ALFRED A. YUSON WRITES FEATURE ON ENGLISH

The Business Mirror

Written by PLANET ENGLISH / Alfred A. Yuson

MONDAY, 16 MARCH 2009

English, Our Beloved

EILEEN TABIOS, an Ilocana immigrant who now tends a vineyard in Napa

Valley when she's not being an indefatigable poet, editor and publisher,

authored a poetry collection a few years ago titled I Take Thee, English,

For My Beloved.

The cover had her in a bridal gown embellished in that old-trad Pinoy

fashion, with peso bills slipped into its folds by well-wishing wedding

guests. We can easily imagine her having the first dance with a language

not our own, but one that has long been made (and romanced) into our own.

As with all the so-called Fil-Am poets and writers, the favored weapon of

combat in that highly competitive arena is English. These first- and

second-generation writers who still trace their roots, themes, concerns

and imagistic motifs back to the motherland are now legion, and

increasingly successful, staking claims to authorship or pages in

prestigious literary journals, contest prizes and fellowships at various

workshops in the US and Europe.

Together with other expatriate Filipino writers (in London, Paris,

Holland, South Africa, Australia and Singapore among the global turfs our

countrymen inhabit), they provide a great good challenge for all homegrown

and/or still home-based Pinoy poets and writers in English. They, too, are

legion.

In the mid-1970s, when the language debate seemed to start favoring the

native tongue by way of nationalist inclination, the well-humored alarum

was raised by Tagalistas in Manila: The death knell was sounding for all

those who still wrote in English.

As it came to pass, however, only imagined was the imminence of a complete

takeover by Filipino, the language that every other Pinoy still contends

is Tagalog.

Of course, Visayans would have none of it, at least as far as it should

issue from their pens. It has been the movies and electronic media that

are uniting most Filipinos from all over the archipelago in exercising a

Tagalog-based patois that ranges from the classical, in terms of

vocabulary and syntax (as is familiar to speakers in Bulacan, Laguna and

Quezon provinces), to the appropriative (of foreign terms and phrases),

which has always been the metier in urban centers, specifically Metro

Manila.

But the Bisaya still speaks and writes mostly in Bisaya, the Ilonggos in

Ilonggo, the Ilocanos in Iluko, and so forth. Or they write, literarily,

or at least communicate on paper (thence the computer) in what has been

the de-facto lingua franca that still finds a common denominator among a

great number of Filipinos.

As an itinerant teener in the 1960s, I sought adventure in the

Cordilleras, and noted how the highland natives all spoke correct if

simple English, but couldn't communicate much in Tagalog. It was the same

in the deep South. Actually, just getting past the Tagalog region meant

that one heard more of Pampango or Bicolano, and had to communicate in

sprinklings of English and the then a-borning Filipino, then called

Pilipino.

In the last few decades, Filipino has gained more of a foothold all over,

albeit Cebuanos still prefer to sing the national anthem in their own

mother tongue. It is still English that is the pacifier and leveler, so to

speak, when it comes to business, academic and legal communication, let

alone extended discourse.

Ditto in the literary field. While more and more books are coming out in

Filipino, especially in children's literature, the young poet in Zamboanga

or Davao, Batanes or Zambales, would still tend to apply his craft in

English, simply because he has not been trained as sufficiently in

Filipino as the poet from Lukban or Kawit or Malolos.

English-language training has itself fallen into disrepute, true, yet the

young reader can still avail himself of more publications in the

now-acknowledged global language, whether he confines himself to a modest

school library or pays for an hour at an Internet cafe.

And so the love affair with English as we know it continues for Filipinos..

The adopted foreign language may be burlesqued a la Erap, and jokes spun

from declasse malaprops that substitute "chamberlain" for "chandelier." It

may feature Pinoy neologisms like "aggrupation" or "Filipinisms" such as

"For a while" as uttered on the phone by secretaries before they give you

the boss.

But not only is it here to overstay. As the poet-academic Gemino H. Abad,

University of the Philippines (UP) professor emeritus, has famously

stated, "We have colonized the language; English is ours."

There is a parallel development worldwide. In the mid-1990s, a

British-Chinese publisher in London came out with a literary anthology of

works by Commonwealth writers, giving it the title The Empire Strikes

Back. Indeed, the likes of Salman Rushdie, V.S. Naipaul, Michael Ondaatje

and Kazuo Ishiguro spearhead the takeover of bestsellers' lists by writers

who write in a second language.

The British novelist often goes and stays abroad to refresh his spirit and

material, perchance his own use of language. Cesar Ruiz Aquino of

Dumaguete City once postulated that while Philippine literature in English

was a dynamic affair, English literature in the Philippines was an

entirely different matter, principally having to do with Timothy Mo's

taking up residence in Cebu City. The Sino-Brit novelist wrote Brownout on

Breadfruit Boulevard, with Cebu for its setting.

Aquino might have also cited James Hamilton Patterson, who lived for a

time on an island off Marinduque and produced a wondrous book about it

(Playing With Water), before he took up residence in Mandaluyong. James

Fenton wrote The Snap Revolution for Granta literary magazine when his

extended stay in Manila coincided with the Edsa People Power phenomenon.

Maybe these gentlemen know something other than that English is a crazy

language, as Internet posters continue to pass on. Maybe they're

enraptured by the way we've taken to English as our beloved, or how our

movie stars have taken English apart, the way a bombshell once declared:

"It's a crazy planets! [sic]"

*****

(The Filipino's superior ability to communicate in English, the only truly

international language, is recognized worldwide. British life insurer Pru

Life UK believes that this is the Filipino's competitive advantage, and is

committed to enhancing and nurturing this valuable skill through this

campaign, with the help of the best writers and experts in the language.

Promoting good English is our unique way of caring for the future of our

fellow Filipinos.)