SABBATICAL NOTES. 23 JULY 2014. WEDNESDAY. N5. We do not owe the Tagalog language anything; the Philippine nation-state owes the non-Tagalog peoples a lot, including restorative justice. ANOTHER LIE IS GOING around. It is an old one, and we have heard this spoken--and even written--by rabid Tagalistas in the past. The Tagalistas are not necessarily Tagalog people even if many of them are, but ideologues of the national language that has reduced non-Tagalog speaking peoples second class citizens in a country professing, among other things, democracy and social justice. The latest of this assault is the claim of one Tom Agulto who argues that the country owes the Tagalog people a debt of gratitude. In extensu, the non-Tagalog peoples owe the Tagalog people their national language. Agulto forgets the history from below, and does not remember that the Katipunan oath of the Ilokanos was written in their language and signed with their blood. He should check the Katipunan documents at the National Library and read up on the brains of the nation by Resil Mojares. A young activist, Eugene Carmelo Cabanilla-Pedro, falsified the claims of Agulto, and I am citing from his post verbatim: This statement by Tom Agulto--who is (sic) Pangasinense or Ilocano, I think--is not supported by historical evidence. He seems to presume that since the Revolution was started by Tagalogs, the language used by all was Tagalog. 1) Tagalog was not as widespread as it is today during the revolution. If it were, Tagalistas like de Veyra would not have said that they wanted to Tagalog to be the national patois so they and other Filipinos could learn it. 2) The revolution was an ilustrado revolt, at least at the higher ranks. The common language of the ilustrados was Spanish, not Tagalog. 3) Even in an essay written by Virgilio Almario, a Tagalista, although he misinterprets the instructions of the revolution to be bilingual only in Spanish and Tagalog, the instruction clearly portrays a multilingual revolution, for the instructions require that communications and revolution-related things be translated to non-Tagalog languages in non-Tagalog areas, and Spanish is the common language of communication. 4) Many of our nationalists used Spanish and English in their writings and other works. The above can only mean one thing. We do not owe any utang na loob to the Tagalog language. What we owe is respect to our patrimony, which requires preservation, development, and propagation of all Filipino languages. [Source: E Carmelo Pedro, https://facebook/groups/philippinelanguages/10152533887388771/?notif_t=group_activity. Retrieved 23 Jul 2014] In fine, we note that Agulto, per Roy Vadil Aragon, is not a Pangasinan or an Ilokano, but a Tagalog from Bulacan. WPH/
Posted on: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 08:10:54 +0000
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