Note, the topic and the reaction is 98% positive. All we need now is ACTION.
We are
a great artistic people, disoriented , most of the time. The political
conditions (in the PHil.
is proof enough. Where can you find a people, with as much gift of laughter?
A people
who laughs, in spite "there whole world is too much". I refer you to Frankie
Sionil Jose's
VIAJERO,Solidaridad , 1993. I wish for our people.....who reads....and
digest.
Sionil Jose, is now writing about Gen Artemio Ricarte y Vibora, in novel
form. If we can
not articulate, our people's wishes in the arts....we will be a nation of
"borrowers".
We seem to borrow negative things. I had better stop. Merry Christmas

max fabella from florida

An article by CPR on being Filipino--------------.  Carlos P. Romulo I am a Filipino - inheritor of a glorious past, hostage to the uncertain future. As such I must prove equal to a twofold task- the task of meeting my responsibility to the past, and the task of performing my obligation to the future. I am sprung from a hardy race - child of many generations removed of ancient Malayan pioneers. Across the centuries, the memory comes rushing back to me: of brown-skinned men putting out to sea in ships that were as frail as their hearts were stout. Over the sea I see them come, borne upon the billowing wave and the whistling wind, carried upon the mighty swell of hope - hope in the free abundance of new land that was to be their home and their children's forever. This is the land they sought and found. Every inch of shore that their eyes first set upon, every hill and mountain that beckoned to them with a green and purple invitation, every mile of rolling plain that their view encompassed, every river and lake that promise a plentiful living and the fruitfulness of commerce, is a hollowed spot to me. By the strength of their hearts and hands, by every right of law, human and divine, this land and all the appurtenances thereto - the black and fertile soil, the seas and lakes and rivers teeming with fish, the forests with their inexhaustible wealth in wild life and timber, the mountains with their bowels swollen with minerals - the whole of this rich and happy land has been, for centuries without number, the land of my fathers. This land I received in trust from them and in trust I will pass it to my children, and so on until the world is no more. I am a Filipino. In my blood runs the immortal seed of heroes - seed that flowered down the centuries in deeds of courage and defiance. In my veins yet pulses the same hot blood that sent Lapulapu to battle against the first invader of this land, that nerved Lakandula to combat the alien foe, that drove Diego Silang and Dagohoy into rebellion against the foreign oppressor. That seed is immortal. It is the self-same seed that flowered in the heart of Jose Rizal that morning in Bagumbayan when a volley of shots put an end to all that was mortal of him and made his spirit deathless forever; the same that flowered in the hearts of Bonifacio in Balintawak, of Gergorio del Pilar at Tirad Pass, of Antonio Luna at Calumpit; that bloomed in flowers of frustration in the sad heart of Emilio Aguinaldo at Palanan, and yet burst forth royally again in the proud heart of Manuel L. Quezon when he stood at last on the threshold of ancient Malacañang Palace, in the symbolic act of possession and racial vindication. The seed I bear within me is an immortal seed. It is the mark of my manhood, the symbol of my dignity as a human being. Like the seeds that were once buried in the tomb of Tutankhamen many thousand years ago, it shall grow and flower and bear fruit again. It is the insignia of my race, and my generation is but a stage in the unending search of my people for freedom and happiness. I am a Filipino, child of the marriage of the East and the West. The East, with its languor and mysticism, its passivity and endurance, was my mother, and my sire was the West that came thundering across the seas with the Cross and Sword and the Machine. I am of the East, an eager participant in its struggles for liberation from the imperialist yoke. But I also know that the East must awake from its centuried sleep, shake of the lethargy that has bound his limbs, and start moving where destiny awaits. For I, too, am of the West, and the vigorous peoples of the West have destroyed forever the peace and quiet that once were ours. I can no longer live, being apart from those world now trembles to the roar of bomb and cannon shot. For no man and no nation is an island, but a part of the main, there is no longer any East and West - only individuals and nations making those momentous choices that are hinges upon which history resolves. At the vanguard of progress in this part of the world I stand - a forlorn figure in the eyes of some, but not one defeated and lost. For through the thick, interlacing branches of habit and custom above me I have seen the light of the sun, and I know that it is good. I have seen the light of justice and equality and freedom and my heart has been lifted by the vision of democracy, and I shall not rest until my land and my people shall have been blessed by these, beyond the power of any man or nation to subvert or destroy. I am a Filipino, and this is my inheritance. What pledge shall I give that I may prove worthy of my inheritance? I shall give the pledge that has come ringing down the corridors of the centuries, and it shall be compounded of the joyous cries of my Malayan forebears when they first saw the contours of this land loom before their eyes, of the battle cries that have resounded in every field of combat from Mactan to Tirad pass, of the voices of my people when they sing: Land of the Morning
Child of the sun returning
Ne'er shall invaders
Trample thy sacred shore. Out of the lush green of these seven thousand isles, out of the heartstrings of sixteen million people all vibrating to one song, I shall weave the mighty fabric of my pledge. Out of the songs of the farmers at sunrise when they go to labor in the fields; out of the sweat of the hard-bitten pioneers in Mal-ig and Koronadal; out of the silent endurance of stevedores at the piers and the ominous grumbling of peasants in Pampanga; out of the first cries of babies newly born and the lullabies that mothers sing; out of the crashing of gears and the whine of turbines in the factories; out of the crunch of ploughs upturning the earth; out of the limitless patience of teachers in the classrooms and doctors in the clinics; out of the tramp of soldiers marching, I shall make the pattern of my pledge: I am a Filipino born of freedom and I shall not rest until freedom shall have been added unto my inheritance - for myself and my children's children - forever.

The Man Who Spoke Tagalog

There was a time in my little town of Santa Barbara,
Pangasinan, in the Philippines, when speaking Tagalog
(and English, of course) earned the the speaker some
ridicule. This was because in a rural town Tagalog was
still largely associated with sophisticated city life
in Manila and any returning townmate speaking Tagalog
was viewed as pompous.
I do not know if my father was viewed as such. Not
that I know of any anecdote about him that he spoke
Tagalog with arrogant affectations. After all there
was no reason for him to speak Tagalog with anyone in
the hometown.
But he spoke Tagalog comfortably, long before it
became the supposed basis of today’s “Pilipino,” the
national language of the Philippines. Pilipino, if one
cares to admit, is Tagalog, of course. My father was
conversant with it before sophisticated or
pseudo-sophisticate d characters in my hometown could
do so with funny awkwardness.
What happened was that as a newly married young man
he brought his new bride south to far Tagalog country,
beyond Manila, to a large sugar plantation in
Canlubang, Laguna Province. He worked as a truck
driver hauling sugar cane from the fields to the
mills. He must have worked there for only a couple of
years or so because three years after my parents got
married I was born a couple of a hundred miles way up
north of Canlubang. Apparently, within that short
time, it was long enough for him to be able to learn
what was then a novel dialect called Tagalog.
My mother said that I was actually born in Trinidad,
Benguet, up in the mountains near the resort city of
Baguio where my father worked after Canlubang. But on
instructions of my Natividad grandfather, possibly out
of sentimentality, I was taken down to our lowland
hometown to be registered and baptized.
Trinidad was originally peopled by Igorot
tribes and I remember being teased by my aunts and
uncles that everytime I got dirty from playing
outdoors they called me an Igorot. Lowland Christians
stupidly stereotyped Igorots as an unkempt minority
tribe.
I know now, of course, that teasing one as an
Igorot is as stupid as Western people teasing
Orientals as inscrutable little characters who all
look alike. Igorots, after all, have more of their
ancestral cultures still relatively intact. To this
extent they have a cultural edge over Christian
lowlanders who failed to preserve their pre-hispanic
culture.
Back to Tagalog...
My feeling is that Tagalog was touted as the “basis”
of the national language to make it look neutral to
appease non-Tagalogs whose languages were not selected
as the national language. I have no proof to support
that feeling, of course. However, the fact that a
Tagalog, Manuel Quezon, was president at the time a
national language was chosen, may have been an
unadmitted factor in annointing Tagalog as the
national language.
Had Sergio Osmena been in power instead of Quezon,
Cebuano could have been the national language. I have
heard somewhere that Cebuano-speaking people
outnumbered Tagalog speakers before Tagalog was chosen
as the “the basis of a national language. Today, of
course, Tagalog would appear to foreigners as endemic
all over the Philippines.
Had the national language been chosen when Elpidio
Quirino (or Ferdinand Marcos) was in power, Ilocano
could have been the national language. After all,
Ilocanos are widely known for their pioneering spirit
in migrating to many places outside Ilocandia. For
instance, in Pangasinan province, the majority of
towns now speak Ilocano. As of this writing, only
thirteen out of almost fifty towns have so far
remained speaking Pangasinan.
I don’t know if it is true that even in as far
as Hawaii some places had street signs that were in
both English and Ilocano. Many Ilocanos were recruited
as sugar farm hands in Hawaii long before World War
II.
Anyway, back to Tagalog again...
Years ago, when I was in high school, schools began
to teach Tagalog in earnest as the national language.
My Tagalog dictionary was my father. That is, when he
was at home. He was an interprovincial bus driver and
most of the time he was out of town.
Times have changed since my father’s time. In my last
visit to my hometown when my mother passed away I
found that kids spoke Tagalog offhandedly without
conscious pompousity as in the past. Meanwhile,
unfortunately, adults spoke Tagalog in the widely
accepted form of hilarious Taglish.
Taglish, I think, does not speak well for a world
image of the Philippines. Like pidgin English it is
hilarious to the ears of real English speakers. What
brought Taglish about? The mandatory use of English in
schools and internal affairs in the Philippines, may,
arguably, be one cause of Taglish. People tend to
forget original Tagalog terms and quickly substitute
English.
Example: “Nag bik ng kik ba ang mudder mo
noong Tangsgibing?” (Did your mother (mudder) bake a
cake (bik ng kik) last Thanksgiving (noong
Tangsgibing) ?
It is a tribute to the colonial prowess of American
administrators that, after imposing English in the
Philippines in a matter of less than half a century
(1898-1946), Filipinos have considered English as a
part of their national culture. The tragedy, however,
is that when the Americans left, Filipinos found
themselves speaking funny Taglish.
Back in 1898, the Philippine-American War followed
the Spanish-American War when Filipinos refused to
recognize the cession of the Philippines by Spain to
the United States.
Not surprisingly the Filipinos lost to
American superior training and equipment. What may be
surprising is that it took the Americans longer to
defeat the Filipinos than it took them to defeat the
Spaniards. The United States deployed about 75% of
their relatively modern military resources that
finally extinguished immediate hopes of Philippine
freedom after more than three centuries of Spanish
oppression.
Stories ran that English was promptly imposed
on the vanquished Filipinos. Some American soldiers
served as the first English tutors who were eventually
replaced by young, civilian volunteer teachers from
the United States.
To this day, sixty years after the Americans
left, English remains an official language in the
Philippines. It may be argued that since English has
become the most visible international language it is
to the benefit of the Philippines to stick to it as a
part of its language culture.
What is ignored is that typical Filipinos on
the street murdered both English and Tagalog into
Taglish. Also ignored is that only a tiny number of
Filipinos are tasked to deal with - or work - abroad;
that they can learn English as a special foreign
language without subjecting the whole country into
using English in its internal affairs.
Many non-English speaking countries teach English
only as a secondary tool for their international
relations. Their school system, their government,
their internal affairs, etc. still proudly use their
respective native languages. Non English-speaking
people whose careers would require English can study
it as a special discipline.
Filipinos can do the same thing.
But in the Philippines English appears to be status a
symbol. It does not matter that it is murdered into
Taglish. Few, however, may admit that speaking
English, or the attempt to speak English, is a status
symbol. They cannot admit that a colonial mentality is
still deeply embedded in the fabric of Filipino mores.
I once heard someone declare how high society types in
Manila spoke Taglish with pride and sophisticated
finesse!
When my father was alive I don’t remember him
speaking Taglish. But he did use certain English
words, not because it is a reflex, but because some
English words, indeed, have no Tagalog equivalents.
Anyway, due to disuse, his English leaves much to be
desired spite of his seventh grade education of the
1920's which would have qualified him to be a
schoolteacher in the midpoint years of the American
occupation of the Philippines.
He chose to be a bus driver instead while
quite a few people with equivalent education chose -
were recruited - to become teachers without going to
high school and college. Today, of course, teachers
have to finish college and pass government
examinations.
His English was handy when he was drafted in World
War II and was among those holed up in Bataan. His
unit, the 11th Division, Philippine Army, was under
the command of American officers. However, my father’s
actual contacts with them were rare.
It was scary enough that he was always in harm’s way
driving men and supplies to and from the front lines.
So, like other Filipino conscripts he dreaded the
additional ordeal of trying to understand American
officers snarling orders in an incomprehensible
accent.
As a consequence Filipinos in Bataan used among
themselves Tagalog instead of English. That was how my
father’s Tagalog improved and served him well in
Bataan. Filipino officers issued orders in Tagalog
even if at the time Tagalog, to be officially called
Pilipino after the war, was not yet universally used
as the Philippine National Language.

=====

Fred N
Livonia, MI