A MANSION OF MANY LANGUAGES

(1) 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.”

(2) 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.”

(3) 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 Indonesia, Thailand, and, yes, even our best friend, China.

(4) 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. 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.

(5) 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?

(6) 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.

(7) Let me explain.

(8) 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.

(9) 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 anime. 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 postmodern 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 that is already hallelujah for the English teacher.

(10) The third is that today’s generation of students is no longer burdened by the guilt of learning English – and mastering it. I still remember those writing workshops I took in the 1980s, when I was asked why I wrote bourgeois 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 an eyelash, I answered that I don't know anything about workers and peasants, and to write about something I don't know would be to misrepresent them. To the charge that I write only in English, I showed them my poems in Filipino, because the modern Filipino writer is not only a writer in either English or Filipino, but a writer in both languages, or in Bisaya or Bikolano or Ilocano or Waray, languages that are like colorful balls he or she juggles with the dexterity of a seasoned circus performer.

(11) So it's not a choice between English and Filipino, but rather, 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 Indonesia, German, or French-the better to view the world from many windows, since 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.

(12) To end in a full circle, we must return to Rolando S. 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."

(13) In short, as a friend and fellow professor has put it, "The Philippines is a multi-lingual paradise." The earlier we know we live in a paradise of many languages, the better we can savor its fruits ripened by the sun.