National Language Month is the death of languages of the Philippines, 3

General Objective 6.

Teach one or two Philippine language electives in the Tagalog regions so that Tagalogs in general will learn to tolerate and respect their fellow Filipinos as brethren and peers, and not as inferior races and provincianos. (Tagalistas will probably be howling in protest at this but this is fairer in the end for all our peoples.)

There is no legal barrier to this program, and in fact our Constitution says that our regional languages should be auxiliary media of instruction. Unlike present “Filipino”, the definition of which is subject to dispute or the creation of which from all Philippine languages while retaining each component language’s uniqueness is linguistically impossible, our regional languages are clearly defined and have pre-dated the existence of the Philippines itself.

Regarding the present “Filipino” language itself, it is a dialect of Tagalog. It is mutually intelligible with all Tagalog dialects and mutually unintelligible with all non-Tagalog languages, and moreover, any Filipino who grows up learning only the “Filipino” language grows up into a Tagalog.

There is no law at all that mandates the teaching of Tagalog in Philippine schools or says that “Filippino” is Tagalog. Therefore from a certain point of view, what is being taught in Philippine schools as “Filipino” is illegal since it is in fact a Tagalog dialect, and nowhere in the Constitution does it say that Tagalog is the national language.

Furthermore, the creation of which from all Philippine languages while retaining each component language’s uniqueness is linguistically impossible, given the differences in grammar, syntax, idioms, accents, tonality of each separate language.

This might have been the intention of the delegates to the Philippine’s 1935 Con-Con perhaps because they believed it could have been possible, but they were wrong.

Human beings commit mistakes. It is now time to recognize that these delegates have made a mistake based on a wrong belief.

In any case, it is certain that the majority of them had no intention whatsoever of killing all the ethnolinguistic peoples of the Philippines except one. If they were alive now to ruminate on the way the “Filipino” language provision was used to demean and slowly kill off the ethnolinguistic peoples of the Philippines, they probably would be horrified.

Furthermore, the delegates to the Philippine’s 1935 Con-Con were also no doubt influenced by the peculiar nationalism of the 19th century, which equated a nation-state with one particular language. This started with Napoleonic France, which consciously supported the hegemony of the French language.

We now know that this policy, which is based on the idea of unity in uniformity or one nation – one language, causes great harm to the diversity of a country’s culture by lowering the social status of its constituent peoples who do not speak that language, turning them into second class citizens, and if left unchecked, exterminating their very identities.

In a few cases, the arrogant insistence of a State to legislate and impose a national language has resulted in civil strife (such as the Tamil-Sinhalese, the Pakistan-Bangladesh, Basque-Spanish, Corsican-French conflicts.)

In fact many countries that have turned Federal, after the 19th century age of language and Unitarian nationalism, have consciously adopted the idea of unity in diversity. Most Federal countries, and even many Unitarian countries today in fact recognize and use several official languages (for example, India has almost 20, Switzerland 4, Canada 2).

The historical bulwark of Federalism, the USA, does not recognize a national language in the Federal level at all. When do we, peoples of the Philippines, adopt such liberating policies?

When do we leave behind the oppressively centralizing policies of the 19th and early 20th century, and stride forth in liberty toward the 21st century?

In Asia itself, China was the first nation-state to legislate a so-called national language (Mandarin) and the Philippines, following the trend of the times, unfortunately followed suit.

The present-day Chinese are now trying to correct this mistake by recognizing and using their regional languages in their traditional regions. The Philippines has not, and it is time that we do so now. Before our diverse peoples die out, or before outright conflict ensues from awakened minority peoples justly trying to save themselves from extinction./PN