We’d like to believe that we deserve a society that treats people fairly regardless of how well they speak and write English and regardless of whether they speak it with a regional accent or not. We think, if we continue stomping our feet enough in a loud appeal to nationalist sentiment, that we could one day see a society where people with a fourth-grade level of English language proficiency are as well-regarded as those of us who are privy to the kind of thinking and knowledge that only the English language (as well as the languages of cultures with extensive track records of achievement) can efficiently convey.
Unfortunately what we think we deserve is not usually what we actually get.
Some people here may not have noticed it yet, but differences in degree of command over the English language across the population is one of the key polarising forces in Filipino society — whether we like it or not. That is the grim reality whether it be in the mad scramble for plum positions in Government and the corporate world or a competition of ideas bourne out of those rare bursts of thinking outside the square (more specifically, thinking outside of the square of Pinoy-grade thinking).
As I did write in my book:
Acquisition of knowledge – the fuel for intellectual advancement – is an unnecessarily challenging issue in Philippine Society. The few volumes of material containing useful information in, say Tagalog, being turned out by the heroics of a few purists – and translators – constitute a trickle compared to the torrent of knowledge that is churned out by the advanced world everyday. The Philippine Elite, armed with their private school or foreign university educations – and superior command of English – readily soak this all up. The masses, on the other hand, struggle to grasp the same ideas through severely limited communication faculties. The insult of an inability to acquire ideas articulated in English is added to the injury of their lack of access to quality education.
Thus, the obvious Truth stares us in the face:
:D English opens doors.
:D Excellent English gets you through those doors first.
Indeed.
It gets you the great jobs.
Dish out a good dose of the ol’ “Arrneo” accent and watch the smiles that follow in the faces of recruiters. Demonstrate consistent grammar, spelling, and sentence construction, and you find favour among managers who constantly fret over wasted time proofreading the reports and emails of the more vastly numerous products of the Philippines’ diploma mills.
It gets you the chicks.
Don’t believe all those Tagalog movies where Sharon Cuneta the kolehiyala falls for Robin Padilla the kanto boy. Those movies make a lot of money by playing on the sad frustrations and fantasies of the vast majority of Filipino males.
It gets you an audience.
An audience that matters, that is. Because, honestly folks, how much can one actually expect to learn from pandering to a crowd that finds comfort in re-assuring one another that being “down-to-earth” (read: mediocre) in English is “o.k.”? There’s a false sense of safety in the immense comforting numbers of Filipinos who come together in a gigantic love-in on the basis of a shared sense of exclusion from that tiny but elite world where world-class ideas are exchanged — and profitably exploited — in high-fallutin’ glory. They are the masses and therefore the audience that matters, some say. Suuure. And yet we tremble at the might they wield come election time. Why do we “tremble”? Because we have come to know the palpable stupidity of the popular vote. What then do we learn by pandering to them? Leave that effort to the politicians — a profession where even morons can succeed.
It so happens that the VAST majority of Filipinos are unable to cobble together an English paragraph without sporadically reverting to Tagalog words or simply turning the text into an incoherent spaghetti-like mishmash of subject-verb disagreements, inconsistent multiple clauses, and appalling application of idiomatic expressions (in the context of those, minor spelling oversights can be forgiven). Tragic when one considers how so many otherwise insightful ideas are not done justice by the people who wish to convey them, all because we prefer to find comfort in the warm fuzzy mediocrity of the vast majority.
The good news is that although I highlight that the tiny elite who enjoy an excellent command of English are overwhelmingly products of elite private schools, there are exceptional exceptions. You can see this in the few who have recognised what it takes to succeed in a society ravaged by a particularly debilitating strain of colonial mentality, and the broader reality of a world utterly dominated by a lingua franca that Filipinos once upon a time had a legitimate claim to mastery over in the region.
The bottom line is that English proficiency can be acquired regardless of the circumstances of one’s upbringing. One only needs to stare what is real in the face and recognise what it takes to succeed.
The alternative will be a pathetic resignation to a lifetime of demanding that those who think as a matter of habit dumb down the language that they use.
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Dude, where do you get all those pinup girl posters?
Forwarded emails, dude. :D
I’m running low on supply though…
Suliranin naman talaga ang pagkakahalo ng mga salita ng parehong wika maski ang iyong pangunahing wikang gamit ay Inggles o Filipino — nakasisira istruktura ng Inggles ang paghahalo ng mga salitang Filipino rito, at nakakasira din sa kasanayan sa wastong paggamit ng Filipino ang paghahalo ng Inggles. Sa katunayan ang resulta ng naturang walang-pakundangang paghahalo ay ang nakaiiritang dialekto na kung tawagin natin ay “konyo”.
Ang nais ko lamang idiin sa tuwing ihahain mo ang paksa ukol sa Inggles ay hindi dapat ito maging dahilan upang kalimutan ang sari-sarili nating wika, maging Filipino man, o Tagalog, o Bisaya, o Ilokano, etcetera. Sa aking obserbasyon sa Katagalugan, bagaman araw-araw ginagamit ang Inggles at ang Tagalog, napakarami ang hindi sanay sa wastong paggamit ng maski alin sa dalawang wikang ito.
Batid ng mga manunuri na ang multilingualismo, o kaalaman at pagsasanay sa higit sa dalawang wika, ay may kaukulang benepisyo sa ilang prosesong mental.
Samantalang nararapat lamang na ating pagibayuhin ang pagsasanay sa wikang Inggles, bilang lingua franca ng internet at ng isang globalisadong merkado, mahalaga rin ang pagsasanay hindi lamang sa pagsasalita, kundi maging sa pagsusulat, sa sari-sarili nating wika upang makuha ang mga benepisyo ng tunay na multilingualismo, at hindi maipit sa mababaw na bilingualismo na karaniwan sa ordinaryong Pilipino.
Wala akong problema sa pagka-multi-linggwal nating mga Pinoy. Ngunit sa iyong mga salita ika nga, ang Inggles ay ang lingua-franca sa lahat ng bagay na pinagmumulan ng essensyal sa kabuhayan ng mga Pinoy. Ang ating ekonomiya at lahat ng pasimuno ng hanap-buhay ng karamihang mga Pinoy ay nakasalalay sa kapital na nagmumula sa ibang sosyedad, tayo’y mga mistulang sunod-sunuran lamang sa amoy ng perang nagmumula sa ibayong dagat.
Samakatuwid, ang prioridad ng anumang pondong alokasyon sa edukasyon ay dapat ihanay sa pagpapalago ng mga abilidad na malaki ang kontribusyon sa pag-unlad ng kakayanan ng taong mag hanap-buhay. Batay dito, at kung talagang seryoso tayo sa pangarap nating bawasan ang kahirapan ng madla, masasabi ba nating prioridad na pagkagastusan ng napaka-limitadong pondong alokasyon sa edukasyon ang anumang bagay na di-ugnay sa pangangailangang mag-hanap buhay? Iilan ba talaga ang pangangailangan ng negosyo na tugma sa abilidad sa linggwaheng Tagalog kung ikukumpara sa oportunidad na ihinahain para sa mga magagaling mag-Inggles?
Mantakin natin ang oras at materyal sa klase na winawaldas sa pag-turo ng isang abilidad na wala namang naidudulot na dagdag na kaalamang tutulong sa pag-asenso ng tao.
Di mawawala ang pananagalog kahit na ito ay tanggalin nang tuluyan sa kurikulum ng pampublikong edukasyon. Ito’y mananatiling unang linggwahe ng Pinoy kahit na anong prioridad ang ibigay sa pagtutro ng Inggles. So ano ba ang ikinakatakot natin sa pag-prioridad ng Inggles sa pampublikong sistema ng edukasyon?
I agree that English language mastery is crucial for our nation (a second language like Spanish or Chinese would be ideal). In addition, we have to make sure that the teaching of science and mathematics should also be a priority. I notice that grad students coming from China and India exhibit above average math skills and they mostly do well here. If you are numerate as well as articulate in English, think of the doors that will be open to you.
Gaya na ng aking nauna nang nabanggit sa isa mo pang akda, naibalik na ang pagtuon ng pansin sa pagsasanay sa wikang Pilipino, lalo na’t umuusbong nang husto ang mga industriyang BPO, call center at IT.
Subalit hindi ako sang-ayon sa iyong sinabi rito:
Sa tingin ko, mapanganib ang implikasyon ng iyong isinaad sa itaas — sapagkat hindi lamang ang paksa ng Filipino ang tatamaan nito.
Kung susundan natin ang lohika ng iyong pahayag, bakit pa tayo magtuturo ng mga paksa katulad ng Araling Panlipunan (social studies), PE, Musika, at Literatura, samantalang hindi naman magagamit ang mga nabanggit na paksa sa pag-asenso ng tao? Nararapat bang isawalang-bahala na lamang ang mga paksang ito, kasama ng Filipino, sapagkat walang malinaw na kaugnayan ito sa “pag-asenso” ng isang tao?
Tutal nagiging nars lang naman na papuntang ibayong-dagat ang mga Pinoy, nararapat bang Biology at Inggles lang ang ituro sa mga paaralan?
Nais ko ding balikan natin ang kasaysayan, partikular ang panitikang Pilipino (Filipino literature), sa parehong Inggles at Tagalog. Sa panahon na iyong ginugunita — ang nakaraan kung saan may nakahihigit na husay ang mga Pilipino sa wikang Inggles — ay siya ring panahon kung saan umusbong ang kahusayan ng mga manunulat sa wikang Filipino. Ang kahusayan sa pagsusulat sa wikang Inggles nila Nick Joaquin, Jose Garcia Villa, atbp. ay siya rin namang katapat ng mga katulad nina Bienvenido Lumbera at Lope K. Santos sa wikang Filipino.
Hindi sagabal ang pagpapalagiw ng wikang Filipino sa edukasyon, kundi, isang pagkabigo ng sistemang pang-edukasyon ang humahadlang sa pagkawala ng naturang husay ng mga Pinoy sa wikang Inggles. Kasabay at kaakibat ng pagkawala sa husay sa Inggles ang patuloy ng pagbaba sa husay sa matematika (na walang kinikilingang wika) at agham. Ang pagsasaayos ng naturang sistema lamang ang makakapaniguro na mapagiibayo ang kahusayan sa Inggles, matematika, agham, at maging sa wikang Filipino.
Ambot ninyo dinha, bisaya kong dako. :lol:
“It gets you the chicks.
Don’t believe all those Tagalog movies where Sharon Cuneta the kolehiyala falls for Robin Padilla the kanto boy. Those movies make a lot of money by playing on the sad frustrations and fantasies of the vast majority of Filipino males.”
hahaha…depende kung sinong ‘chicks’ ang tinutukoy mo.
Too lengthy – going around in circles just to – open a simple idea that ‘elites are educated’.
How about use of objective data – numbers, figures, quantifications?
seryoso muna… ilang beses na rin tinalakay sa blog an isyu na language/mode/medium of instruction.
mahalaga ang ingles. Klaro ito.
pero hindi yan ang TAMANG TANONG na dapat sagutin ng mga lider sa edukasyon.
ang tanong: anong linguahe ang kailangang gamitin para makasiguro na natututunan ng kabataang pinoy ang dapat nilang malaman upang makipagsapalaran sa kahit ano mang larangang ninanais nila?
ang ingles ay isa sa mga lenguaheng kabilang sa comprehensibong sagot sa tanong na ito.
may kulang:
ang ingles ay isa lamang sa mga lenguaheng kabilang sa comprehensibong sagot sa tanong na ito.
Can I share what I learned from someone I admire on education?
Tell me first if it’s banned or not banned?
Banned. Next!
Excellent English gets you through the doors? What doors? The dunny door?!? (You see I have been infected by Australian humour!)
Nonetheless, before anyone can learn English, he/she should be able to think. And this is the faculty one needs and research findings suggest that this is best developed in the mother language of the child. When basic literacy and numeracy has been developed, then it’s time for learning English.
And dinky di mate. An Arrneow accent is hard to find, like a stubbie in the Nullarbor. In fact it is like plummy speech in Oz. Where can you find plummy speech nowadays? On Bourke Street? On Queen Street?
No amount of Arrneow accent can mask faulty thinking. This has indeed worried the Jesuits lately.
Bloody indeed mate!, You can learn good English in Australia. Now if you speak in Strine, that would shut the door on your dunny here!
blackshama: Making it sequential is your assumption. One can learn French and counting at the same time. Evidence — 4-year olds.
I presume French is the mother language of the child.
Banned. Okay no problem.
Just answer this question please – by what authority?
Nice to know one can deal with minds of a 4-year old.
Danger is, child abuse.
Just in asking, benign, why don’t you tell the collective, which door or what door have you so far opened and what plum corporate or government post did you find?
Stop going back to your boring linguistic groove, please!
Oh, the Media Dog of Bayani Fernando and Gloria Arroyo, speaks
like an expert.
I write TAGLISH, Any problem?
Anyway, are they paying you well from their loots? Your Masters
must be proud of you. I am buying the most effective dog tick
repellant to fumigate all embeded Media Dogs.
The problem with Filipinos is that we tend to be more over conscious with everything in English..well not only in English but in Tagalog as well. It’s not uncommon to see people and most especially the media to joke on regional accents and associating them with people from the lower strata…Bisaya accent – maid? This is the major mentality problem which hinders the development of communication. This is the primary reason why even for jobs as sales clerks, college graduate seem to be a requirement — communication skills are half-baked.
here in the US, people say ‘in the back’ rather than at the back. Then in the southwest, there aren people who’ll use don’t instead of doesn’t. Back in the Philippines, when a student would say in the back rather than at the back, eveyrbody giggles. The problem is not whether we should use English as often that our native language…the problem is the ingrained psych among Filipinos that English makes you ‘better’. Social climber mentality.
And the same applies for Filipino…which not different from Tagalog(nationalist strategy of Tagalizing the non-Tagalogs). There are people who will keep on asserting that Tagalog should be the primary language in the Philippines and should be used in school. There’s this mentality that when you speak Tagalog, you are nationalistic; you’re own native language -non-Tagalog, you are regionlistic/seccessionist; English- you are white-washed. False sense of nationhood.
“Sa katunayan ang resulta ng naturang walang-pakundangang paghahalo ay ang nakaiiritang dialekto na kung tawagin natin ay “konyo”.”
It depends how you see it..there are just people who try too hard to sound from the upper society but some, it’s natural. it’s like a loan word. It’s just like Filipinos using the term rotonda in Filipino English rather than roundabout. If the aim to to sound ‘sosyal’, there is something wrong with it. But if it’s just for the sake of loan words, no problem. US English got tons of words borrowed from Mexican Spanish…and when they use this word when speaking with British or Aussie peolple, the latter wouldn’t have any idea of the term..not unless they speak Spanish(preferrably Meican Spanish)
Yup. That’s how the de la Paz family got in trouble :lol:
and that’s how a smart-aleck nephew of a governor from a Luzon province got shot point blank after throwing his weight around in bisdakland :lol:
Hindi naman konyo/elite english vs. tambay english ang problema eh.
The greater concern here is functional language vs. non-functional language, e.g., nakakaintindi ba talaga ng Inggles ang isang tao sa isang antas o lebel na magagamit niya para maging produktibo sa buhay niya?
What benign0 is always trying to assert is that the inclusion of local languages in the curriculum (BTW, I am of the position that local mother tongues — NOT NECESSARILY FILIPINO/TAGALOG — should be used as medium of instruction in at least the earliest stages of education) is a waste of time.
One thing I’ve noticed, however, is that some taipans (Lucio Tan, particularly) are actually kings of borken English.
Maybe it depends more on a person’s ability to open doors for themselves?
The guiding principle here is all things being equal.
Obviously the Taipans possessed something else that made them successful in business (something to do with their being of Chinese descent, perhaps ;) ).
But all things being equal (in experimental jargon, controlling for all extraneous parameters), The Truth remains: (a) English proficiency opens doors, and (b) excellence in English gets you through those doors first.
It’s simple, really™
@B0:
wow! its coz their chinese that they are great? a malay-filipino is not EQUAL to chinese-filipino?
wow! thats pretty racist! :)
It does matter actually. Both Konyo and Tambay English disrespects the language. And more alarmingly, it creates the gap. Filipinos who think they speak with a neutral/american accent(which is just in their mind. If you look at it they speak a variant of Filipino English) think they are better in the language and proudly proclaim that they suck in Tagalog and throw insulting jokes at those with thick accent. Some even go far as saying that probinsyanos(aka people OUTSIDE metro manila) have regional defects(like there’s something wrong with their accents)! Like their Konyo speak doesn’t have any defect at all.
Wanna make tusok tusok to the fishball.
But then, the problem with the mother tongue issue that was never addressed is the case of multicultural cities.
In Manila, there are people who speak Tagalog, Bisaya, Ilonggo, Tausug, maranao as their native tongue.
In Baguio, a more interesting case than Manila, there are people who can speak Ilocano(the lingua franca) and there are don’t(esp the new immigrants from non-Ilocano speaking areas), and there are don’t who understand Tagalog well(many from the rural areas of CAR as well as the Ilocos and Cagayan Valley)… In this case, the solution would be ‘ethnic’ segregation if mother tongues are to be strictly used or forced assimilation. ike those who speak Ilocano would go to a school where Ilocano is the MOI and the Tagalogs go to the Tagalog schools, etc.. or the case of People who don’t speak Ilocano at all should be forced to learn Ilocano or else they won’t be able to follow the lessons, pass the test…
In Sagada, there are people whose native tongue is Ifontok, some, Kankaney. Which language is to use, eh?
In Buguias and Kapangan in Benguet, there are those whose mother tongue is Ibaloi, Kalanguya, or Kankanaey. Again, which MOI should be used?
Or the case of Tarlac which is a melting pot, Kapampangan, Tagalog, Ilocano or Pangasinense? Or ethnic segregation?
This pretentious promotion of mother tongue(which is disguised Tagalization) would end up being segregated, or just as bad, other ethnic groups have to be absorbed.
“One thing I’ve noticed, however, is that some taipans (Lucio Tan, particularly) are actually kings of borken English.”
I wonder if you evne have read my post or just assumed. I even mentioned that many Americans have numerous grammar and spelling erros as well as pronunciation, most notable the word almond.
my point: embrace English as our OWN, it’s been in the country for about a hundred years now. Let’s not repeat the same mistake we did with Spanish.
What the pseudo nationalists are doing with English is exactly the same thing they did to Spanish — eliminate it. The pseudo nationalists are subtly trying to TAGALIZE the country. And looking at the curriculum, why is it that only Tagalogs are ALLOWED to learn their language in school?
Visayans, Ilocanos, Iloggos, etc are forbidden by the law to sing the national anthem in their own respective languages. The irony, it was just ‘translated’ to Tagalog from Spanish.
“The greater concern here is functional language vs. non-functional language, e.g., nakakaintindi ba talaga ng Inggles ang isang tao sa isang antas o lebel na magagamit niya para maging produktibo sa buhay niya?”
Making English a regular part of the common Filipino will(along with the local languages). Look at SIngapore. The MOI is English even they speak different of languages. If Singapore can, why can’t the Philippines?
And your rhotic question(I assume) subtly imples that Tagalog(no matter how you say you are pro mother tongue yet you have failed to address the case of multicultural places) is MOI as it is widely used in the media