‘Tagalog is bullshity’…revisited

RECENT developments make it de rigour to revisit this column i.e.

The Commission on Higher Education (CHED), the Philippine government agency supervising colleges, universities and other institutions of higher learning, has decided to remove the study of the Filipino language in the General Education Curriculum.

The CHED made this effective removal through its Memorandum Order No. 20, series of 2013 (CMO 20-2013), and this MO was further upheld by the Supreme Court.

Indeed, Secretary of Foreign Affairs, ambassador to the United Nations and journalist Teddy Boy Locsin put it so appropriately, “Tagalog is bullshitty” and moi could not agree more.

Let me add some more. Since grade school we all have been force-fed this language as our national language when it is only spoken by people living in Manila and nearby provinces. Ask anybody if he enjoyed his Pilipino subjects; nobody took that subject seriously. We all enrolled in that subject because it is a required subject and unless you have plans to be the next Francisco Balagtas, Pilipino as a required subject is completely useless.

Excerpts from a July 26 article on GetRealPhilippines.com by benignO…

Tagalog Triumphalism has STUNTED Philippine Development

One of the worst legacies left by the Yellowtards (Filipinos rabidly loyal to the cult of the Aquinos and who now “lead” the Philippine Opposition) is a blanket assurance that Filipinos are best off speaking Tagalog. This assurance that all will be well speaking in a language that they are comfy with came to the detriment of a once renowned mastery of the English language that Filipinos of post-Liberation yore were once proud of.

Under the Yellowtard era, which spanned much of the 1980s through to 2016 when the second Aquino presidency ended, Tagalog saw a Renaissance of sorts, thanks to broadcast media propagating jingoistic notions that speaking Tagalog is “cool” and “patriotic”. This was, not surprisingly, widely-embraced. Mastery of the English language was, even then, still within the domain of tiny private-school educated elite. As such it was easy to pitch Tagalog Triumphalism using the blessed-poor-versus-evil-rich narrative that resonates strongly with the Philippines’ predominantly Roman Catholic masses.

Tagalog is for losers who are severely challenged in the mastery of proper English and I do mean the “Queen’s English”, not the mutilated version staple to most disc jockeys on FM stations.

As a defence mechanism and trying to be clever, the favorite line is “English is just a language and not a gauge or standard for one’s intelligence.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. To be able to achieve mastery of proper English, one needs a considerable amount of intelligence and discipline.

To be able to speak, write and comprehend proper English one needs to study it, and studying means you must be able to read and write. To be able to just read and comprehend a fair amount of intelligence is required; more so writing in proper English.

So yes, mastery of proper English is a gauge of one’s intelligence.

To be able to speak Tagalog does not really require some intelligence. Just watch “Eat Bulaga” for about a week and by Sunday you will be able to speak Tagalog like a natural-born tambay in Cubao.

More excerpts from Tagalog Triumphalism has STUNTED Philippine Development:

Indeed, in the plots of many Tagalog movies, the protagonists are often impoverished characters and the villains, English-speaking rich people. The idea that Tagalog is the language of the good but “oppressed” and English is the language of the “oppressors” resonates well with that all-too-familiar victim mentality that pervades Philippine society. This victim mentality characterises not just Tagalog movies but also Philippine politics itself where skilful pandering to this narrative is practically a template for winning votes.

The facts, however, are more confronting and unpopular. The English language and any language native to societies with strong and historic traditions of scientific and technological achievement is what open doors to prosperity. This describes everything Philippine society isn’t. Filipinos lack an inherent ability to create, accumulate, and deploy capital at scales needed to keep pace with the development and progress of the world’s most advanced and most powerful societies. Underpinning such a capability is scientific and technological prowess — things Filipinos evidently lack, too.

This character is mirrored in Filipinos’ domestic lingua franca, Tagalog. Tagalog is inadequate both in breadth and depth of vocabulary to articulate science and technology. There is little such body of work documented in Tagalog because its native speakers are not known as originators and developers of such forms of knowledge. As a result, Tagalog has never been under any pressure to evolve to meet the needs of a strong scientific and technological tradition.

Seen under that light, a continued focus on a language that essentially deprives an entire people of direct access to knowledge documented and articulated in the languages of winners is an absolute atrocity at a national scale. A policy of allocating an amount of resources to the propagation of a language that does not return commensurately to that investment is an abject waste. It is time Filipinos put a stop to that ongoing waste and focus what they have on an important enabler of prosperity and advancement. The English language empowers those who master it. Filipinos need to wake up to that reality and make decisions on how to invest their finite public education resources on the basis of that reality.

Are you not curious why we have a proliferation of Korean students in the country, particularly “I Am Iloilo City”? And it’s not because of La Paz batchoy and the Esplanade?

And did you not notice the mushrooming of schools teaching Koreans the English language?

The Koreans, a far more progressive and advanced nation economically than these islands, have long realized the fact that to make it anywhere in this world the mastery of the English language is de rigour.

In the meantime the idiots here continue to mask their deficiency of the English language by speaking in “Taglish.” They think they’re cool; they’re not! They sound like incoherent blabbering idiots. (brotherlouie16@gmail.com/PN)