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A MANSION OF MANY LANGUAGES STORY

The document discusses the importance of bilingualism in the Philippines, emphasizing that proficiency in both Filipino and English enriches cultural and professional opportunities. It highlights the rising enrollment in English courses due to job vacancies and the influence of ASEAN, while also advocating for the integration of multiple languages in education. Ultimately, it posits that mastery of one's first language is crucial for learning additional languages, framing the Philippines as a 'multi-lingual paradise.'

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Denisse Urian
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21 views4 pages

A MANSION OF MANY LANGUAGES STORY

The document discusses the importance of bilingualism in the Philippines, emphasizing that proficiency in both Filipino and English enriches cultural and professional opportunities. It highlights the rising enrollment in English courses due to job vacancies and the influence of ASEAN, while also advocating for the integration of multiple languages in education. Ultimately, it posits that mastery of one's first language is crucial for learning additional languages, framing the Philippines as a 'multi-lingual paradise.'

Uploaded by

Denisse Urian
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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A mansion of many languages

In 1977, my mentor, the poet and National Artist for Literature and Theater
Rolando S. Tinio, said: “It is too simple-minded to suppose that enthusiasm
for Filipino as lingua franca and national language of the country involves
the elimination of English usage or training for it in schools. Proficiency in
English provides us with all the advantages that champions of English say
it does. It gives us access to the vast fund of culture expressed in it and
mobility in various spheres of the international scene. This is especially true
in those spheres dominated by the English-speaking Americans. It also
helps us to participate in a quality of modern life of which some features
may be assimilated with great advantage.”

Professor Tinio continues: “Linguistic nationalism does not imply cultural


chauvinism. Nobody wants to go back to the mountains. The essential
Filipino is not the center of an onion one gets at by peeling off layer after
layer of vegetable skin. One’s experience with onions is quite telling: Peel
off everything and you end up with a pinch of air.”

English enrollment rising

Written 40 years ago, these words still echo especially now. By some quirk
of history and economics, enrollment in English courses are rising. This is
so because there are many vacant positions for teachers of English and
literature in private and public schools. Moreover, there are many
vacancies, still, for jobs in call centers with entry-level pay of P18,000 plus
a signing bonus. It is also a career that will make you earn twice your
present salary in just a few years. With the opening of the doors of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), more Filipinos are being
hired to teach English in the region.

Why? First, Filipino teachers will accept a pay scale lower than their
Western counterparts, a pay scale that is still higher than what they would
get in the Philippines. Second, they are conversant with American popular
culture, a happy (or unhappy) result of colonialism and neo-colonialism.
Third, they are still Southeast Asians beneath their skin and are thus
familiar with Asian cultural practices, whether said or unsaid. One is the
importance of saving face.
The meaning of “maybe” or “I will try” to an invitation means the invited
does not want to hurt you by giving a vague answer. Another is the primacy
given to family. Already in his 50s, one is still called Totoy or Baby or Blue
Boy, and still lives with one’s parents and extended family in the warm
cocoon of home. Meals are shared, stories swapped, Netflix passwords
given away, to kin who live just an arms’ length away from you. You can see
that, as well, in the other Southeast Asian countries. In these places,
families are nuclear and not split. Food is communal and not eaten in siloed
cubicles. I have lived in Singapore and Malaysia, and food is one good way
of keeping friends.

Mastery of two languages

Three long decades of teaching English and Filipino to students have


shown me that the best students in English are also the best students in
Filipino. And how did they master the two languages?

One, they had good teachers in both languages in their early years. Two,
they have inhabited the worlds of both languages—English in school; They
spoke English in social media, Tagalog at home, and Taglish with friends.
Three, they have gone beyond the false either-or mentality that hobbled
their parents’ generation. This either-or mentality was a product of weak
critical thinking.

Let me explain.

My best students in English and Filipino were taught by the crème de la


crème, many of them teaching in the private schools in Metro Manila and
the regions. At the Ateneo de Manila University, we used to have classes in
Remedial English, since renamed Basic English or English 1. These were six
units of non-credit subjects. These were intelligent students from the public
schools and the provinces. Lack of books and untrained teachers hindered
them from having a level playing field with the other freshmen. A year of
catching up was necessary for them to have the skills to put them at par
with the other students.

Moreover, I introduced them to the worlds of the language they were


studying. This can be in the formal realm of the textbook. It can also be
found in films, documentaries, graphic novels, YouTube video clips
or animes. I encourage them to keep a journal as well, which was not a diary
where you wrote what time you woke up and why. A journal, or its
cyberspace cousin, the Web log or blog, aims to capture vivid impressions
or moods on the wing. If at the same time it sharpens the students’
knowledge of English, then the English teacher is ready to sing hallelujah.

Bilingual students

Tthe third is that today’s generation is no longer burdened by the guilt of


learning English – and mastering it. I still remember the writing workshops
I took in the 1980s, when I was asked why I wrote “petit-bourgeois” poems
and stories in the colonizer’s language. The panelists said I should write
about workers and peasants – and that I should write in Filipino. Without
batting a false eyelash, I answered that unfortunately, I grew up in a military
base and knew nothing about the lives of workers and peasants. I added
that to write about something I don’t know would be to misrepresent them.
I could write about the lives of young soldiers and retirees fading into the
sunset. I could write about the lives of the brave soldiers’ wives and their
children. That I know only too well.

To the charge that I write only in English, I showed them my poems in


Filipino. The modern Filipino writer is not only a writer in either English or
Filipino. He or she writes in both languages, or in Cebuano or Bikolano or
Ilocano or Waray. These languages are like colorful balls he juggles with
the dexterity of a seasoned circus performer.

So it’s no longer choice between English and Filipino. Rather, it is now


English and Filipino, plus the language of one’s grandmother, be it Bikolano,
Waray, or Tausug. And in college, another language of one’s choice, be it
Bahasa Malaysia, German, or French. Learning other languages is good. It
gives you a better way to view the world from many windows. To learn a
new language is to see the world from another angle of vision. In short, one
no longer has to live between two languages, but to live in a mansion of
many languages.

To end in a full circle, we must return to Professor Tinio, who said: “Only the
mastery of a first language enables one to master a second and a third. For
one can think and feel only in one’s first language, then encode those
thoughts and feelings into a second and a third.” This, then, is the gist of
the mother-tongue approach to language learning, which the Department of
Education has finally adopted for our elementary schools nationwide.

In short, as Dr. Isabel Pefianco Martin, my friend and fellow professor at the
Ateneo de Manila University has put it: “The Philippines is a multi-lingual
paradise.” The earlier we know that we live in a paradise of many languages,
the better we can savor its fruits ripened by the sun

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