Taglish is not the enemy
October 30, 2006 | 12:00am
A new anthology of plays has just been published by the University of the Philippines Press. Edited by playwright and Palanca Hall of Famer Rene Villanueva and performance poet Vim Nadera for the UP Institute of Creative Writing, Ang Aklat Likhaan ng Dula 1997-2003: Kapangahasan bilang Kaligtasan is the ICW’s second collection of recent and outstanding Filipino plays. Both established and new playwrights are represented in the book, including Teo Antonio, Nicolas Pichay, Chris Martinez, Jun Lana, and Allan Lopez.
The book’s title – which translates to "Daring as Deliverance" – hints at a crisis in Philippine drama: its slide into obscurity these past few decades, beset by dwindling audiences, rising production costs, and the competition from all sorts of alternative media for the Filipino’s attention and entertainment peso.
When I began writing plays for the stage in the 1970s, Philippine theater – particularly theater in Filipino – was undergoing a welcome resurgence; the Philippine Educational Theater Association was at the peak of its powers, the Cultural Center of the Philippines was showcasing the best of world and local drama through Teatro Pilipino and Bulwagang Gantimpala, and a new generation of playwrights was emerging, including Bienvenido Noriega, Rene Villanueva, Tony Perez, Bonifacio Ilagan, Malou Jacob, Edgardo Maranan, Reuel Aguila, and Isagani Cruz. School-based theater was also very much alive in such places as UP, UST, Ateneo, and St. Paul’s College.
It felt good to be writing plays, not only because of the prestige that went with winning a Palanca or CCP Award – how hungry we were for these distinctions in those days! – but also because we could expect our work to be produced almost as soon as they were written, such was the demand for new material and the willingness and ability of various theater groups to stage them, anywhere from the plush Little Theater of the CCP to a flyblown corner of Sta. Mesa Market.
As I’ve often remarked, playwriting can be the most taxing of the literary arts because of the many levels of anxiety the playwright has to endure: the rush to finish the play, the search for its producer and the wait for its production, and the high (or the crushing letdown) of watching its performance.
This new anthology revives those anxieties, as well as the hopes that come with them for the revival of Philippine theater itself, pinning those hopes on the audacity of these new playwrights. (That audacity can be extremely funny or extremely disturbing, as recent plays by Chris Martinez and Allan Lopez have shown.)
The book is available at Aeon Books on Katipunan, Popular Bookstore on T. Morato, Solidaridad, Powerbooks, National Book Store, Bound Bookstore, Fully Booked, and the University of the Philippines Press bookstores in UP Diliman, Baguio, Iloilo, and Davao.
I’ve been having interesting exchanges with some readers following my recent piece on language issues, where I argued against the growing mode of thinking that English can only or best be promoted in this country by eschewing Filipino and Taglish. Taglish in particular seems like an easy target, as it appears to mangle both English and Filipino, impairing the learning of both languages and producing masters of neither language.
I don’t know if the linguistic evidence will bear that out; I’m inclined to believe that, like many seemingly obvious things, it’s actually false, and I’d be glad to hear from serious scholars what the truth of the matter is, and how a language is really learned and mastered. (I’m asking for academic proof, not for more opinions probably just as faulty as mine.)
A reader named Peter observed that "In all the countries where English was used to conquer, there has always been some resultant form of mish-mashed English that results, and we know this as pidgin English. The Bahamas has it, the Philippines has Taglish, Puerto Rico has Nuyorican. And I’ve noticed that Vietnamese English speakers in America also use some form of Viet-English combination. How about the French Canadian spoken in Quebec, which the mainland French scoffs at when they hear it? And pity the fool who tries to interpret French Haitian. I am sure there are other derivations such as Dutch-Indo, Viet-Chinese, etc. But Taglish should not be used as an excuse for the lack of English speaking in the Philippines. Remember, it is the media that the public mimics, and we are so guilty of it."
As I wrote Peter in response, he was right about these spin-offs of English; they’re inevitable, and they’re how languages grow. Old English itself, or Anglo-Saxon, began as a form of German in the 5th century, and then took in a massive dose of French (and its Latin pedigree) after the Norman invasion of 1066. You can imagine the horror of both Anglo-Saxon and French purists, if there were any, at the emergence of this hybrid language in the markets and the military camps. And what would it have been called – "Franglish"? (Many modern Frenchmen deplore and yet can’t help speaking what in the ’60s became Franglais.)
That’s how I see Taglish; as a language or a variety of it, it’s objectively neither good nor bad, neither better nor worse – it just is, and will be. And it is, because it’s useful and often easier on the tongue and on the mind. Some people make fun of it by trotting out the oft-quoted "Let’s make tusok-tusok the fishballs," but that’s just as ridiculous and pointless an example as the old salumbola and salumpuwit straw dummies that anti-Filipinists have used to malign the language. In other words, whom do you know really speaks that way? Most of us – yes, including many who might otherwise compose their papers and messages in letter-perfect English – will more likely say, "Hindi ako maka-relate sa topic ng lecture niya" or "Paki-fax na lang ng estimate mo sa akin bukas."
I dare anyone to tell me those same things in unadulterated Filipino (whatever that means; as far as I’m concerned, Filipino is already, necessarily, and wonderfully enriched by its borrowings).
Can I say these things in "pure" English? Sure: "I can’t relate to his lecture topic" and "Please fax me your estimate tomorrow." But then again, why should I, if the social or speaking situation doesn’t demand it? How many among us – including we Filipino PhDs in English – speak in straight, complete, and impeccably composed sentences in English, anyway? And again, why should we, if we’re not in Cambridge, in Geneva, or even in South Dakota? If you’ve tried lecturing two full hours a day in English, four days a week, as I’m doing now in northeastern Wisconsin, you’ll know how that can lead to lockjaw, and what a relief and how natural it is to meet a fellow Pinoy and say, "O, pare! Tapos ka na bang mag-grade ng midterms mo? Mag-relax naman tayo mamaya, may replay daw n’ung championship game kagabi diyan sa Faculty Lounge."
Anyone who has nightmares about Taglish replacing English in our newspapers and schoolbooks anytime soon needn’t worry. People often forget that Taglish works best as a spoken language; it’s a pain to read over more than a few sentences, no matter how easy it may be on the ear. Someone thought otherwise and paid dearly for it in the early 1970s, when the country’s first (and, to my knowledge, only) avowedly Taglish tabloid newspaper, the Sun, opened and failed with a deafening thud. As for TV, well, that’s another matter, since it’s more of a verbal medium, and class considerations take over in terms of the language used by particular programs (e.g., no Taglish in English newscasts, Filipino/Tagalog or Taglish for sitcoms).
To sum things up, as I told Peter, I like Taglish; it’s useful and speakable, and a whole lot friendlier than English. At the same time, we should promote English as an international language and a smart option for the 21st-century Filipino – and there are ways of doing it, too, but cutting down on Taglish isn’t one of them. Taglish isn’t the enemy; under-funded, unimaginative, and sloppy teaching is. The best thing you can do for your children’s English is not to threaten them with a P50 slash in their cellphone load allowance for every Tagalog word they utter, but to buy them good English-language books and magazines suitable for their ages and interests – something that says "Read me, I’m interesting!" instead of "I’m a lesson in English."
As it turned out, Peter and I were on the same side of the issue, and he had a startling insight to share. He was, he said, also very much in support of improving English instruction in the Philippines, but " Speaking English, in my opinion, has been detrimental to us Filipinos who moved to the States. Because we can speak English, we can easily assimilate (ourselves in American) society, get good jobs, go to school, and be even better. But the poor non-English-speaking immigrants are out of the running for those good jobs.
"And what do they do? They are the ones who open up businesses, and they flourish. They are the Korean grocery and deli owners in Manhattan. They are the Bangladeshi clothing vendors on Broadway. The Greeks are the pizza shop owners in Boston, the Lebanese the gasoline station owners, the Vietnamese the Laundromat operators. They are the ones who are actually supporting the majority population with their small businesses, and who are making a good living because of it – while we Filipinos are happy to work side by side with the Americans or the other English-speaking immigrants, and settle for our just reward – the paycheck– and we are stuck in this mode!"
Amen, Peter, amen!
E-mail me at penmanila@yahoo.com and visit my blog at http://www.penmanila.net.
The book’s title – which translates to "Daring as Deliverance" – hints at a crisis in Philippine drama: its slide into obscurity these past few decades, beset by dwindling audiences, rising production costs, and the competition from all sorts of alternative media for the Filipino’s attention and entertainment peso.
When I began writing plays for the stage in the 1970s, Philippine theater – particularly theater in Filipino – was undergoing a welcome resurgence; the Philippine Educational Theater Association was at the peak of its powers, the Cultural Center of the Philippines was showcasing the best of world and local drama through Teatro Pilipino and Bulwagang Gantimpala, and a new generation of playwrights was emerging, including Bienvenido Noriega, Rene Villanueva, Tony Perez, Bonifacio Ilagan, Malou Jacob, Edgardo Maranan, Reuel Aguila, and Isagani Cruz. School-based theater was also very much alive in such places as UP, UST, Ateneo, and St. Paul’s College.
It felt good to be writing plays, not only because of the prestige that went with winning a Palanca or CCP Award – how hungry we were for these distinctions in those days! – but also because we could expect our work to be produced almost as soon as they were written, such was the demand for new material and the willingness and ability of various theater groups to stage them, anywhere from the plush Little Theater of the CCP to a flyblown corner of Sta. Mesa Market.
As I’ve often remarked, playwriting can be the most taxing of the literary arts because of the many levels of anxiety the playwright has to endure: the rush to finish the play, the search for its producer and the wait for its production, and the high (or the crushing letdown) of watching its performance.
This new anthology revives those anxieties, as well as the hopes that come with them for the revival of Philippine theater itself, pinning those hopes on the audacity of these new playwrights. (That audacity can be extremely funny or extremely disturbing, as recent plays by Chris Martinez and Allan Lopez have shown.)
The book is available at Aeon Books on Katipunan, Popular Bookstore on T. Morato, Solidaridad, Powerbooks, National Book Store, Bound Bookstore, Fully Booked, and the University of the Philippines Press bookstores in UP Diliman, Baguio, Iloilo, and Davao.
I don’t know if the linguistic evidence will bear that out; I’m inclined to believe that, like many seemingly obvious things, it’s actually false, and I’d be glad to hear from serious scholars what the truth of the matter is, and how a language is really learned and mastered. (I’m asking for academic proof, not for more opinions probably just as faulty as mine.)
A reader named Peter observed that "In all the countries where English was used to conquer, there has always been some resultant form of mish-mashed English that results, and we know this as pidgin English. The Bahamas has it, the Philippines has Taglish, Puerto Rico has Nuyorican. And I’ve noticed that Vietnamese English speakers in America also use some form of Viet-English combination. How about the French Canadian spoken in Quebec, which the mainland French scoffs at when they hear it? And pity the fool who tries to interpret French Haitian. I am sure there are other derivations such as Dutch-Indo, Viet-Chinese, etc. But Taglish should not be used as an excuse for the lack of English speaking in the Philippines. Remember, it is the media that the public mimics, and we are so guilty of it."
As I wrote Peter in response, he was right about these spin-offs of English; they’re inevitable, and they’re how languages grow. Old English itself, or Anglo-Saxon, began as a form of German in the 5th century, and then took in a massive dose of French (and its Latin pedigree) after the Norman invasion of 1066. You can imagine the horror of both Anglo-Saxon and French purists, if there were any, at the emergence of this hybrid language in the markets and the military camps. And what would it have been called – "Franglish"? (Many modern Frenchmen deplore and yet can’t help speaking what in the ’60s became Franglais.)
That’s how I see Taglish; as a language or a variety of it, it’s objectively neither good nor bad, neither better nor worse – it just is, and will be. And it is, because it’s useful and often easier on the tongue and on the mind. Some people make fun of it by trotting out the oft-quoted "Let’s make tusok-tusok the fishballs," but that’s just as ridiculous and pointless an example as the old salumbola and salumpuwit straw dummies that anti-Filipinists have used to malign the language. In other words, whom do you know really speaks that way? Most of us – yes, including many who might otherwise compose their papers and messages in letter-perfect English – will more likely say, "Hindi ako maka-relate sa topic ng lecture niya" or "Paki-fax na lang ng estimate mo sa akin bukas."
I dare anyone to tell me those same things in unadulterated Filipino (whatever that means; as far as I’m concerned, Filipino is already, necessarily, and wonderfully enriched by its borrowings).
Can I say these things in "pure" English? Sure: "I can’t relate to his lecture topic" and "Please fax me your estimate tomorrow." But then again, why should I, if the social or speaking situation doesn’t demand it? How many among us – including we Filipino PhDs in English – speak in straight, complete, and impeccably composed sentences in English, anyway? And again, why should we, if we’re not in Cambridge, in Geneva, or even in South Dakota? If you’ve tried lecturing two full hours a day in English, four days a week, as I’m doing now in northeastern Wisconsin, you’ll know how that can lead to lockjaw, and what a relief and how natural it is to meet a fellow Pinoy and say, "O, pare! Tapos ka na bang mag-grade ng midterms mo? Mag-relax naman tayo mamaya, may replay daw n’ung championship game kagabi diyan sa Faculty Lounge."
Anyone who has nightmares about Taglish replacing English in our newspapers and schoolbooks anytime soon needn’t worry. People often forget that Taglish works best as a spoken language; it’s a pain to read over more than a few sentences, no matter how easy it may be on the ear. Someone thought otherwise and paid dearly for it in the early 1970s, when the country’s first (and, to my knowledge, only) avowedly Taglish tabloid newspaper, the Sun, opened and failed with a deafening thud. As for TV, well, that’s another matter, since it’s more of a verbal medium, and class considerations take over in terms of the language used by particular programs (e.g., no Taglish in English newscasts, Filipino/Tagalog or Taglish for sitcoms).
To sum things up, as I told Peter, I like Taglish; it’s useful and speakable, and a whole lot friendlier than English. At the same time, we should promote English as an international language and a smart option for the 21st-century Filipino – and there are ways of doing it, too, but cutting down on Taglish isn’t one of them. Taglish isn’t the enemy; under-funded, unimaginative, and sloppy teaching is. The best thing you can do for your children’s English is not to threaten them with a P50 slash in their cellphone load allowance for every Tagalog word they utter, but to buy them good English-language books and magazines suitable for their ages and interests – something that says "Read me, I’m interesting!" instead of "I’m a lesson in English."
As it turned out, Peter and I were on the same side of the issue, and he had a startling insight to share. He was, he said, also very much in support of improving English instruction in the Philippines, but " Speaking English, in my opinion, has been detrimental to us Filipinos who moved to the States. Because we can speak English, we can easily assimilate (ourselves in American) society, get good jobs, go to school, and be even better. But the poor non-English-speaking immigrants are out of the running for those good jobs.
"And what do they do? They are the ones who open up businesses, and they flourish. They are the Korean grocery and deli owners in Manhattan. They are the Bangladeshi clothing vendors on Broadway. The Greeks are the pizza shop owners in Boston, the Lebanese the gasoline station owners, the Vietnamese the Laundromat operators. They are the ones who are actually supporting the majority population with their small businesses, and who are making a good living because of it – while we Filipinos are happy to work side by side with the Americans or the other English-speaking immigrants, and settle for our just reward – the paycheck– and we are stuck in this mode!"
Amen, Peter, amen!
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