By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
Ordinary Cordillerans appear to have lost their facility over the English language. Gone were the days when tourists would be greatly surprised to find out that even the ordinary sidewalk vendors had an understandable command of the language.
There is one thing though we did not have back then that the Cordilleran youth have now. Their facility over the Tagalog language which we insist on calling Filipino (Pilipino during my school days). You would not notice they are Cordillerans. Back then, one could easily conclude a person was from these mountains by his dialectal accent especially when speaking Tagalog, aside from his usually obvious lack of concern on his being cheaply dressed. For we did not give much care to fashion flair, much less to wearing expensive items from established fashion lines or brands.
So we are losing the lingua franca while gaining Filipino. Is this good or bad? But why don’t we have both. For the world has become so small and any country is better off having a good command over its brand of English. To hell with the so called Queen’s English. All we need is a good command of English as a second language. People speaking a second language will surely inject their own idiosyncracies, culture, traditions, history and other traits, until the language becomes their own. So we have our Filipino English and we should be proud of it as the British would snottily flaunt their Queen’s English. We should also snottily flaunt our Igorot English as much as Du30 is hurling everywhere his Bisaya English generously interspersed with cuss words.
But we should be understandable to foreigners so we could be employable or worth dealing with in the international scene. For it would be meaningless for us to forsake the world with everything Filipino. Because what do we have here anyway? Politicians who only talk big but could not provide enough jobs for their people.
Before we leave the subject on the lingua franca, there was a time when the lingua franca was French. This was when Napoleon Bonaparte almost conquered the whole world. The vestiges of that time are the French phrases with their funny pronunciation in International Law or Foreign Relations. Those who want to enter the Foreign Service or to become diplomats have to have a relatively good command over the French language. Now, the lingua franca that evolved is English.
A lingua franca is very important especially during these times when the world has become so small. It facilitates international understanding and cooperation—and subsequently sharing in the technological and economic development. Just the other week I met an Igorot client who just arrived from abroad. The first question I asked her was: “Where did you come from? Australia, America or the UK.” She has children in all those places. Surely her frequent travels abroad was made better with our Filipino English.
As a Baguio native who works as an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher in the US where she became a citizen once related to me, one of her students there who hailed from Egypt walked in the middle of the road instead of the sidewalk because he did not like people to talk to him in English. It turned out that he did not even know a single grammatically correct English sentence when he landed on one of the airports of California.
The point is we have been steadily losing one of our advantages which is our command of English as a second language. While it might not be the same in other aspects of our lives such as in our command of technology, what is certain is we are lagging behind in many aspects compared to other progressive countries.
One big reason for this is our being poor readers. Many are even non-readers. And so many of our readers don’t have the strength to apply in practical life what they have read.
How many people are avoiding lifestyle diseases by changing their lifestyle as is being said in all written media of communication? How many are imitating feel good stories about economic success of hardworking individuals being published all the time everywhere? How many are being conned by schemers due to their non-reading habits or ignorance? Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Hence, everyone has to help out. Convince anybody you can to read. This could turn out to be the biggest help for others. More so with the proliferation of theinnumerable electronic gadgets anyone could buy around for misplaced entertainment.**
