PATHLESS TRAVELS

2015-05-242015-05-25

Languages and dialects

Note: This piece was first published as my column piece in the Nov. 15, 2002 issue of Northern Dispatch Weekly. It is being reposted here with very minor edits.

THIS IS A FOLLOW-UP on the piece I wrote last week in this column, about Ilocano and other local languages. I would have liked to use “Northern Philippine languages,” not as an off-the-cuff phrase but an exact taxonomic category established through linguistic studies.

IRAIA thoughts

Some might be surprised of this talk about “Philippine languages,” on the belief that there is only one Philippine language (which many consider to be Pilipino), or just a few languages that may include Ilocano and Cebuano, while all the others are “dialects.”

There is in fact among us a very persistent notion. That is, if a certain variety of speech is not widely accepted and used, then it is a “dialect,” while another speech variety that has become a national or regional standard is called a “language.” One doesn’t have to travel far to hear apologetic comments such as, “Pasensya dagiti saan a makaawat, mas nairwamak gamin nga agsao iti dialect mi nga Ilokano (or Kankanaey-Bontoc, or Kalinga, etc.).” Continue reading “Languages and dialects”

2014-10-282019-09-30

Cold analytical anger, because it takes all kinds

It took me seven years of activism more or less — from 1970 to 1977 — to control and channel my adolescent anger and arrogance.

A personal rant with political overtones

It was hard enough, especially for a teenage activist who saw up close the Marcosian state violence that claimed the lives of fellow street marchers and, under martial law, comrades in the underground. It was an extra challenge, for one who believed he had all the answers in his hands and had the right to lash out at anyone who questioned his political and ideological beliefs.

Let me get that right: This doesn’t mean that angry activism automatically leads to arrogance or blind, brash action. They don’t. This also didn’t mean that, prior to 1977, I was a seething, roiling cauldron of dysfunctional behavior that exploded and splattered onto other people, hurting them in random ways. I wasn’t. Continue reading “Cold analytical anger, because it takes all kinds”

2014-06-222015-10-08

“Kung ano ang bigkas, siyang baybay.”

When activists and progressive writers started to seriously and consistently write in Tagalog-Pilipino in the late 1960s and early 1970s, they were quickly confronted with the issue of how to spell Spanish or English words rendered in Tagalog. For example, should it be sitwasyon, situwasiyon, or situweysyon? Rebolusyon or ribulusiyon? Even how to spell native Tagalog words often became problematic: Lalake or lalaki? Babae or babai? Ibaksak or ibagsak?

IRAIA thoughts

As a rule-of-thumb solution, many of us adopted the rule, “Kung ano ang bigkas, siyang baybay.” How you say it is how you spell it. The premise was that there was only one correct way of pronouncing words in Tagalog-Pilipino. Thus, if we were faithful in spelling a written word the way it is spoken, then the assumption was that we should quickly agree on standard spelling.

But anyone who’s been around the Tagalog provinces or with friends from those provinces will easily realize that there are quite a number of dialect and accent variations in how words are pronounced. Following the bigkas-baybay rule, we should accept “Isuksok mo ang sanrok sa ringring” of Eastern Rizal and “Eka ko e tama, pero eka niya e mali” of Nueva Ecija as normative for written Tagalog. We often see roughly painted notices (“Bawal omehi ditu”) on walls, and make fun of them as examples of low literacy among street-educated Filipinos. But how do we know, really? Maybe those who wrote them are as educated as we are, but are merely following the bigkas-baybay rule. Continue reading ““Kung ano ang bigkas, siyang baybay.””