regarding english in the philippines. its slide into spanish status amongst the locals
- From: Helen dila <socculturefilipino@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 17:18:04 -0700
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To: "Placido Calderon" <placido05@xxxxxxxxx>
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Subject: Re: The death of the Spanish language in the RP?
Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 01:29:21 -0700 (PDT)
This is fact, although people might refute it, you never lose your native
tounge, you just forget some of the words, but hearing it again after 40
or more years you remember.
Those who claim they forgot after 7 years is fooling no one, I met an
engineer while working for G.E. and he had been in the US since 1958, and
was only back a year or so but he speaks good old Tagalog, a language that
a street kid like me never use. But studied.
That was 20 years! Then after 15 years I returned to Pinas for the first
time, I picked the language up as if I never left, and I lived with
Americans most of that time. Rural America. Not California at all.
Anyway, Americans did not force Spanish out, they do wanted it out but
they also needed a single language to deal with Filipinos, although there
are more Filipinos who can speak Tagalog (although not as a first
language), Americans cannot use it but they do have Spanish speakers and
that is what they used first. After all, Spanish is understood all over
the country, although broken or as a working language, which is similar to
English usage in Pinas now.
Spanish still exist and used by Filipinos but it is no longer feasible
economically to publish anything in that language.
This is normal. Someday English will go the same way, in fact an American
expat wrote about this several times, he didn't like it. My grandfather
wrote the very same thing but about Spanish back in 1920's.
Placido Calderon
TI:
Thanks for your e-mail. The Philippines has become so international that
we are now in the forefront of learning other foreign languages in
addition to our indigenous tongues. Many of our people speak English so
much that some tell people that they have already forgotten how to speak
their own native language(s). That was true when I was a student at the
UP when someone kept on talking to me in English alleging that she
already forgot how to speak Tagalog.
When I came to visit my father's hometown for the first time in 23
years, that was in 1993, I met a townmate from the USA who was also
visiting my father's hometown and he refused to speak to me in Tagalog
alleging again that his being in California for 7 years made him forget
Tagalog. I told him that I had been in the USA since 1964 and the year
1993 was my 19th year in the USA and I still could speak Tagalog
fluently and even much better when I left the RP in 1964. I also
refused to speak English when I came to the RP in 1993 when people there
started conversing with me in English. I politely responded in Tagalog.
I did speak Spanish to one resident of Baler who was from Cuba and
spoke broken Tagalog.
Manuel Faelnar and other critics of the Tagalog language and also those
in the Hispano Filipino group will not like your article even though it
is factual. As they say truth hurts.
As regards the impending demise of English, I do not foresee it that
way. English will be there as we use it in the Universities and
Colleges, in television, newspapers, et cetera. What we will have is
Taglish as they are having in Singapore which is called Singlish from
Chinese and English. We already have Taglish in the form of
Senatoriables, Presidentiables, flying voters, brown outs, et cetera, I
met an accident instead of saying I was in an accident (a car accident).
But again language is a living matter and only time will tell how rapid
will be the absorption of English from the non-British world in the
international English dictionary.
Eddie
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