I MET through the internet individuals who are concerned about how
Tagalog or the use of Tagalog badly affects other regional languages and
dialects. They regard Tagalog as an apocalyptic blaze that threatens to
engulf other Philippine languages and dialects. They take this issue as
writing on the wall.
I know of some peope who even go a step farther, suggesting that Tagalog should be boycotted outside of its own turf, the Katagalugan territory or the Tagalog region.
They are not taking this linguistic issue lying down, especially with the internet—one of the most potent tools activists, writers or old fools have nowadays—at their disposal. As endemic as it is in this age, sooner or later, online friends and acquaintances will surely be requested of their John Hancocks to support the noble campaigns and protests. (I might have already received a couple or so of these signature solicitations in the recent past, although I must have missed them as I methodically get rid of most of my emails without even verifying who their senders are. Every email is a spam whenever I am in a bad mood.) Or you will see them at their blogs, websites and e-groups, in all formats, preaching their gospels. Alleluia! You won't believe it, but some of them are already around!
They have reason for doing that and for believing what they believe in. And being a Kapampangan, I for one share their concerns.
These individuals believe that Tagalog is encroaching on other regions and endangering the other native languages and dialects. This is a sad and bitter fact that we all know of. This fact becomes even sadder and bitterer to me because my language, Kapampangan (which my townsfolk adoringly call Amanung Siswan), is in the most vulnerable position as it is separated from Tagalog by just a highway, a bridge, and a rice field, leaving it with no fortified defense at all. At least the other regions have distance, bodies of water, or mountains for their shield. Pangasinan and the Ilocandia, for instance, have Pampanga as their fence against Tagalog. The Ilonggos and Cebuanos have hundreds of islands and seas insulating them from Tagalog. That is why the bitterest opposition against Tagalog must come from Pampanga, from Kapampangans like me. But why are not Kapampangans voicing their concerns about the situation in the north where the Ilokanos are clandestinely inching their way into some Kapampangan bailiwicks like Tarlac?
Whoa! Hold your horses! By the jumping Jesus, put down your swords and keep your cool!
I iterate I am a Kapampangan, and a true-blue one at that, but I don't ever claim I have bitterness whatsoever towards Tagalog. As far as I know Tagalog has done nothing wrong to me. If there is anything I have towards Tagalog, it is mercy. Yes, mercy!
I have always been reminding my friends that a good Kapampangan is a good Filipino: Ing metung a mayap a Kapampangan metung yang mayap a Pilipinu. This same dictum is what I religiously follow in my dealings with everything that is Filipino or whatever concerns what the world now knows as the Philippines. This is the reason why I personally don't see anything Filipino about opposing Tagalog, much less boycotting it or getting envious of its putative developments and successes as a privileged language, or a "killer language" as what some linguists dub it. In a fragmented society like the Philippines we need one language that will unite us, and it just so happens that Tagalog is the one that was culled. It could have been Kapampangan or any of the other local languages or dialects.
But then, as Filipinos or citizens of what the world now knows as the Philippines, what do we do to support and preserve Tagalog? What do we really know about Tagalog, its condition, and its imminent fate?
In linguistic analysis and in reality, Tagalog is in no bed of roses. It is in no better condition than that of the other languages or dialects still existing or languishing in our country. It needs our action and support (or activism) as much as the other languages and dialects in our country do. Tagalog will actually be no more in a short period of time. This is inevitable. It is fast disappearing and therefore needs saving as well. The Tagalog that we have now is not the Tagalog that our neighbors (or ancestors, if you will) had and spoke. It is but the remains of what Tagalog used to be. The Tagalog that we know now is but a Creole language—the hybrid of what once was Classic Tagalog (Katutubung Tagalog or Sinaunang Wika), Spanish, and English. Like all of our other regional languages and dialects, the Tagalog that is now with us is a Frankenstein creature—without its known parents, without a definite identity, abandoned in the cold and dark by its own maker.
Tagalog is in much graver danger of getting extinct. It is in fact paying the heavy price of being our country's national language. Its own location is where its impending doom lurks because the National Capital Region (NCR), the torque of its influence, is the main port of entry of all new foreign ideas, both technological and political, especially those from the United States and other English speaking nations that are NCR's biggest economic partners. This means that any linguistic intrusion that happens in the Philippines is first felt in the NCR, and Tagalog is the very first among our indigenous languages that is heavily affected.
Our opposition (in whatever degree, of whatever nature) against Tagalog will not do any good for our global culture. It will rather expedite Tagalog's disappearance and will consequently erode our national heritage, of which the language is an essential part as the hand is to the human body. Going against Tagalog is going against our own kind.
Is it really the fault of Tagalog that our other local languages and dialects, for unknown reasons, lack strength and innate defense before and against other languages? The strength of a language depends on the strength of the culture that gave birth to it. But then again, the strength of a culture is in the education and determination of its people to preserve it. Whose fault is it then?
One should keep one's language in its purest possible form while one learns other foreign languages. One has to keep one's culture and one's own language where nobody can touch them. In a diglossic society such as our country, that is a must. In a multi-cultural archipelago like ours, that is everyone's responsibility.
It is a mutiny of sorts to not recognize and preserve Tagalog. As law-abiding citizens, we need to support our Constitution that stipulates that we use and respect our national language that, although to the frustration and indignation of many, happens to be Tagalog. What are we grossing out and fretting about for over the legal enshrinement of Tagalog as our national language, while we pathetically ignore the fact that English is given more privilege and prestige by our very own Constitution?
Tagalog is nothing more but a victim like Kapampangan and other indigenous languages and dialects. The real "killer languages" in our country are Spanish and English. Combined they roughly comprise about half of each existing regional language or dialect. It is even surprising that no one has/had the initiative and courage to cleanse our languages and dialects of the "killer languages" and save ours from "linguistic cannibalism and murder." Our languages are devoured alive, from their skins to their marrows, by Spanish and English, both colonial languages that thrive in our country because of our support or perhaps ignorance. We have harbored them.
As a citizen of what the world now knows as the Philippines, I always remind myself to avoid borrowing from Spanish and English when I write or talk in Kapampangan. What and where one borrows reflect who one is, what one stands for, and of what one's spirit and mind are molded or made. I am from the place that the world now knows as the Philippines, and if I need to borrow, I do so from my brother or my next-door neighbor, not from total strangers, much less from intruders who forcibly break into my own house. Well, I will borrow a scoop of rice from my brother or neighbor, not from someone who don't even know how to cultivate it.
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