Pinoy Kasi

181 languages
By Michael L. Tan
Philippine Daily Inquirer
9:52 pm | Thursday, August 29th, 2013
 4 68 59
August is designated as National Language Month (Buwan ng Wikang Pambansa) because Aug. 19 is
the birth anniversary of President Manuel Quezon, who first designated Tagalog as the basis for a
national language, way back in 1937.
More than 70 years later, we continue to be linguistic schizophrenics, still debating on whether we should
use Filipino or English (some schools even threatening expulsion for violators of “English-only” rules on
campuses), and whether we spell the national language Filipino or Pilipino.
I don’t think anyone now denies the need for a national language but there is still resentment, mainly from
Cebuano speakers, at “Tagalog imperialism.” Less discussed is the way Filipino, as a national language,
has been slow to absorb words from languages other than Tagalog. The original intention, after all, of a
national language was to bring in words from different languages in the Philippines.
In the last few years there has been still another twist to our language situation and this is the
implementation of Mother Language-Based Multilingual Education, with the Department of Education
requiring the use of an area’s mother language up to Grade 3 as the medium of instruction.
Many mother languages
The DepEd has designated 17 languages for now that qualify for Mother Language-Based Education.
There are actually many more potential mother languages, the total number spoken in the Philippines
running to 181, if we are to use the count of the “Ethnologue” of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL).
SIL started out as a missionary group sending out linguists to learn the languages of the world in order to
translate the Bible. That mission remains but in the course of their work over several decades, SIL has
become a recognized authority on the world’s languages.
“Ethnologue,” which has a print and electronic edition, is a standard reference now for people interested
in languages.  The latest electronic edition was uploaded on the Internet a few months ago, with
information on more than 7,000 languages of the world. For the Philippines, it lists 185 languages, of
which four are extinct.
There is open access to ethnologue.com, so I would encourage readers to visit. For starters, learn about
the languages used in the Philippines. Rather than looking at linguistic diversity in the country as an
obstacle to national unity, look at these languages as contributing to a richer national identity.
Every time I browse through “Ethnologue” I discover something new. I didn’t know for example that we
have more than two million deaf people. Filipino Sign Language or FSL is listed as one of the 181 living
languages in the Philippines.
Although my paternal roots are in Davao, I didn’t know  Davawenyo  qualified as a language, described
as a “synthesis” of Filipino and Cebuano and other Visayan languages.  Or that there is a language
called  Malaynon, spoken in Malay, Aklan.
Note these are languages in their own right, and not dialects.   Malaynon,  Davawenyo  are languages,
just like Tagalog, Cebuano, Ilocano. Dialects are variations on a language, for example, Tagalog’s
dialects are listed in “Ethnologue” as Bataan, Batangas, Bulacan, Lubang, Manila, Marinduque, Puray,
Tanay-Paete, Tayabas. I suspect that there are many more dialects waiting to be identified, just like new
animal or plant species.
Language status
The latest “Ethnologue” listing does not just list languages and the number of speakers. What it does now
is talk about the status of these languages, using 13 categories of an Expanded Graded Inter-
generational Disruption Scale or EGIDS. I know it sounds almost like a scale to measure earthquakes and
in some ways it is—linguistic seismic activity, that is. The scale goes from 0 or International, meaning the
language is used globally, down to Extinct status.
The main point about EGIDS is to look at the way languages are developing. High on the scale would be
languages that have written forms, that are moving toward standardization in pronunciation, grammar and
other language attributes, and “modernization,” meaning the ability to translate to and from other
languages and to be able to communicate on a wide range of topics that are part of contemporary society
(e.g., computers).
Using this EGIDS, we find two languages in the Philippines classified as “national”: English and Tagalog
(with 21.5 million speakers). The second category is “wider communications,” and includes Cebuano
(15.8 million), Ilocano (6.9 million), Bikol (4.5 million), Hiligaynon (5.7 million), Waray (2.5 million),
Pampangan (1.9 million), Pangasinan (1.1 million), Maguindanao (1.1 million), Tausug (1.06 million), and
Masbateño (700,000). Note that most of the numbers of speakers that are cited come from the 2,000
national census. The 2010 census apparently did not collect data on language use.
I’ll skip the other categories and jump to the “threatened” and “nearly extinct” languages. These are
mostly Agta languages, spoken by various Negrito groups whose younger members no longer speak their
mother language. Not all the threatened languages are those of the Agta though. Included here is
Bolinao.
The EGIDS categorization emphasizes how languages are transmitted, a particular language is seen as
threatened if younger people no longer use it. When a language is spoken only by those who “are no
longer of child-bearing age,” it means there will no longer be natural transmission of that language.
I did wonder about Maranao not being in the “wider communications” category and was surprised to find it
had 776,000 speakers. I had always thought Maranao speakers outnumbered those of Tausug and
Maguindanao, but I realized this was only because the Maranao are so visibly dispersed throughout the
Philippines as traders. This dispersal might actually work against the Maranao language, as the children
end up speaking Tagalog, Cebuano, Ilocano or whatever the dominant language is in the area they’ve
migrated to, and do not learn Maranao.
A decline in the use of a language can be reversed though.  A language can be “rediscovered,” as I’m
seeing this happening to Sambali (Sambal in the “Ethnologue” listings) through a family friend, Malou
Tinio, and her group, who are trying to get Sambali to be used by the young. A language is said to be
revitalized if it can be spoken by a second generation, and is reestablished if it is picked up by a third
generation.
So, lolos  and  lolas, work hard on your grandchildren if you want your mother tongue propagated. You
can do this simply by using the language at home, but better still, work on dictionaries, on a written
literature (collecting stories and poems for example). Get local universities and colleges into the act,
following the lead of Holy Angels University, which has done wonders for Kapampangan, both the
language and culture.
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E-mail: mtan@inquirer.com.ph

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