Why we can’t speak the same language

Media

Part of Panorama

Title: Why we can’t speak the same language
Creator: Ramos, Maximo
Language: English
Source: Panorama XII (10) October 1960
Year: 1960
Rights
Fulltext: So desu ka! Why We Can’t Speak the Same Language by Maximo Ramos J whole lot has been 2\1_ spoken and written about the language ills of our country. Should we keep English in our schools? Can we? Was it wise to start our child ren’s schooling in the vernacu lars beginning last school year? Are our vernaculars adequate means of communication in a technological world in which peoples speaking a wide variety of languages are meeting one another across the conference table as they could hardly have dreamt of doing not so long ago? Why did we add to our language headaches by requir ing our students in liberal arts, law, commerce, education and foreign service to present 24 units of Spanish before we grant them a college degree? These and numerous related questions have occupied our educational leaders for some time now and, on the whole, we have answers to them neatly for mulated and tucked back of our collective minds. What has not received the attention it de serves, however, is the body of sociological bearings of our lan guage situation. Frequently in history, lang uage has been used by an en trenched minority to dominate a population. Such of a minor ity may be the priestly class, a group of political schemers or a self-appointed upper caste. Just as literacy in a dead language October 1960 49 in China or Tibet and in Latin and Greek was employed by the class using its ability to read and write in that language as a means of controlling society, so has literacy in Spanish — and in more recent years English — which have been learned by re latively few of our people, been used by the social elite in this country to lord it over the ma jority. During the entire American regime, the ability to use Eng lish was the chief test for em ployment in the civil service. More than a decade after inde pendence, and in spite of the Constitutional injunction that we develop a national language based on one of the native ton gues, the ability to read and write in English is a prerequi site to the practice of the pro fessions: the board examina tions for instance, are all in English. A class language helps the members of the group using it to monopolize the cultural and so cial advantages in the commu nity. Thus in early modem Europe, since French was used as the language of the court, this helped the privileged classes preserve their feeling of belong ing to a brotherhood of the elite. Hebrew. Latin and Greek had earlier served their users in a similar way. In its time, Hebrew was considered the language spoken in Paradise. It was, therefore, believed to be the an cestor of all languages, and only those who spoke it were regard ed as truly patrician. Latin grammar used to monopolize the European child’s school hours, to the neglect of such subjects we now consider indis pensable to the child’s educa tion as science, arithmetic and social studies. Grammar was synonymous with Latin for cen turies, since only Latin was deemed worth studying. The traditional secondary school in England was known as the “grammar school” until almost yesterday, and in Denmark the secondary school is still known as “latinskola.” For Latin was the language of the Church and the universities. Those whose only languages were the “vul gar” tongues were fit to be ex ploited. Similarly, Spanish has long been a class language in the Philippines, and English, if we do not drop it or, keeping it, we do not upgrade the efficien cy with which we teach it to more of our people, may well become another class language in a few decades. Tach one of the colonial powers, as indeed each of the peoples of the world at all times, thought its language the most beautiful language ever spoken and the most adequate for the needs of mankind, * in cluding those who were unfor 50 Panorama tunately not able to learn it. The Spaniard, the American and the Japanese, unless he was of a scholarly turn of mind, never bothered to learn a Filipino lan guage when he was here. He held the native tongues in con tempt — thought them crude, unwieldy, completely inade quate for the communication needs of civilized society. Some writers, more fluent than re liable went so far as to try to make others believe that the language of a people was ac countable for their cultural achievement, or their lack of it. It used to be contended, for ex ample, that in chemistry the Germans were way ahead of other peoples because the Ger man language easily lent itself to the formation of new words, i.e., the chemistry of words. It was seriously claimed that Eng land was the first European state to become industrialized because the English people spoke English instead of Rus sian, German, French, or Italian. What these writers forgot is that functionally, as Richard T. La Piere has put it, “one lang uage is or can readily become just as good as another for any particular purpose.” It is true, of course, that European culture was in a number of ways super ior to that of the peoples the Europeans conquered. But the difference did not lie in any su periority of the European lan guages over those of the natives; it lay, rather, in the materials and methods for conquest the Europeans had perfected. J) REAMERS HAVE long envi sioned a world society whose members are bound to anoe another by common lang uage ties. Esperanto and the more recent Basic English have been advanced as languages that should unite the world by making it easier for people to communicate with one another. It is true that people are get ting to meet and know one an other better because new inven tions have made travel and communication faster. And it is true that the more people get to know and another the more they will find that they have a lot more things in common than differences among themselves. A world language, therefore might well be a means of blend ing the many dissimilar cultures of the human race. Unfortunately, the problem is formidable. For instance, there are at least 28 principal lang uages in the world each of which is spoken by at least 20 million people. The physical problem, alone, of disseminating a universal language all of them can use profitably seems insur mountable under our present political and technological ar rangement. Nor is the picture dim only October 1960 51 because of numbers. More im portant is the fact that language is deeply seated in the psycholo gy of the people who speak it, and it cannot be easily super seded either by edict or by cul tural domination. The sociolo gist Kimball Young has writ ten: “While technology and modern business, politics, sports and so on may have made for a kind of universal lingua franca in these matters, the deeper emotional meanings of culture, which are imbedded in speech and writings, serve as a basis for variability and separateness which cannot be gainsaid. Cer tainly any plan for an interna tional order must reckon with the linguistic factor if it is to fact reality.” Even more important is the fact that languages are constant ly being changed by those who speak them. Only a dead lang uage, one no longer spoken or written, does not change. Hence, even if the world’s three billion people were to speak the same language today, that language would not sound and look the same everywhere tomorrow. The ways in which the people spoke their old languages, plus their particular needs, chance a language. Note how the English spoken by Filipinos varies with the vernacular background of the speaker. Those who propose Esperanto and similar synthetic tongues make their own task even hard er by not stopping at the claim that their new language will unify the world. They also aver that the new language is super ior to any of the existing tongues in that it is more pre cise, more logical, more versa tile, more easy to learn. The proponents of these made-up languages forget that no lan guage, living, dead, or artificial, is superior to any other lang uage. To any given society the language that is the most useful the most adaptable, the easiest to learn, the most accordant with logic, the most musical and sonorous and mellifluous is its own language. The misconception about the alleged superiority of the lang uage to all others led to the myth of the superior race which saw in Hitler’s regime what tra gic excesses a foolish myth can lead to. The race myth is traceab’.e to certain doctrines of the later years of the 18th cen tury. Some imaginative writers of the time came up with the idea that what they called “na tional character” was all that ac counted for the differences in people’s cultures and institu tions. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, for example, claimed in his much-cited Address to the Ger man Nation (1807) that what gave rise to German culture was the unique quality of the Ger man language. The stress laid 52 Panorama by Fichte and his followers on the decisive place of the Ger man language in determining the German character as a peo ple triggered a series of reac tions. It gave rise, first, to the science of philology — certain ly a fruitful result. Philology, in turn, led to comparative studies on the languages and institu tions of the languages of Europe and Asia. Scholars were parti cularly fascinated by the simila rity between certain European languages and Sanskrit, the an cient languages of faraway In dia. The belief soon grew that Sanskrit was the original lang uage from which the European tongues were descended, Heb rew having long been deprived of that preeminence. Tt was all very fascinating in* deed, and for an entire gen eration after 1830, the philolo gists were engrossed in the nice game of tracing the origins, mi grations, and kinships of these languages which soon came to be known as “Indo-European,” “Indo-Germanic,” or just “Ar yan.” Before long, a doctrine which won wide support grew; this claimed that there had been a parent Aryan language and that a primordial Aryan race spoke it. This, it was held cer tain, explained the unmistak able resemblances between Sanskrit and the languages of Europe. From this point, it was only one short step to the claim of the cultural superiority of a race and the consequent call on such a race to save the world from barbarism. It could have been easy, of course, to show that contrary to such racist nonsense, race and language are not identical. Even a well unified race like the Am erican Indian, for example, has over 100 distinct languages, plus a far more numerous variety of dialects. Different races in some European states speak the same language, for language is no res pecter of national boundaries and historical barriers. T he races have also been assigned “temperaments” by superficial observers who fail to realize that the differ ences they see are merely caus ed by differences in gestural language. For example, the Western visitor’s idea that Fili pinos are a placid and unemo tional people, and on the other hand the Filipino’s idea that Westerners are by temperament violent and lacking in self-con trol may be traced to the fact that the Westerner uses more and livelier gestures in his lang uage than the Filipino. Our continued use of English and Spanish in our schools at the expense of our mother ton gues has hampered our artistic development as a people. Thought and language are inse parable: “It can be said that October 1960 53 the whole history of an area will be mirrored in the ways of sayins things, the ingenious mean ings words take on, the idioms, proverbs, humor, and the like.” Dr. Clifford E. Prator, who was Fulbright lecturer in the teach ing of English here some years ago and later wrote what is per haps the most definitive study of the language problems beset ting this Republic, has arrived at the conclusion that we Fili pinos are — to make a blunt summary of his chief finding — wasting our time on English. He goes on to say: “When com mand of the language is imper fect, then thinking is inhibited. If a man borrows a strange lang uage to express himself, at least part of his thought is also bor rowed and vital elements of his individuality are sacrificed. Yet true creativeness involves the fullest possible expression of self. . . Four centuries of colonialisrti have reduced Philippine cultural individuality to a low ebb. Much of the art, architec ture, music and literature of the Islands is unmistakably deriva tive. There can be no doubt that this cultural eclipse is due part ly to the long-continued neglect of the local languages in which the native culture found expres sion. In the eyes of the child who finds his natural medium of thought and communication almost entirely banned from school, the vernaculars lose pres tige. The child fatally develops an inferiority complex toward his own thinking.” To illustrate, thousands of Fi lipino children grow up bating or, at least, indifferent to Lapulapu, Diego Silang and even Gregorio del Pilar and Andres Bonifacio, all heroes in their an cestors’ long fight for liberation from their conquerors, because even some Filipino historians treat these men little better than hoodlums. One argument often advanc ed to frighten our people into continuing with our wasteful at tempts to master English and Spanish is that we have more than 80 vernaculars. As a mat ter of fact, however, too much has been made of the differ ences among Cebu Visayan, Ilo ilo Visayan, Tagalog, Ilocano, Bicol, Pangasinan, etc. The pro ponents of the foreign tongues blind us to the fact that the Philippine vernaculars are real ly variants of one and the same language; they have identical patterns of sound and structure. Dr. Cecilio Lopez, a Germantrained Filipino linguist, has compiled a list of some 2,000 words common to all the major Philippine vernaculars. Surely, with all the means of travel and communication that modem technology has made possible, a Filipino national language is bound to arise much faster than we have heretofore be 54 Panorama lieved possible. In the course of time, the dialectal differences between the Lancashireman and the Bedfordshireman have been blended out into modern Eng lish, and that between the Rhinelander and the Prussian into modern German. Without doubt, the differences among the Philippine vernaculars are bound to disappear and blend into a Filipino national lang uage, an outgrowth of Filipino culture. Philippine social life and Philippine history. Almost every country that has been faced with a language problem as knotty as ours has decided that each child’s educa tion should begin in his mother tongue, a transition being later made to the national or com mon language which is the prin cipal medium of instruction. In fact, there has been what amounts to a world-wide move ment in that direction. In Me xico, the school system saw a complete rejuvenation under Jaime Torres Bodet, the coun try’s minister of education and later the Secretary-General of UNESCO, who made general the use of the different Indian dialects in the first few grades of school. A carefully written series of bilingual primers is now being used in Mexican schools. Both Peru and Bolivia are final izing plans to follow Mexico’s lead in this program. Upon ad vice of American educators, Haiti has abandoned French in the first two grades of school and put the Creole vernacular in its place. The American au thorities in Puerto Rico have re luctantly, but finally, accepted the hard fact that it is Unwise to continue using English as the vehicle of instruction in the grades. In all the dominions and colonies of the British Em pire, the children’s native tongue is now used as the language of the first few grades of school. hat is the probable out come of our langauge si tuation? Do our native tongues have a chance of survival? They have no influential backers, and their literature is, admittedly, not exactly rich. But they be long to the population, and they have proved their durability by surviving half of millennium of linguistic colonialism. A Filipino writer who has pro duced a considerable body of highly competent English prose, having been writing in the lang uage since 1930, summed up the whole situation in a remark he made to me soon after he re turned from Korea and Japan where he had gone on a writing scholarship. “I never realized how silly we Filipinos have October 1960 55 been in trying to use English un til I heard two Koreans trying to speak to each other in Eng lish.” ¥ ¥ * Is That So? “I hear that your uncle who tells those tall tales has a slight cold.” "He’s dead” “Still exaggerating, huh?” Is There Such an Animal? Husband: “It says here that the musk ox of the far north is not really an ox at all, but a member of the sheep family” Wife: “Well, just who is he trying to fool?” A Juvenile Report Y SMALL DAUGHTER had spent some time with ’’ her grandmother and broke something for which she had been reprimanded. A few days later, she was listening to a discus sion a friend and I were having about weapons, and afterward my daughter asked me what the word meant. I answered that it usually referred to an ob ject that did damage. She thought about this for a moment, then asked in a little voice, “Mother, am I a weapon?” ---- MRS. W. H. DE MOURE ¥ 56 Panorama
pages: 49-56