Author’s note: This was first published on 18 May 2003 under my Pathless Travels column published by Northern Dispatch (Nordis) Weekly. I’m reposting it here in three parts, with some revisions to update my own understanding of the issue, and to make it more timely. This is Part 3. Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
Again, let me wonder aloud: Why is it that despite the evidence to the contrary, the twin myths of a “Pinoy summer” and a “Pinoy rainy season” persist in the public mind?
In the same light, one wonders about the stubborn persistence of those other undying myths, about Filipinos for example having descended from “three waves of migration” — you know, the fantastic but now-debunked story about Indonesian A and B, then Malay, that many of us still believe as true.
Or how about the Code of Kalantiaw, which has been shown to be a hoax? Let’s mention too the story of the Ten Datus of Borneo, which is a folk legend that might have some historical basis but with no hard evidence so far. Or the myth that there is only one Philippine language, or five or eight at most, while the others are merely “dialects.” Continue reading “A myth called Pinoy summer (3)”