The Philippines is a multi-lingual and multi-cultural nation given its 172 languages but emphasis is given only to the two languages. This, said Dr. Aurelio S. Agcaoli, is a reminder that we have not done enough.

BY MARICAR CINCO
Contributed to Bulatlat
Vol. VII, No. 24, July 22-28, 2007

Los Baños, Laguna (62 kms. south of Manila)– One may think that “Linggo ng Wika” (Language Week) was being held earlier here as the English Division of the Department of Humanities of the University of the Philippines-Los Baños (UPLB) held a symposium on Philippine languages last July 26.

Dubbed “Languaging Language,” Dr. Aurelio S. Agcaoili, a faculty member of the University of Hawaii’s College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature, stressed the need to give back the care and concern to indigenous and foreign languages in the critical production of a communicative world.

Agcaoili exposed the prevalent “valorization” of the English and Tagalog, while other languages are slowly being displaced. The Philippines is a multi-lingual and multi-cultural nation given its 172 languages but emphasis is given only to the two languages—Tagalog masked as Filipino and English as the language of capital, commerce and colonialism.

He said that language is a lie. “Lie is simply saying what it is not. Representation is that process of making present that which is not present, and therefore, that which is absent.”

With language, Agcaoili said that we find “truth” from our unique experiences, recognize it in its particular form and find the connection with other experiences.

He called on academicians in all disciplines to instill the care and concern for language as the very universal instrument to understanding the world. The languaging power of the language, he said, is not merely a mechanical translation of a concept from one language to another, but moving with it the knowledge, lights, insights and the commitment to truth. “You have to catch the language of sociology, for instance, in order to understand what the sociologist is saying in the same way that you have to catch the language of. poetry to understand what a poet is trying to say.”

Agcaoili said that in the 1934-1935 Constitutional Convention, there was no reference to the national language being based on an existing native language of the country. “When we value English alone at the expense of other Philippines languages; when we value Tagalog as Filipino alone at the expense of the other Philippine languages, at the expense of the 171 languages of this homeland… (that is when) language becomes a reminder that we have not done enough to give our share in the pursuit of that which is socially just and fair, in that which is linguistically democratic and culturally just.”

According to him, the ideology of having one national language when in fact we have other languages spell the death to these languages and will further deteriorate if we do not act now.

When asked by a professor as regards what can be done to achieve the goal, Agcaoili said that teachers can start including literary pieces not only from the Tagalog regions, but also those from other Philippine languages. He also called on policymakers to promote a pluralist national language.(Bulatlat.com)

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