Category: tagalog

almario, pilipinas, revolution

so, finally national artist and KWF chief virgilio almario is engaging with mainstream and social media re the renaming of country.  he’s been on radio and television, and KWF’s facebook page has a Q & A primer of sorts and other essays, and on katrina’s wall i saw part of a letter from almario to his supporters where he claims that the change from pilipinas to “filipinas” is revolutionary, or something to that effect.

he seems to have backed down on “burahin ang philippines,” which is good.  the philippines in english stays, but pilipinas in tagalog/filipino he still wants to kill and replace with “filipinas” so as to be consistent daw with “filipino” the language.  e what if, para consistent, yung “fiipino” the language na lang ang ibalik natin sa “pilipino” na ginagamit pa rin naman ng maraming pilipinong hirap magsambit ng “ef” sound?  ay, kakailanganin ng charter change, ‘no?  ‘wag na lang, let’s just leave it as is.  anyway it won’t be the first time that the constitution is defied (think dynasty).

sabi rin ni almario, dito LANG daw sa atin tinatawag na “pilipinas” ang bansa — in europe daw, lalo na in spain, we are known either as the philippines or filipinas.  kaloka.  papalitan natin ang matagal nang tawag natin sa ating bansa dahil “filipinas” pa rin ang tawag sa atin ng spain?  hello?  pakialam ko sa spain.

and what about this: “pinoy” and “pinay” come daw from the last two syllables of “pilipino” and “pilipina”, and pinas from the last two syllables of “pilipinas,” therefore changing to “filipinas” won’t change it to “finoy” and “finay” or “finas.”  i am in complete agreement with prof lilia quindoza-santiago on this.

… tungkol sa palayaw na “Pinoy” at “Pinay” na sabi ay galing sa ikatlo at ikaapat na pantig NG FILIPINAS – paano KAYA natiyak ng KWF ito? Patunayan sa bisa ng estadistika at masusing pananaliksik! Sa kalaganapan ng gamit ng Pilipinas, maaaring may timbang pa rin ang unang titik at pantig na /Pi/, sige nga mapapatunayan ba ninyo na yung ikatlo at ikaapat na pantig ang pinagmulan ng Pinoy at Pinay? THIS IS REALLY AND TRULY ABSURD!

indeed.  show us the proof.  it is even more likely that “pinas” comes from “naspi,” early slang for pilipinas among musikeros abroad, a la yosi for sigarilyo, first and last syllables reversed.

ayon pa  kay almario, walang batas na nilalabag kung papatayin o pipigilin ang “pilipinas” in favor of “filipinas.”  pero kahit na.  changing the name of the country is no small matter.

prof lilia:  ang pagbabago ng pangalan ay isang desisyong legal – kahit naman sa indibidwal, hindi mo basta-basta mapapalitan ang iyong pangalan, kelangan pumunta ka sa korte at manghingi ng legal na kautusan para mapalitan, kahit iisang letra lang ng iyong una, pangalawang ngalan at apelyido.  E ganito ang batas para sa pagpapalit ng ngalan ng isang tao, hindi ba mas dapat sundin ito sa pagpapalit ng ngalan ng bansa?  Tawagin na ninyo akong legalistic, but that’s what it is folks.  Walang mangyayari sa resoulusyon ng KWF na ito kung hindi gagawing batas ang pagpalit ng ngalan ng Pilipinas para ito itatak sa ating pasaporte.  Ibig sabihin, in William Faulkner’s words, this is all “sound and fury signifying NOTHING.”

besides, changing what almost a hundred million filipinos call their country simply cannot be, should not be, a decision for government to make.  if at all, it should be a response to already widespread use of “filipinas,” if ever.

isa pa, ano ba talaga ang itinawag ni bonifacio sa bansa?  pilipinas o filipinas?

Ipinaliwanag ni Almario na ang “Filipinas” ang orihinal at opisyal na pangalan ng bansa hanggang sa dulo ng ika-19 siglo at ginamit ni Jose Rizal sa kanyang mga gawa at ni Andres Bonifacio sa kanyang tulang “Katapusang Hibik ng Filipinas.” 

but if you google  Katapusang Hibik ng Flipinas, the search engine gives you links to Katapusang Hibik ng Pilipinas instead.  so, ano ba talaga?  this is no small matter either.

which brings me back to revolution and this quote (from a letter almario wrote to his supporters) that katrina posted on facebook:

“Ang “Filipino” at ang “Filipinas” ay kinatawan lamang ng nabubuong pambansa at makabansang rebolusyon, isang bagong himagsikan mula sa kultura ng korupsiyon at kamangmangan na umiiral sa ating kasalukuyang “Pilipinas,” tungo sa higit na pagkakaisa at kaunlaran ng sambayanan.” — Virgilio Almario.

medyo over the top, thus drawing this rejoinder from prof. lilia:

Lilia Quindoza Santiago  Kung laganap ang korupsiyon at kamangmangan sa kasalukuyang “Pilipinas”, babaguhin ba ito ng pagpapalit pangalan patungong Filipinas? Paano? Paano nga ba nagaganap ang pagbabago ? – Ito ba ay idinidikta ng otoridad mula sa mga nakaluklok sa posisyon sa gobyerno o mula sa mga mamamayang nagnanais ng pagbabago? Ano ang ikinaiba ng analysis na ito sa narinig ko na ( at ayaw kong paniwalaan) na “damaged culture’ ng mga tao sa arkipelago?

for a language to be revolutionary, for language to bring national unity and progress sans corruption, it would have to be truly a language of the masses, and not some laboratory version that doesn’t make sense.

WIKA NATIN ANG DAANG MATUWID, says the cover photo of KWF’s facebook page, apparently in celebration of Buwan ng Wikang Pambansa and some Pambansang Kongreso sa Wika in august.

WIKA NATIN ANG DAANG MATUWID.  our language is the straight path?  really?  a language that ‘s killing off more and more tagalog words and taking in more and more english ones and even ispeling them the tagalog way so that matitisod ka at mapapaisip muna, o tatamarin ka na lang magbasa at magsulat?

or is it, the straight path is our language?  what straight path.  at least di ko na naririnig yung kung-walang-corrupt-walang-mahirap line, i suppose dahil di naman kayang panindigan.  it’s time to drop daang-matuwid too, methinks, because it’s just another road that has the oligarchy and its minions laughing all the way to the bank, as always.

WIKA NATIN ANG DAANG MATUWID?  come on, KWF, you can do better than that.

 

patayin ang ‘pilipinas’ ?!?

believe it or not.  the komisyon sa wikang filipino (KWF), based in malacanang, and headed by national artist virgilio almario aka rio alma, saw fit to pass a resolution last april 12 that would change the nation’s name, from philippines (of american times to today) and pilipinas (of lope k. santos’ time to today) to filipinas (of spanish times only).  why?  read Patayin ang ‘Pilipinas’ by almario himself.

not surprisingly, pinagtawanan ito sa social media. paano na nga naman: it’s more fun in filipinas?  it’s more fun in the filipinas?  in las filipinas?  any of the above, ang fangit.  but seriously, i share the sentiments of these facebook friends:

Zeus Salazar: hindi ko yata mabibigkas ang ‘ep’. ito naman ang kabulastugang ifinalulunok sa atin dahil sa kabulastugang ifinalunok sa atin noong dekada 1970 nang pinalitan ang ‘pilipino’ ng ‘filipino’ para di-umano maging katang-tanggap ang wikang pambansang base sa tagalog sa lahat. hanggang ngayon pilipino o tagalog ang tawag dito ng nkararaming pilipino. mamaya-maya tatawagin naman ng mga may pakana nito ang ‘pilipinas’ na ‘filipinas’ kahit na hindi natin mabigkas ito. wala na ibang magawa sila, yung may katuturan naman at intelehente. kung lagi na lamang mapapalit kung anu-ano, ano ba ang magiging permanente sa atin. pasiya ba ito ng bayan?

Adam David: Nais ko ring magsangguni ng pagpapalit ng paggamit ng pangngalan/pangalan na simpatiko at romantiko sa ating kasaysayan ng kolonyalismo: “comfort women” imbis na “biktima ng panggagahasa sa panahon ng digma.”

Nawa’y ipagpatibay ang paggamit ng katagang ito para sa ikauunlad ng modernong bansang Filipinas.

 Marck Ronald Rimorin: …this should be made clear: the key stakeholders in the name of a nation are the people, not the office in charge of language (or the poet in charge of that office). “Filipinas” may be correct, but that doesn’t mean “Pilipinas” is wrong. And any sort of “pagpipigil” to use the latter is another height in the peaks of apog.

Adam David: I dunno, Ser Rio, China and Japan seem pretty unified to me, despite various names for their countries/nations/citizens even within their respective countries all these centuries. Try again after another twenty years?

Marck Ronald Rimorin: To be out of touch with the people’s language is to be out of touch with the people. The ivory tower is often just a pile of lime.

i agree too with neil garcia’s response to jerry gracio’s fb status:

Jerry Gracio: Okay, I signed KWF Resolution No. 13-19, s. 2013, so I am for “Filipinas”. Dahil may “F” na sa Filipino alphabet at dati nang may “F” ang mga katutubong lengguwahe sa Filipinas tulad ng Ivatan, Tiruray, Bontoc, Igorot, Bilaan, Tiboli, etc. Maniwala kayo, hindi ito dahil sa mga layuning pambakla: para matanggap na sa lengguwahe ang “fafa” at “fadir”. Mareremedyuhan nito ang problema kung bakit Philippines ang bansa natin pero Filipino ang ating nationality at wika. Totoong hindi nito masasagot ang iba pa nating problema, tulad ng kahirapan, korapsyon, etc.–rebolusyon ang kailangan natin para matapos ang mga ito. Nahihirapan tayong tanggapin ang “Filipinas” dahil maiksi ang ating memorya: naalala natin ang “Pilipinas” na lumitaw lang noong ika-20 siglo at lumaganap noong 1950s, pero hindi na natin maalala na “Filipinas” ang pangalan ng ating bansa mula noong 1543, at “Filipinas” ang tawag sa ating bansa ng ating mga bayani sa panahon ng Rebolusyong Filipino. Naniniwala ako, masasanay din tayo sa Filipinas.

J. Neil C. Garcia:  sorry, jerry, the rationale being presented just isn’t good enough, to my mind.  remember that we are not fighting over letters here.  the f sound might as well be spelled as ph, for finally the letters of the alphabet are nothing if not phonetic approximations of actual speech.  the existence of this sound in our local languages isn’t the issue, really. read more closely: the argument being pushed is ‘historical’: filipinas was the name actually given by villalobos to these islands, which–we must remember–wasn’t really this country yet, not in terms of geography, nor certainly in terms of consciousness and/or identity. it is precisely by virtue of a historicizing perspective that we must accept pilipinas and philippines.  pilipinas is a localization–a creolization–of this original hispanic name, and the simple truth is that both it and philippines (the anglicized version of filipinas) have already achieved a reality in both national and transnational senses–both are already what we, and our country, have come to be.  i don’t see what purpose this orthographic revision will serve in our nation’s ‘being/becoming.’

ang dami nating language and identity problems, and ‘pilipinas’ is not one of them.  sana magpakatino na ang KWF at baguhin naman ang priorities, iakma naman sa nangyayari on the ground, tanggapin na laganap na ang tagalog (yes, tagalog pa rin ang tawag ng nakararami sa national vernacular), tanggapin rin na hindi ito ang klaseng ‘filipino’ (the language) na in-envision o type nila, but hey it’s alive and kicking, playful and irreverent as always, except that it’s gotten so grammatically and semantically sloppy.  i don’t know about the teleseryes, but both the english and tagalog of newscasts leave much to be desired.

check out james soriano, wikang pambansa 101, scroll down to lem garcellano’s rant on broadcast media’s faulty tagalog.  hindi ba ito dapat ang pinapakialaman ng KWF?  the commission has access to government tv, bakit hindi mag-produce ng isang programa na magmo-monitor at magkokomento, magwawasto, kapag may naririnig o nababasa na maling tagalog.  for starters.

the question being asked, of course, is, sino bang kikita dito?  sinong kikita kung maging batas ito at simulan ang pagpalit ng pangalan ng pilipinas sa mga kuwarta ng bayan at mga karatula at letterhead ng gobyerno?  raket lang, di ba.  utang na loob, sobra na, tantanan na ang bayang pilipinas.

what offends me most is that, to explain the killing of ‘pilipinas’, almario throws at us an essay he wrote 20 years ago (!) as he can’t be bothered, twould seem, up in his ivory tower, to come up (down) with something current for us lowly earthlings, how arrogant naman.  o baka naman na sa 1992 pa rin siya, national artist award and all, and he has nothing new to say to nation?  maliwanag kung gayon na napag-iwanan na siya ng panahon and he has no business messing around with our notions of nation and language.

*

Filipinas at Pilipinas bilang pangalan ng bansa ni Danny Arao

What the F by Marck Ronald Rimorin

WFT KWF! or what is wrong with Pilipinas? by radikalchick

 

More than a century of Lope K. Santos’ Banaag at Sikat

By Elmer Ordoñez

As a columnist in English I cannot ignore intellectual trends in Filipino, which has been the preferred language of many professors in their fields (notably Ateneo, UP, La Salle, all elite schools) – which is only just and necessary in a country whose discourses are dominated by English.

Maria Luisa Torres Reyes’ Banaag at Sikat: Metakritisismo at Antolohiya (NCCA, 2011) is one of numerous examples of scholarship in Filipino. This belies the hoary claim of the elite in English that Filipino does not have the vocabulary for intellectual discourse. An Ateneo professor of English, Torres Reyes edits KritikaKultura, a bilingual e-journalon linguistic studies, literature and culture.

Her book is metacriticism, the study of criticism or reception of Lope K. Santos’ Banaag at Sikat since 1907. Santos’ novel (along with its criticism in Filipino) established early enough the capability of Tagalog for handling ideas like socialism.

As editor of Muling Pagsilang, the Tagalog version of El Renacimiento, Santos published in his weekly journal excerpts of his novel Banaag at Sikat for almost two years – read by the intelligentsia and the workers involved in struggle in the first decade of American Occupation. The novel was issued in book form (1906).

Lope K. Santos took over the labor movement, together with Crisanto Evangelista, Herminigildo Cruz, and others when Isabelo de los Reyes and DominadorGomez were arrested for leading mass actions of workers in 1902 and 1903 respectively. Both leaders of the Union Obrero Democratico de Filipinas were “balikbayan” ilustrados who brought with them books on socialism which circulated among nationalists and labor leaders. Santos peppered his novel with discursive passages – uttered by progressive characters like Delfin and Felipe and in exchanges like those between Delfin and lawyer Madlang Layon — alluding to socialist thinkers like Marx and Engels, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Proudhon and Malatesta.

Santos was 25 years of age when he wrote Banaag at Sikat in the thick of labor organizing and demonstrations. (Rizal was 23 when he wrote Noli Me Tangere). Anarcho-syndicalism was the dominant ideology at the time. Crisanto Evangelista persevered in the labor movement (ultimately becoming a Marxist-Leninist when he founded the Partido Komunistang Pilipinas) while Santos (heavily indebted because of his novel) was elected to represent labor in the First Philippine Assembly in 1907, and later to the Senate. He also became governor of Rizal and director of the Institute of National Language (Surian ng Wikang Pambansa).

The critical reception of Banaag at Sikat began right after its publication with an introduction by Santos’ colleague Gabriel Beato Francisco who felt that while the novel was meritorious it was too early (“hindi pa panahon”) for socialism. This was countered by Godofredo Herrera in a three-part essay, followed by Manuel Francisco in a two-part essay, agreeing with Gabriel Francisco. Herrera had a rejoinder in two parts, and so did Francisco also in two parts.

No reviews came out in the 20s. There was renewed interest in the 30s when Teodoro Agoncillo commented that the novel was a “socialist tract” implying it was propaganda and not “literary.” The ‘formal’’ weaknesses (e.g. the didacticism) of the novel were echoed in Juan C. Laya’s review in 1947, and those of Romeo Virtusio and Vedasto Suarez in the 60s, and Rogelio G. Mangahas in 1970. Epifanio San Juan, Jr. using the Marxist approach wrote that contrary to what critics had said about the long speeches, the latter were integral to the thrust of the socialist novel. Comments in passing or as parts of critical essays of other writers (Macario Adriatico, ResilMojares, Soledad Reyes, Virgilio Almario, Inigo Regalado, and others) are cited in Torres Reyes’ assessment.

In 1980 Gregorio C. Borlaza tried to connect the novel to the aims of the “Bagong Filipinas” of the Marcos regime. His essay appropriates the novel to suit the purposes of the New Society – like what was done to a progressive film “Juan Makabayan” where at the end was the claim that agrarian reform was already being carried out.

Torres Reyes noted that formalist or normative criticism runs through the essays and notes except for that of San Juan.Jr., and that there is consistent “dichotomizing” of the dualisms “form and theme,” “intrinsic v. extrinsic,” and “text and context.” The prevailing aesthetics during the turn of the century could only be what was taught in Ateneo or UST which surely included Aristotlean notions of plot, character, conflict/resolution and themes carried over to the University of the Philippines where Agoncillo imbibed the craft of fiction in the 30s. New Criticism, Marxist, Freudian and archetypal approaches may have informed the criticism produced during the 50s through the 70s—.followed by structuralism/post structuralism and post-modernism. Subjective or impressionistic criticism plays a role in judging literary works.

Torres Reyes’ metacriticism is one of its kind. While there may have been studies of the history of criticism in the country, Torres Reyes’ focus on a particular book generates interest in the contexts of the novel and the author, his times or milieu, influences, his literary contemporaries (like Valeriano Hernandez Pena, Modesto Santiago, Francisco Lacsamana, Faustino Aguilar and the “seditious” zarzuelistas) at a crucial period – whence took place the beginnings of the workers movement and its repression, the staging of nationalist plays, the ban on the Filipino flag and the hanging of patriot Macario Sakay as a “bandit,” parliamentary struggle for independence, proletarian or social realist literature in what some call the “golden age” of the Tagalog novel.

After more than a century Banaag at Sikat, for all its “esthetic” shortcomings, has a secure place in the literary canon as the first proletarian novel in the country.

rizal, tagalog, nation

it’s really too bad that we haven’t tried hard enough as a people to develop tagalog into a national language.   then maybe we would have a better sense of national interests as opposed to foreign interests, and we could be making decisions among ourselves first before outsiders with vested interests start weighing in.

read Rizal’s open secrets by john nery.   rizal and del pilar in their correspondence 1889 to 1890 turned from spanish to tagalog for a “layer of privacy”, “to wrap something in (or bind themselves to) secrecy”, and “to forge a unity of purpose” at a time when “the question of language was becoming more and more central to their attempt to found a nation.”

read too dr. pablo s. trillana III‘s Rizal and leadership.