DILA stands for Defenders of the
Indigenous Languages of the Archipelago [Philippines].
"DILA is . .
. devoted to the study, preservation, and promotion of Philippine languages and
the di- verse cultures they represent. [It] strives to bring you the best
information about Philippine lang- uages, and to fairly and thoroughly discuss
the issues that are shaping the fate of Philippine langu- ages. [It] is
dedicated to native speakers, scholars, teachers, students, and language
advocates . . . .
"DILA is
the outgrowth of a Yahoo exchange started by Ernesto C. Turla, author
of Classic Ka- pampangan Dictionary . .
. The exchange rapidly attracted other people that shared
Ernie's concern and interest in Philippine languages, including a number of
noted linguists and language advocates.
The name DILA . . . was
proposed by Palanca award winning writer David Martinez and accepted by the
group. The word "dila" is common to many Philip-pine languages and it means
"tongue" as in "lang-uage." It best represents the interest of the group and our
cause. DILA was born to bring the work of this group to others who share an
interest in Philip-pine languages, and to help bring about an informed, public
discussion about the fate of these languages and the cultures they
represent."
Thoughts on Language, Identity, and
Nationalism
A DILA Essay by David C.
Martinez
There is no universal agreement on precisely what constitutes
a nation, but even by the terms of its broadest definition, there is no
"Philippine" nation, in contrast, for instance, to Japan, where 99% of its
population are [and speak] Japanese. In the Republic of the Philippines, its
largest nation, the Cebuanos, constitute less than
a quarter of the total population. What is
ironic is that we are not the country's dominant nation, either polit- ically or
culturally.
Nations are distinguished from each other by at least
one or more "separators," which include ancestry, culture, and religion.
Historically, however, language has served to differentiate one nation from
other nations more than anything else. Like Papua New Guinea and many Third
World countries that inherited their borders from colonial pow- ers, the
Philippines is a fabricated state which required resort to nationalism in order
to create a "nation," an experiment which has failed, and failed
grandly.
Nationalism possesses two
components. Political nationalism
is perhaps best exempli- fied by Manuel L. Quezon's delusional exhortation, "I
would rather have a government run like hell by Filipinos than a government run
like heaven by the Americans." One of its more recent manifestations: the
removal of foreign military installations from the country. Its other component
is cultural, and involves, among
others, the imposition of a "national" language by means fair or foul. In our
country, both components have been used [more accurately, abused] in order to
fashion a synthetic "Filipino" culture at the expense of our authentic national
and regional identities.
Nation-building requires nationalism; the
sole purpose of nationalism is to build a nation. But nationalism can
be intelligent -- as with America's self-image
as a nation vis-à-vis her European roots. Or nationalism can
be blind as with Napoleon's, and later
Hitler's, belief that their respective nations possessed the right to govern
Europe, if not the world.
Both political and cultural nationalism
in the Philippines have not simply been blind; they have been oppressive. Their
ramifications are such that they cannot be called anything less
than internal
colonization. Instances: I can no longer
remember how many times my inability to speak Tagalog fluently has been equated
with a lack of patriotism. To which I retort that Lapu-Lapu and his men slew
Magellan without learning a word of Tagalog.
Many in Manila, when
they say, "Mayroon ka bang
Bisaya?" mean, "Do you have house help?" To act "Bisaya" is to
behave like someone from the boondocks. The premise is that the "true" Filipino
not only speaks perfect Tagalog -- which, ironically, has evolved into Taglish,
to the dismay of linguistic nationalists -- but behaves like a
Tagalog as well. [Remember Lynch's discredited "Filipino
traits"?]
India has refused to elevate one national language over
others. Singapore chose English as both its medium of instruction and official
language, without sacrificing Chinese and Malay, in spite of English's having
been their "language of oppression." They preferred the rational to the
"national." And there is no evidence to indicate that the Indian and Singaporean
love their countries less.
If we have become "Tagalized," it is
because we have allowed ourselves to be "Filipi- nized." We cannot isolate the
slow and painful death of our indigenous tongues from the continuing erosion of
our authentic national identities as Cebuanos, Ilocanos, Kapam- pangans,
Ilonggos, and so on. If it is true that language is
the soul of culture -- which I happen to
believe -- then we can preserve and promote them only by remaining true to our
indigenous identities, a daunting challenge of rediscovery by
itself.
Philippine history as currently written, for instance, is
by and large a history of the Tagalog nation, with the rest of us serving as
rare if necessary footnotes. Alongside the effort to protect our native tongues
must be a sustained endeavor to recall and extol our respective myths and
legends, our prose and poetry, our heritages and histories. For as long as
cultural imperialism remains ignored and/or unchallenged, the continuing crea-
tion of the mythic "Filipino" at the expense of our historical and linguistic
identities will proceed, resulting not only in a mongrel language, but a mongrel
people with mongrel values as well.
The Tagalog template has been
rammed down our diverse nations fundamentally be- cause the powers-that-be since
the 1570s have possessed a monopoly on the instru- ments of coercion:
government, the educational sytem, and the media. Given these powerful,
self-seeking forces, I see no hope whatsoever of protecting our national
identities -- which necessarily includes our languages -- without radical
political change.
The Catalans of Spain and the Quebecois of
Canada, as did native speakers of India's diverse language populations, utilized
a wide variety of weapons in the arsenal of polit- ical tools available to them
to win extravagant cultural concessions from their respective governments.
Spain, Canada, and India accommodated their demands. When the same type of
conflict occurred in Pakistan, that government's insensitivity and
intransigience led to the bloody creation of Bangladesh. We cannot ignore the
possibility [I personally view it as the inevitability] that the Philippine
central government will violently resist any effort to erode its vast political
and cultural powers. They have as much to lose as we have to
gain.
Perhaps because people innately realize that the death of
language is the death of iden- tity, just as many wars have been fought over
language as there have been over reli- gion. If we truly care for our true and
dying nations, the bottom line is whether we are
as devoted to our tongues
and cultures are we are to our
faiths.
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