Filipinos Seek 1 Language to Bind Nation : Program Under Way to Replace English, Varied Local Tongues

On a recent Monday morning, officials in the southern Philippine city of Cebu voted to rebel against the government of President Corazon Aquino.

According to Vice Mayor Alvin Garcia, the officials decided to sing a chorus of the national anthem in Cebuano, the regional language that is spoken by about a third of the nation and is unintelligible to the rest.

The symbolic protest was aimed at the heart of one of the Aquino government’s cherished programs--adoption of the language called Filipino as the national language.

Obviously, this was less threatening than the killings and abortive coups that have taken place since Aquino came to power in 1986. But it exposed simmering ethnic resentment in this country of 60 million people, and it added fuel to a debate about the dominance of American culture in the Philippines nearly a century after the U.S. Navy routed the Spanish at Manila Bay.

“It’s embarrassing,” complained Francisco Sumulong, an uncle of the president and majority floor leader in the Philippine House of Representatives. “The Philippines is one of the few places in the world where the people don’t speak a national language. When I travel outside of Manila, I have to address other Filipinos in English. Without a common language, we don’t have a national identity.”

But Hortensia B. Starke, a congresswoman from the Visayan Islands in the south, warned that if a national language is simply decreed by the central government, “we are only going to condemn our country and our people into isolation, darkness and retrogression.”

For more than 300 years of Spanish rule, the official language of the Philippines was Spanish. The country’s first, short-lived national anthem was sung in Spanish.

But by 1901 the Americans had taken over the Philippines as a colony, and within 30 years, according to a survey, 26.6% of the people spoke English--a tribute to the effectiveness of the American-imposed system of primary education. More important, English was made the official language of the courts, business and government. Everything from street signs to medical school exams was now in English.

Neither the Spanish nor the Americans paid more than passing attention to the languages that had been used in the Philippines for hundreds of years: Tagalog, the vernacular of Manila and environs; Cebuano, spoken in the south; Ilocano, in the north, and about 70 other languages and dialects.

As early as the 1930s, a Philippine educator, Jorge Bocobo, had lamented: “No foreign language, be it Spanish or English, or any others, can be the genuine vehicle of our inmost thoughts, our inmost feelings. No foreign language can be the expression of our national soul.”

Seizing on the wave of nationalist pride that swept the country after the ouster of President Ferdinand E. Marcos in 1986, the Aquino government incorporated a revolutionary passage in the new constitution, which became law in 1987. Overriding decades of debate, the new constitution said flatly that “the national language of the Philippines is Filipino.” Until otherwise provided by law, English would be permitted in official communication.

It was a time when the Aquino government was literally fighting for its life, beset by military uprisings and near-collapse of the economy. Virtually no one seemed to have noticed the constitutional provision regarding language.

But last year Aquino issued what seemed at the time an innocuous executive order, in commemoration of Philippine Language Week, reminding the nation that Filipino was the national language and calling for its propagation by government officials. The nation woke up to the fact that it had a new language and few people knew it.

In 1959 Tagalog, the language of Manila, had been declared the lingua franca of the Philippines, and officially called Pilipino. But regional opposition to the selection of one region’s language over another’s--Tagalog was spoken by a minority of Filipinos--had led to a suggestion that the country create a “fusion language” of regional dialects. The idea was incorporated into the 1973 constitution but was denounced by linguists who said it would produce a “Philippine Esperanto” that would be unworkable. It was quietly shelved in favor of the continued use of English.

But a curious thing began to take place in the course of the rebellion that brought down Marcos. Politicians appearing at public rallies were booed when they spoke in English.

The news media still used English, but a commercial television station experimented with using Tagalog-based Filipino for its evening news broadcast. Its ratings soared. By this year, only one of the five channels still used English for its newscasts. Three newspapers now appear in Filipino, but 17 continue to appear in English.

“Filipino is spreading very rapidly,” said Andrew Gonzalez, president of De La Salle University and a linguist of international standing. “My gut feeling is that TV and radio are spreading Filipino much better than the school system.”

The government implemented a bilingual education policy as early as 1974, mandating that all subjects except math and science be taught in Filipino. Math and science would at first be taught in the local dialect, then in English.

According to Gonzalez, at least 95% of the schools now have some form of bilingual education--Filipino and English--but have achieved varying degrees of success. Many private schools have ignored the issue entirely, using English as a medium of instruction and teaching Filipino only as a language.

“It’s very hard to teach social studies in Filipino,” Gonzales said. “It’s not easy for a lot of teachers to make the switch.”

Aquino’s executive order made no reference to the schools, but a national outcry has developed over implementing the national language policy in education. The opposition has coalesced around two complaints: that teaching Filipino will exacerbate regional differences and that de-emphasizing English will put Filipinos at a disadvantage in the world marketplace at a time when they are racing desperately to catch up.

In early May, the Cebu Provincial Council introduced legislation that would make it illegal to teach Filipino in the schools.

“You can’t equate nationalism with speaking one dialect,” Vice Mayor Garcia said. “It’s one thing to speak a little Filipino and another to know a language well. The result of this policy will be to give Tagalog speakers more power, and that’s discriminatory against the rest of us.”

Garcia said he favors the continued use of English in official communications, saying, “At least we’re at a par with everyone else.”

The other argument against the replacement of English with Filipino is economic. As Rep. Starke told Congress, “We all know of the ability of the Filipino to read, understand and speak the English language, an ability that places him ahead of and above other nationalities in the international community.” She said the government risks “throwing all this away.”

More than 1 million Filipinos work abroad, and this is an important source of foreign exchange for the country. Some businessmen question whether this situation will be threatened by the switch in emphasis to Filipino, even if English continues to be taught.

“De-emphasis of English will have serious drawbacks for the economy,” said Fromy C. Fortich, president of Gulf Pacific Services, which recruits Philippine nurses for work in the United States. “One of the primary concerns of U.S. employers, especially in hospitals, is whether the workers can speak the English language. In this area we are better off than Korea or Thailand. We have an advantage.”

Fortich said that even today more than half the Philippine nurses recruited for work in the United States fail to pass the necessary examinations because of problems with English.

Another problem with the switch-over to Filipino is that many have only a hazy idea of what the language is. By constitutional definition, Filipino “shall be further developed and enriched on the basis of existing Philippine and other languages.”

Thus, someone watching the evening newscast can hear an announcer speaking Filipino but using such phrases as “foreign affairs department” and “education subsidy bill,” and purists might describe the result as “Taglish,” a mixture of Tagalog and English. In fact, a dictionary of Filipino words in Filipino has existed for only a few months.

Graffiti near army headquarters in suburban Quezon illustrate the problem. An unknown protester has scrawled, in English, “Down with American Imperialism.”

“As long as you’re talking about ‘What are you going to eat today?’ and ‘Are you going downtown today?,’ it’s very easy to use Filipino,” linguist Gonzales said. “But the moment I start talking about issues and principles and concepts, then its much easier to talk about it in English.”

Jimmy Abad, vice president of the University of the Philippines, said it is the university’s task “to intellectualize the language to make Filipino a language of intellectual discourse.” But he noted that few textbooks exist to help with this task.

(Southland Edition) LANGUAGES OF THE PHILIPPINES

Percentages reflect the population speaking that language. The total is greater than 100% because many Filipinos speak more than one language.

English: 45% Filipino: 55% Other major languages: 1. Cebuano: 24.1% Central and southern Philippines in provinces of Cebu, Bohol, Negros Oriental and most of Mindanao. 2. Tagalog: 21% Manila and nearby provinces in southwestern Luzon. 3. Ilocano: 11.7% Northern Luzon 4. Hiligaynon: 10.4% Panay, Negros Occidental and central islands. 5. Bikol: 7.8% Southern Luzon 6. Waray: 5.5% Samar and Leyte in eastern Philippines. 7. Pampangan: 3.2% Pampanga in central Luzon. 8. Pangasinan: 2.5% Lingayen Gulf area of northern Luzon. Sources: Encyclopedia of the Third World, Third Edition and Philippine Embassy