BY DR. JOSE PALU-AY DACUDAO
TODAY I am due to operate on yet another charity patient in Butuan Medical Center, the public hospital run by the Butuan City government. He was hit on the head by a rock two weeks ago, and incurred an open depressed fracture that is beginning to get infected.
Scared of financial expenses, the family delayed seeking medical attention, and finally ended up in a public hospital. This is a familiar story everywhere in the Philippines.
What is their problem? MONEY.
Some do not pay my professional fees at all. Given their impoverished situation, I do not force the PF issue. I operate anyway lest a patient lose his life, and I am of the school of thought that believes that emergency cases should be operated on whether or not the patient can afford to pay.
Some of my patients have actually given me anything from fruits, to crabs and chickens. In effect some may believe that they are paying for my services with commodities, a characteristic of barter trade. Perhaps some regard these commodities not as actual payment but as gifts.
If patients pay, they usually pay with MONEY.
What are the types of money?
Commodity money contains material whose value is about equal to the value assigned to it. For example, the value of a piece of coin is approximately equal to the value of the gold contained in it.
Credit money is paper backed by promises of a government or a bank, to pay an equivalent value in the standard monetary metal. For example, the bearer of the money could go to the issuing bank and claim gold bullion with an equivalent value to that assigned to the paper money.
FIAT money has a value that is fixed merely by government edict, and is not redeemable in any other currency or commodity. Since 1971, when the USA severed it link to the gold standard, the world has mostly run on fiat money.
Fiat money then is intrinsically of little or no value at all. Fiat money is composed of intrinsically cheap paper or metals, assigned a higher value by the government.
Get a 100 peso bill from your wallet and hold it in your hand. Go on and do it.
What is it? It is just paper. There is not much difference between it and say a 20 peso bill or a 1000 peso bill, or any other fancy piece of paper, except for the fact that the Philippine government says it is worth 100 pesos.
Why am I going to all this trouble talking about the different types of money when our column should be talking about preserving dying Philippine languages and Federalism?
Take note of the sentence above: Fiat money is composed of intrinsically cheap paper or metals, assigned a higher value by the government.
Therefore, it HAS a higher value in the eyes of the citizens under that government. Though intrinsically cheap or worthless, it assumes a much higher value than its intrinsic worth. The government has that much power!
If the above elaboration is true for fiat money, it is also true for LANGUAGE.
When a government designates a particular language as the NATIONAL or OFFICIAL language of a country that language automatically assumes a value higher than what it was worth before the official designation. That language assumes a majority social status and with this so does the ethnic people that speaks it.
What happens then?
The other languages and ethnolinguistic peoples of the country automatically assume a minority social status, they become second class citizens, and as history has showed time and time again they will be driven to extinction if they do not or cannot resist the transforming influences of the national or official language of the government.
Today, one or two languages of the world die out WEEKLY, because of selfish and colonial language policies of governments all over the world that advocate Unity in Uniformity or one nation – one language ideologies.
Among the guiltiest government of the world is the Manila-based Philippine Government whose colonial policies have turned the whole Philippines into an imperial playground and milking cow.
Not content with draining our taxes into its coffers, it also wants the souls of our cultures. The soul of an ethnic people and culture is its language(s). The National Language policy of Imperial Manila has already killed off at least 3 Philippine languages since World War II, and is fast killing even the bigger ones.
The solution?
Officially recognize all the Philippine languages in their traditional areas, starting by teaching them in schools. English stays as the leveling tongue of the Philippines, and as an economically indispensable language (for international science and commerce).
Teach one or two Philippine languages outside their traditional areas, including in the Tagalog regions, in order to foster true respect and understanding between Philippine ethnolinguistic peoples./PN
