BY DR. JOSE PALU-AY DACUDAO
1987 Constitution
The 1987 Philippine Constitution does not mandate for the development and adoption of a common national language based on…“one of the existing native languages”.
Again, as in the 1973 Constitution, Tagalog cannot claim as the only basis in the development thereof.
Apparently there has been a shift from the purely monolingual language ideology of the 1935 Constitution to a national language based on multiple languages ideology in the 1973 and 1987 Constitutions.
The National Language Commission was mandated to “initiate and sustain the use of Filipino as a medium of official communication and as language of instruction in the educational system”. However, thus far the preference for Tagalog over the other Philippine languages has been overwhelming.
International linguists all uniformly say that the present “Filipino” is a Tagalog dialect. Dialects are mutually intelligible versions of a language, differing slightly in grammar, pronunciation, or vocabulary.
“Filipino” is mutually intelligible with all other Tagalog dialects, and mutually unintelligible to all other Philippine languages. There has been no convincing result recognizing the non-Tagalog languages. (With the above explanation, of Filipino being a Tagalog dialect, I will henceforward refer to ‘Filipino’ as Tagalog.)
The provision that the auxiliary official languages are the regional languages (Hiligaynon, Bicolano, Cebuano, Kapampangan, Ilocano, etc.) and shall serve as an auxiliary media of instruction has not been satisfactorily implemented either. No government agency of the Philippines, at the time of this writing, has ever published a non-Tagalog Philippine language grammar book, much less taught it in schools. Ironically, anyone who is interested in learning a non-Tagalog Philippine language has to learn it from the grammar books of Christian missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant, and nongovernment organizations.
Even the Philippine Constitution in English has not been translated to any Philippine language other than Tagalog, although there is a mandate to do so.
Another sticky fundamental issue that needs to be openly discussed is the technical feasibility of creating a “Filipino” language that is to be “developed and enriched on the basis of existing Philippine and other languages.” Why is this a sticky issue?
We have to consider that this provision is based on the spirit of respecting the various Philippine languages and the ethnic peoples that speak them. Yet it is also linguistically impossible to develop a single language from all the Philippine languages while retaining each of the language’s unique identity, given the differences in each language’s grammar, syntax, vocabulary, and accent.
Moreover, such an artificial language would be a different language from the present Philippine languages, and imposing it on all Filipinos would be in effect imposing a foreign artificially created language on them. Such an imposition is contradictory to the spirit of respecting all the Philippine languages and the ethnic peoples that speak them.
In a real sense this provision is technically impossible to fulfill. What other country in the world has a provision such as this? None. (To be continued)/PN
