German,” said Almario.
Almario believes that policymaking for language, like what Former President Quezon did during the Commonwealth Era, is an effective and conscious effort to promote and propagate the Filipino language.
Currently, the KWF wants to further the effort of promoting and developing Filipino as the national language of the Philippines by harnessing words from different native dialects besides Tagalog, and incorporating them in Filipino.
“There is a need for conscious efforts, and this is what we at the KWF are doing now. We believe that if people want to include their ethnic language into the national language, then they should exert conscious efforts to do so, because, if not, they won’t be included in the tongues of Filipinos. Also, there have been few words that have gotten inside Filipino, and sometimes are only for kidding around, not words that can engage people into intellectual topics. But English permeates very easily, owing to how we have been bombarded with English since long ago. A ton of English words have already entered our tongues; and that’s how we unconsciously learned English, in contrast to the country’s native languages, which remain in their respective regions,” said Almario, a former dean of the University of the Philippines College of Arts and Letters.
Anti-Filipino sentiment, federalism, and other hurdles
There are groups of people, however, who are averse to the establishment of a national language. The new administration’s inclination toward a federalist government is feared by several linguists, including Almario himself, because it may promote regionalism and engender contempt toward the Filipino language. Finally, there is a problem on the part of schools and professionals in using Filipino as a medium of communication—these are the main problems facing the national language today.
According to Almario, there exist several anti-Filipino associations that reject notions of a national language and promote regional languages. “They are active in discrediting the efforts for a standardized national language, even in social media. But I’d just like to explain to them that Filipino is not anti-native language. In fact, Filipino wants to include other native languages. Secondly, there are efforts for the development of all native languages. We have translators creating new books, and novels, so all languages have equal footing with one another. We’ve also started creating orthographies of different languages so that there is harmony between languages—that if you are literate in one orthography, it’ll be easy for you to read other native languages—that is called ortograpiyang pambansa, where spelling is standardized,” he explained.
With the new administration in Malacañang, the KWF remains both optimistic about and cautious against the new head of state, an ethnic Visayan, and an adherent of federalism.
“I think President Duterte will be supportive of KWF’s efforts because the efforts are geared toward the inclusion of native languages, including the Visayan languages,” Almario said.
“I’m just wary about federalism because it may breed an attitude of contempt toward Filipino and promote regionalism. But so far, all the federalists, including Duterte himself, have not said anything about language, only about political and economic issues.”
The chairman added that another difficulty facing the national language is the reluctance of school administrations and professionals to use Filipino as a medium of instruction.
“For the professionals, they are reluctant to use Filipino because they have this consciousness that every technical term must be translated into Filipino. But there is no need to translate everything. They just need to explain, say, carbon dioxide and how it is different from oxygen. Why say sipnayan if you can say aritmetika? So that’s what needs to be done, for them to have faith in themselves,” he said.
“Another big hindrance is school administrators. They need to respect Filipino, to open their minds to teaching it. Many school administrators believe that Filipino is for the lowly, and that it’s only good in basic education.”
Intellectualization: the next step
About 97 percent of Filipinos, according Almario, understand Filipino. But a renewed effort is underway to focus on written Filipino, the next step toward intellectualizing Filipino. There has also been an increase of Filipino authors, in recent years, including millennials who have taken to writing as their avenue for creativity.
“So our campaign’s objectives are to study the different regional and ethnic languages, to review their lexicon, vocabularies, and introduce those words to Filipino bit by bit. That’s what I’ve been doing ever since I started working at KWF—I’ve searched for words that are not easily described by Tagalog and I use those words in my writing. For example, in English Biology there are ‘wild animals’ and ‘wild plants.’ In Filipino wild is mabangis, mailap, o ligaw, but you can’t say the same Tagalog words for a plant! You can say halamang gubat, but not mabangis na halaman. Now, I found out that in Cebuano and Ilonggo, there is such a word for both—ilahas. I’ve gotten the Ilonggo variation because it is more fluid to say. We’ve spread ilahas throughout; now we have poets and writers using ilahas. There’s even a book titled “Ilahas,” he shared.
But the effort doesn’t stop at adding words to Filipino alone. The KWF is also conducting efforts to include affixes, grammatical rules, including diacritic, and accent marks. The KWF’s second effort is creating a linguistic orthography.
There are, however, some difficulties encountered in mainstream and social media, where there is a lack in the proper usage of Filipino. “Social media and mainstream media do not make the effort of propagating the national language. In the former, English is the language spoken, if there is Filipino, the one used is colloquial, non-standard, characterized by contractions, and abbreviations. While there is nothing wrong with this, it becomes a problem when it becomes a habit,” said Almario.
According to Jonah Mary Mutuc, 22, a writer from Quezon City, technology and the advent of social media are the cause for the inclination of Filipinos toward English rather than their own national language. “Since Filipinos are now present in the global cyberspace, the Internet, they want to be understood by other nationalities as well, and what better language to use than the international language, English?” Mutuc said.
Mutuc also added that government websites must be in Filipino, more Filipino broadsheets should proliferate, and that Filipino courses must absolutely remain in the three stages of education.
“So, what can we, ordinary Filipinos, do to develop Filipino further? We must urge others to use Filipino properly, as we would, too, especially in speech; to discuss important topics other than gossip, like politics, science, philosophy, because the strength of a language lies in its capacity to be used in any situation or context. Most of all, never be ashamed to use your own language,” said Almario.
