Let's set the harina

We are a cruel society, especially here in the Philippines. And in the last decade, the Internet had made it even more convenient for us to display our nastiness.

A recent victim of Internet bashing was Angelica Jones, who made a rather shallow dent in showbiz in the mid-‘90s by hogging tabloid headlines for her now-immortalized controversial statement: “I am not a GR!”

Of course, she meant GRO — short for guest relation officer. But the letter O being round in shape must have rolled off some place and she was unable to find it when she needed it during a Senate hearing about some now inconsequential issue. (Was it about the business of escort service?)

Today, Angelica serves as board member in Laguna and has an Honorable before her name. One of her projects requires her to spearhead the gathering of plastic bottles to be recycled for public use. In her Twitter account, she asked everyone to please donate plastic “battles.”

There were other misspelled words that could make even Melanie Marquez flee in terror. (By the way, whatever happened to the book she was planning to put together — a compilation of her grammatical boo-boos that had been labeled as Melanisms?) In TV5’s Paparazzi the other Sunday, however, Angelica disowned the Twitter account iamangelicajones that had already disappeared from the Internet.

Was it a bad joke that somebody played on her? Too bad for Angelica, it may take a long time for her to live down her “I am not a GR” tag. In her every interview, viewers — sadly — listen and sit up not necessarily to absorb the context of what she is saying, but to catch possible grammatical monstrosities that could be posted and made fun of on the Internet.

Such is the fate of Angelica Jones.

 I don’t know why we have to pick on her when she never claimed to have a doctorate degree in English. But surely she is not exactly faultless and should be told that perhaps she should start communicating in a language that she is familiar with — and that is clearly Filipino. That may even score her points for being nationalistic. But there’s still the matter of substance. That’s not something you learn overnight even if you sign up with John Robert Powers.

However, there is still something terribly wrong with us with the way we poke fun at somebody like Angelica who never had pretensions of being scholarly. Of course, there had been attempts from her end to give interviews in English that turned out to be bigger catastrophes than some of the major calamities to have hit this country in the last half century.

But really, laugh all you want, but the fact remains that she is addressed as Honorable and has access to the coffers of her province. She has power.

At the same time, no one seems to have bothered to point out the verbal mistakes of broadcasters who are supposed to teach us what is correct. Don’t we always believe what we read in the papers? Or in the case of those news reporters — what we hear and see on television?

These days I dread it every time the price of wheat goes up. No, not just because I have to pay more for my favorite bread and cakes. I cringe with every fluctuation of wheat prices because I know that in the primetime newscast I will be hearing those TV reporters mispronounce for the nth time the word harina, which is supposed to be said with a silent H.

Harina is Spanish for wheat, but we borrowed it and had long been using it as part of our every day kitchen language. Like any Castilian word, you don’t pronounce the H. The same rule applies to names: Hernando, Hernandez, Herrera, etc.

Oh how I die every time our voice-over announcer in Startalk says Mark Herras, but with an audible H in the actor’s last name. But I am just a talent in the show and my job doesn’t include supervising the voicing of our video clips. Heaven (now you say the H there) knows how many times I had pointed that out — on the air even — except that no one listens.

The few who do reason out that we are in the Philippines and that is acceptable here. But why accept it when it is wrong? When are we correcting such mistake? I am even going to just let pass the way Filipinos say 7 as shete instead of syete. That and other Hispanic words had been so deeply incorporated into our language it may be difficult to undo the way we say these in conversations. (But omitting the H sound when we utter Spanish words can still be remedied!)

Even harder to change now is how most of us have gotten accustomed to saying Arellano the wrong way. The way you are supposed to pronounce that is “Areyano” — you know, like the fastfood chicken brand El Pollo Loco. Pollo is Spanish for chicken and the correct way of saying it is poyo.

Unfortunately, most people are wary to point out mistakes in pronunciation because they’ll be branded either maarte or a braggart. And then we don’t want to offend.

I used to get embarrassed when others would correct my grammatical errors. But I am far from perfect and the only way for me to realize my lapses is for somebody else to tell me. I’d be red-faced initially, but I’d be grateful in time because those are lessons in grammar you’ll never forget.

It’s sad that no one has bothered to call the attention of news reporters today because — no thanks to them — we will soon be seeing and hearing another generation that doesn’t know any better.

And it’s not only every day Spanish words that they mangle. Who among the news reporters are aware that southern is not pronounced sawdern, but s -th rn.

If ignorance reigns among the supposedly knowledgeable people from news, what do you expect from film and TV’s pretty faces? They endorse the Belo Medical Group and tell viewers to “visit the Belo Greenhills clinic in Connecticut,” but with an audible c in the middle. You actually say “ka net’ i kat.”

Among the glamorous set, Kris Aquino is one of the very few who can say Roosevelt correctly — “ro’z   v lt’.” An ABS-CBN writer told me years back that she once pointed that out to her staff.

So next time you find yourself headed toward the direction of Muñoz in Quezon City, maybe you can take the jeep and tell the driver: “Mama, bayad po — sa ‘ro’z   v lt’” lang.”

Of course, there’s a chance your co-passengers will gang up on you and beat you up. That’s one risk you have to take.

Too bad there is no easy way to martyrdom.

Oh, but you’ll end up the hero and inspiration of all call center agents nationwide.