Agosto: Buwan ng Wikang Pambansa
August, National Language Month, is almost over. It’s rather ironic to have set aside one special month in the year to pay homage to our national language, as though it had become a thing of rarity about which we have to be reminded from time to time.
Perhaps the reason for the yearly observance of a month, which used to be a week, dedicated to the Pambansang Wika is that language has always been a contentious issue and a source of discord. It used to be that speaking in the native tongue, instead of English — the colonizer’s language — was subjected to fines. (Colegiala-speak or “tusok-tusok the fishball” Taglish was years into the future.)
Language has been at the heart of one of the most enduring issues in literary production. The most lionized or internationally known Filipino writers — Carlos Bulosan, Jose Garcia Villa, F. Sionil Jose, Nick Joaquin and now Miguel Syjuco — wrote their works in English, and so we have a new generation of Filipino writers inspired enough to believe that they, like Samantha Sotto of Before Ever After sensation and Candy Gourlay of Tall Story fame, are ready for the world literary stage. On the other hand, writers in Filipino and other vernacular languages can only have a comparable fame and/or readership if their works become national bestsellers (after all, there are potentially millions of Tagalog, Ilocano, Cebuano, Bicolano readers), or are translated into English and somehow get lucky enough to be bought and read overseas.
It is not only the English vs. Filipino debate (a non-issue, in so far as the growing ranks of bilingual and even trilingual writers of the country are concerned) that has stoked academic debate for decades, but also the Pilipino vs. Filipino controversy. Pilipino is Tagalog, while Filipino is supposed to be the truly national language which incorporates borrowings from other Philippine languages. In a recent discussion over beer and sisig at Trellis, National Artist for Literature Rio Alma and four poets from two generations (Vim Nadera and Michael Coroza, Teo Antonio and myself), took up the new directions that literary Filipino (as distinguished from other variations of spoken Pilipino or Filipino) has been taking. One of these is the incorporation of words such as gahum (power) from Bisaya and rabaw (surface) from Iluko, as a means of enriching literary expression and widening the base for acceptance of a national language.
The Buwan ng Wika has been adequately served this year by various events in the literary life of the nation. The Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino has had a month-long schedule of activities including a national workshop on Filipino and Rizal’s Sesquicentennial, forums and symposia, a floral offering to the Manuel Luis Quezon, who championed the National Language, and its annual essay contest with this year’s theme being “Ang Filipino ay Wikang Panlahat, Ilaw at Lakas sa Tuwid na Landas.”
Then there was the book launch at C&E Publishing of Elynia Mabanglo’s excellent and lyrical translation of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, which she rendered as Ang Pantas. The Pilipino or Tagalog word really means “the learned one,” while the more “modern” Filipino translation would keep it as Ang Propeta to hew closer to the original. But “pantas” was a carefully thought out and deliberate choice, because Gibran was more philosopher than seer, whose words of wisdom have influenced millions around the world.
Michael Coroza, mentioned earlier, was the guest of Lisa Macuja on her DZRH Art2Art Sunday program on radio-TV live streaming, and it was a most delightful 30-minute interview about the life and works of Francisco Baltazar whom we know as Balagtas, the father of Filipino poetry, after whom the verse debate called balagtasan was named. Coroza and Teo Antonio are among the country’s leading contenders for the title Prinsipe ng Balagtasan (Teo’s father, Emilio Mar. Antonio, was Hari ng Balagtasan while he lived). The two have staged the balagtasan in Filipino communities overseas. During the interview, Coroza recited lines from Florante at Laura with flourish and authority, and one could sense that in the hands of the new generation of Filipino writers, the Pambansang Wika is alive and thriving in the country and in the world.
While many non-Tagalogs have resisted the imposition of Tagalog-based Filipino, foreigners have pursued the study, even mastery, of a more traditional Filipino with passion. I have in mind Russian Filipinologists, among them Eugenie Polivanov in the 1900s, Vladimir Makarenko in the 1960s, the popular UP visitor Igor Podbereszky in the 1970s, and in recent years professors Elena Frolova and Ekaterina (“Katya”) Baklanova of Moscow State University. It’s refreshing to be exchanging occasional academic e-mails with Katya in classic Tagalog, but as a philologist, she would be familiar and at ease with Taglish and the new Filipino.
