I have been reading, or rereading, Philippine prehistory quite recently. For one, the task had something to do with lifting the sheer weight of academic demands off my shoulders. After all, I am a student first and last. But everywhere between being a student dwells my being a Filipino, which leads to the other reason why I willingly took the effort to browse Felipe Landa Jocano and Renato Constantino texts. For the most part of my high school life, I was raised to read books on Philippine history which spoke little, if there was any, about Philippine prehistory. Of course, history and prehistory are two different things. Still, one cannot help but wonder why so little has been taught in learning institutions about that point in time when the hearts of our ancestors throbbed with the fullest manifestation of life. The reason why I said that is because there seems to be a whole universe of truth in the idea that you do not have national identity, you forfeit your existence. Or you do have one but you willingly want to dispose of it, you might as well simply want to evaporate in thin air.
I recall our classroom discussions with one of our professors. She handled our legal history class, and for each class session one cannot help but easily notice the passion she had for defending our rightful claim to a national consciousness. She is a well-traveled woman who never fails to take stories upon her return to our country. At one time, she recalled how one taxi driver got infuriated at them. She and her friend were in the streets of Italy and they hailed a cab. In an attempt to secure the direction they were heading, her friend spoke to the chauffeur in Italian and asked him questions in the same manner, ostensibly an effort to be better understood. Surprisingly, her attempt drove the Italian driver mad. "You foreigners speak my language in a bad way," the driver grumbled, "you are being disrespectful. How would you feel if your own language is butchered?"
Apparently, or as things turned out, my professor and her friend had to walk their way home.
The moral of that fateful encounter is clear. You cannot blame the Italians, or at least the taxi driver, for having a strong attachment to what forms a part of his heritage. He strongly believed in his conviction that his own language is not to be played with. He strongly believed in his conviction that his own identity is not to be trampled with. Not a single person in this world has the privilege, nay the right, to butcher a parcel of his national consciousness. To others, it might swiftly pass as a simple case of an honest inquiry mistaken for disrespect. To his mind, however, it was an unmistakable example of outsiders usurping your country's tongue and twisting it in shapes and sizes in the hope of mimicking or making a parody of the genuine.
Well, how would we feel if our language is butchered? I do not know. I do not know whether to laugh or to cry just at the thought of foreigners speaking our language in slang fashion. You do not have to look far enough to see classic examples of it. For one, you have the Americans. They tell you "a-dow-bow" instead of adobo. They tell you "akow" instead of ako. They tell you "it-lowg" instead of itlog. Feel free to add words of your own. Suffice it to say, though, that they tend to morph our words in a way akin to their Western phonetics. And how do some others feel towards all these? There's the rub. Some would easily pass them off as jovial or mirthful tries at talking to us in a way we could understand. I surmise a wide majority of us tend to place them under the same light. You hear the Yankees struggling to make a parody of our local lexicon at the least, you readily laugh at them as if nothing was lost in the process. Some others would greet it with a middle finger which, of course, doesn't put us in a good light either.
As Jocano says, and because we are trained in an educational system patterned after our colonizers, "our heritage appears to be shallow with no life force of its own, no dynamism within itself, no roots to stand on its own". There's an odious deficiency on how we teach our students the very roots of our nation. To abandon that duty all the more, or to leave no one to help the younger generation find their way in one of the dimmest corners of our history, is to turn our backs to what made this nation possible in the first place. To continue to confine our teaching methods and their substance within the Western perspective is to rip the very heart of why we ought to reflect on our prehistory. The Americans, or anyone else, tell you that this is our history, its more like shoving before our throats what we are supposed to eat. It is about time that we reinforce our understanding of our prehistory from our own vantage point. What better way there is to impart knowledge than to do it from the very hearts and minds of those who truly own their history.
I remember someone saying that we are becoming more American than the Americans. Or that Koreans are becoming more Filipinos than Filipinos, part of the reason being they continue to flock here while our fellowmen continue to fly abroad, some never to return. What can I say? Truly, these are times when you cannot help but wonder what in the world is happening around us. The next thing you know, you have already become a foreigner in your own land. Globalization? That's another polite way of saying "Western expansionism". Today, the battle lines are no longer drawn between guns and canons. They are now built between one mentality and another. Having a weak hold of your sensibilities of your past can only further allow the advance of the enemy at the gates.
What little hope that remains in us is a restless dream.
I recall our classroom discussions with one of our professors. She handled our legal history class, and for each class session one cannot help but easily notice the passion she had for defending our rightful claim to a national consciousness. She is a well-traveled woman who never fails to take stories upon her return to our country. At one time, she recalled how one taxi driver got infuriated at them. She and her friend were in the streets of Italy and they hailed a cab. In an attempt to secure the direction they were heading, her friend spoke to the chauffeur in Italian and asked him questions in the same manner, ostensibly an effort to be better understood. Surprisingly, her attempt drove the Italian driver mad. "You foreigners speak my language in a bad way," the driver grumbled, "you are being disrespectful. How would you feel if your own language is butchered?"
Apparently, or as things turned out, my professor and her friend had to walk their way home.
The moral of that fateful encounter is clear. You cannot blame the Italians, or at least the taxi driver, for having a strong attachment to what forms a part of his heritage. He strongly believed in his conviction that his own language is not to be played with. He strongly believed in his conviction that his own identity is not to be trampled with. Not a single person in this world has the privilege, nay the right, to butcher a parcel of his national consciousness. To others, it might swiftly pass as a simple case of an honest inquiry mistaken for disrespect. To his mind, however, it was an unmistakable example of outsiders usurping your country's tongue and twisting it in shapes and sizes in the hope of mimicking or making a parody of the genuine.
Well, how would we feel if our language is butchered? I do not know. I do not know whether to laugh or to cry just at the thought of foreigners speaking our language in slang fashion. You do not have to look far enough to see classic examples of it. For one, you have the Americans. They tell you "a-dow-bow" instead of adobo. They tell you "akow" instead of ako. They tell you "it-lowg" instead of itlog. Feel free to add words of your own. Suffice it to say, though, that they tend to morph our words in a way akin to their Western phonetics. And how do some others feel towards all these? There's the rub. Some would easily pass them off as jovial or mirthful tries at talking to us in a way we could understand. I surmise a wide majority of us tend to place them under the same light. You hear the Yankees struggling to make a parody of our local lexicon at the least, you readily laugh at them as if nothing was lost in the process. Some others would greet it with a middle finger which, of course, doesn't put us in a good light either.
As Jocano says, and because we are trained in an educational system patterned after our colonizers, "our heritage appears to be shallow with no life force of its own, no dynamism within itself, no roots to stand on its own". There's an odious deficiency on how we teach our students the very roots of our nation. To abandon that duty all the more, or to leave no one to help the younger generation find their way in one of the dimmest corners of our history, is to turn our backs to what made this nation possible in the first place. To continue to confine our teaching methods and their substance within the Western perspective is to rip the very heart of why we ought to reflect on our prehistory. The Americans, or anyone else, tell you that this is our history, its more like shoving before our throats what we are supposed to eat. It is about time that we reinforce our understanding of our prehistory from our own vantage point. What better way there is to impart knowledge than to do it from the very hearts and minds of those who truly own their history.
I remember someone saying that we are becoming more American than the Americans. Or that Koreans are becoming more Filipinos than Filipinos, part of the reason being they continue to flock here while our fellowmen continue to fly abroad, some never to return. What can I say? Truly, these are times when you cannot help but wonder what in the world is happening around us. The next thing you know, you have already become a foreigner in your own land. Globalization? That's another polite way of saying "Western expansionism". Today, the battle lines are no longer drawn between guns and canons. They are now built between one mentality and another. Having a weak hold of your sensibilities of your past can only further allow the advance of the enemy at the gates.
What little hope that remains in us is a restless dream.
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