*The Ego and Its Own

I read A Testimonial to Alienation last night on the plane on my way back from Bacolod.

Now, I don't know anything about the whole James Soriano drama save for what Mr. Dalisay had to write about him in yesterday's column --- Mr. Dalisay's article being the only response compelling enough for me to actually READ Language, learning, identity, privilege and see just what all the hype was about --- as well as a few angry blogs I simply perused in reaction to Mr. Soriano's article.

And it got me thinking...

Nay, remembering...

Remembering a time when my mother, 3 sisters, and I migrated to the States to be reunited with our father... it was October of '96 and I was already 6 years old then. I was enrolled immediately into the first grade and I remember my 1st grade teacher, Mrs. Gallagher. I remember her asking me if I understood English and I distinctly remember nodding. I also remember not talking on my first day of school and I remember my parents' anxiety when I got home, afraid that I hadn't understood a thing, that the kids might've thought me a dumb mute. But I did understand. I just wasn't all that confident to communicate in English.

I remember not liking the feeling that I was an outsider. Or that I was stupid. Or that I wasn't anyone worth befriending.

And after that moment, I lost all memory of me ever knowing Filipino as a child. It's as if I pulled a self-Eternal Sunshine on my ass and completely deleted the language from my brain, so effectively that by the time I was 7, I could barely understand my parents, uncles and aunts when they'd "bust out in Filipino." I couldn't even translate to my Fil-american cousins the arguments their parents were having whenever they argued in Filipino as we eavesdropped. I suppose it was because I felt I no longer needed the language to feel... at home.

Seven years later, I moved back to the PI with my older sister and spent one school year un-enrolled and was left at home all day with our "yaya" and Eat Bulaga, Marimar, Maria Mercedes, and Maria del Barrio to keep me busy. And with Thalia for a mentor, I slowly re-discovered Filipino (I discovered the language "with" her), but not quickly enough to keep my 1st year highschool classmates the following year from poking fun at my "twang" and my awful discernment between "hindi" and "wala." At first, I fought the system, claiming that I should be exempted from Filipino class (that taught the downright heavy-hitting Ibong Adarna, Florante at Laura, Noli Mi Tangere, and El Filibusterismo) since first of all, I could barely speak the language properly and second, it wouldn't have been fair to put me in a class that "advanced."

But I was Filipino, they said. I may not have sounded like one. But underneath my Westernized air and Jersey accent, I still was.

I remember not liking the feeling that I was an outsider. Or that I was stupid. Or that I wasn't anyone worth befriending.

I didn't like my classmates trying to talk to me in English to appease me, struggling to communicate with me. And all the while "their noses were bleeding," all I could think of was, "Shit, why don't I know how to speak in Filipino so they wouldn't have such a hard time getting to know me and they wouldn't think I was this snotty, little bitch!"

So my God, I learned. I read and reread and exhausted context clues like some foreign language-CSI. At first, I was failing. Miserably. But as I went on, encouraging my friends to talk to me in Filipino, encouraging myself to respond and converse in Filipino, to sing in Filipino... I began to do better than some of my other peers whose first language was undoubtedly, Filipino.

Of course, there was no way I was going to forget English.

But I did eventually learn. And by the time I got to college (learning about Karl Marx and HIS theory of alienation), I was already fluent and learning different "hues" to our surprisingly beautiful language. (I still say "awas" when asking what time a person's leaving and i still put the prefix "na" in most of the verbs I use IE. nakain, naulan.)

Now I understand why some people would think English is "the language of the learned" --- it's kinda like how we look at designer "imported" stuff as opposed to our local and beautifully-crafted originals. We think anything Western is better, from the shoes to the bags and even to the language. Even some of my Fil-American friends who migrated here, have spent years and years here, still refuse to learn Filipino thoroughly and are content with "survival Filipino" for when they need to hail a cab or ask for discounts.

Don't get me wrong: I'm glad our father encouraged our trip to the US and that I learned to speak English fluently since most of my classes were taught in English and a lot of my presentations needed to be delivered in English (strangely, it was only in my 4th year in h/s that I was awarded Best in English and never before then). I am thankful for having learned it through pleasant mundane interaction as opposed to a formal albeit forceful institution. I'm thankful for my pronunciation and enunciation and cadence (and not like how some people speak English in this country with this absolutely weird and "deep-throaty" accent that's completely baffling ---conyo, I think they call it--- then again, I'm sure people are pretty weirded out when my Jersey [shore] accent becomes apparent so... to each his own.)

But I am more glad that I learned Filipino and not because I believe it is "the language of identity" or even "the language of the streets" --- the same language that may just "save me from being mugged in the jeepney"... I am glad because it is the language of "home" and since my return from the States some 15 years ago, the Philippines has been MY home, where my heart is now as it was in Jersey [my personal "province"] when I was 6 and I would not have been able to earn a sense of MY identity if it weren't for these homes and the love that was "communicated" to me. In English AND Filipino (though I wish that "love" were also communicated to me in Ilocano, Pangalatok, and especially now, in Chinese... but that's not the point. =)

When I teach English or such subjects as American Literature, I remind my students that we’re taking up the subject not to try and become Americans, but to become better Filipinos. - Butch Dalisay

Unapologetically and without a morsel of modesty, I'd like to think I'm a better Filipino for knowing both.


But seriously, I thought Soriano's reason for needing to learn Filipino --- because we are forced to relate with the tinderas and the manongs and the katulongs of this world --- was HILARIOUS. I can just imagine him saying it LIKE THAT, shit'll crack. me. up. =)





*Taken from The Ego and Its Own by Max Stirner