Celebrating the Language Month (2)

Celebrating the Language Month (2)

J. Colima Bajado

I was a Waray first, before I become a Tagalog, and English. That is, if I really became the last two. I bet my parents were trying to teach me how to properly enunciate Na-Nay and Ta-tay and were very proud every time I say it correctly by accident, as a toddler. My parents’ efforts were put in vain when I went to school. I was taught by my meticulous (sometimes frustrating) English teachers to say mada (mother) and fada (father). Also in school, I was taught to say marjærin (margarine).

            In addition, maybe because of the stiff Waray tongue, I always have this hard time in pronouncing English words correctly. I cannot forget the moment when I was defending my research paper back in college. Because my professor cannot find an off beam in my paper, he slayed my pronunciation instead. “Mr. Bajado, it is to determine (pronounced as di túrmin), not deter-men!” I repeated the word, but unfortunately, I again said it in the latter pronunciation.

We are sorry products of our inappropriate educational system, which is a further creation of our colonized minds. We always think that English is superior, and the imposed Tagalog language for that matter.  We forget and sometimes ashamed to use our mother tongues- Waray, Akeanon, Hiligaynon, Ilocano, etc.- the lingua franca of the drivers, janitors, farmers and the commoners. After the American regimen, Tagalog has been legalized as a national language and baptized as thus so called “Filipino”.

However, it has already been proven that this so called “Filipino” is nothing less than a colonizer of his own kind. As a response to the outcry of policy restructuring, Mother Tongue Based- Multi Lingual Education (MTB-MLE) has been passed. Some, especially people form Manila, say that MTB-MLE is a silly design because mathematical and scientific terminologies have no equivalent in some local languages. Partly it is true. But we need not to change these terms as it is a requirement in an absolute discipline. However, in the case of Waray, even our natives have already utilized their own arithmetic and scientific expressions and terms.

When the Spaniards footed in our islands, we already have our manner of counting. We have one to ten. Gatos for a hundred. Yukot for a thousand. Dumalam for millions. And we even have Buraburaan for a number impossible to count, perhaps trillions.

Besides, we have already an existing lexis for the shape of the moon. Gimata for New Moon. Kaudto for First Quarter.  Kadayaw for Full Moon, and Dudlumon for Last Quarter. They already have identified a considerable assortment of our flora and fauna. We also have our different directions of the wind: Kanawayan, Timog, Amihan and Habagat.

Waray has been my primary language. At home, we care less about the syntax, grammar, and other linguistic considerations because we understood what we were saying.  English will and cannot catch the nuances and expressions that is peculiar to our tastes. I can attest that some may be successful in their attempts to find the equivalent in English of the following words, but I am sure that those words will not suffice the cultural sense and taste of a speaker in Waray.  Consider these words: Maharathat, madagaang , masapara , nagtitilwaka, naghihimaruydoy.

I am also and still waiting for the day that during the celebration of the language month, the activities will be a Siday recital competition or Esmayling competition instead of the Balagtasan. And I hope in quiz bees, answers will be matters or peoples that have something to do with our heritage, culture and identity as Waraynons.

I will not be proud if you find grammatical, syntactical, psychological, political, lyrical, galonical, errors in this very article. But I will not be ashamed too, for it is a conclusive evidence that all those efforts in school (i.e. fines and other lucrative money-generating-business of the teacher), are all otiose in order to pursue English, and this so called “Filipino” for that matter, too.

As a final point, in relation to the celebration of the language month, I want to share these words of my literary mom and unwavering literary mentor, UP Professor Emeritus and multi-Palanca Award winning poet Merlie Alunan: “Our advocates have thought of all the ways to save our mother languages—legal and conventional, or radical and revolutionary. We may add to all their wise thoughts and recommendations the creative way: Tell our stories in the old tongue. Let them be told, or written in the languages we learned at the knees. Teach the young to dream, to speak, to sing in the language of the mother. Let the stories and the poems be in everyone’s tongue, the songs in everyone’s throat. Give them to every man, woman and child in every village of the beautiful islands of the Visayas. Thus will our languages live!”

Matinuhaon nga pagsalin-urog han aton Pinulongan!

[ Esmayling: A traditional discourse-in-verse of the Warays 

Video produced by CACO Calbayog. Copyright belongs to the producer.]

Published in Gahum Weekly, Vol 2, No. 19