Language – PATHLESS TRAVELS

2024-02-202024-02-26

Do bilingual Filipinos enjoy an advantage?

Cordillera Day 2004 with "Tarzan" (Jim Bakker) and Sr. Genny

This blog piece grew from my comment on a humorous post of an FB friend about the bilingualism that comes so naturally to young children growing up in bilingual environments. The humor arose from a meme triggered by a viral news piece, about Princess Charlotte of Wales speaking two languages at age two—to which someone retorted that this was usual among immigrant children but didn’t hug the headlines because they were poor (unlike children of famous royalty).

2023-04-182023-04-18

More to follow, A.F.

In a deep and profound sense, it was fire (or more precisely, A.F., together with language) signaled the end of the old world as H. erectus knew it.

THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS. Before Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), or some 800,000 years ago probably, our human ancestors Homo erectus discovered how to wrest fire from burning bushes, and how to control and use this terrifying force of nature. Eventually, they learned how to artificially create fire. We now simply call it “fire”, but to be exact, it should be called Artificial Fire, or A.F.

Thus with A.F. did H. erectus people broaden their food sources, expand those parts of the brain that created culture and language, spread to all parts of the world, and thrive in all ecosystems. A.F. paved the way for the next waves of Homo to dominate the living world, and build civilizations that would transform what it meant to exist as humanity.

2019-02-282019-04-21

A linguistic philosophy for intellectualized Tagalog

IRAIA thoughts

After many years of writing alternately in Tagalog and English, I noticed that I am now more at ease in English, although I can still write fluently in Tagalog. On self-reflection, I realized the reason for my strong English bias is that I want to reach an intellectualized audience even if they too are Filipinos like me. The unspoken premise is that Tagalog is much less intellectualized than English, and so it has become more precise, concise, and easier for me to write intellectually in English rather than in Tagalog. Continue reading “A linguistic philosophy for intellectualized Tagalog”