Katrin Ysabelle C.

Engo Sec 6 sub 2

My Country’s Language

“Malaki ang nagagawa ng kultura ng isang mananalit sa mga pamamaraan at manipestasyon

ng paggamit ng kanyang wika” (Fermin sa Salindaw, 2012). Culture and language are deeply
interrelated because of how language can maintain and express the ideas of one’s culture. Give
rice for example. According to the video UP Talks (Galletes, 2019), the term ‘Rice’ is used for
all the kinds of Bigas. Adjectives are given to the words in order to describe the state of the rice
such as Burnt for overcooked rice, Uncooked for unprocessed rice, and so on. However, if we
look at Tagalog, we can see that there is more than one word used for ‘Rice’. Palay for
unprocessed rice, Bigas for uncooked processed rice, Kanin for cooked rice, Tutong for burnt
rice, and so on. Why is this so? Because compared to the US or England where English
originated from, rice is commonly eaten here in the Philippines, thus making our language have
more than one word used for rice. The same goes for our other languages here in our country.
Our country’s language stemmed from our culture. The vocabulary of our language comprises
everything our culture has, which is why there are certain words in English that do not have a
direct translation to Tagalog and vice versa. This is how our culture and language are deeply
rooted with one another. 

Although I do take pride in speaking English fluently, there are multiple occasions where I’d
ask myself ‘Am I less Filipino for not speaking my country’s language?’. I had only discovered
the importance of Tagalog by the time high school ended. Ever since I was young, I’ve been
taught English because according to my parents, it is the universal language that is commonly
used especially in school. So since then, I’ve been using English only except for subjects such as
Araling Panlipunan and Filipino. There are times where my teachers in those subjects would
question if I grew up in the states because of it. I was even told that my accent in Tagalog was
weird, which further demotivated me from learning the language.

Just because I can’t speak Tagalog, doesn’t mean I don’t love my country. But even though I
tell myself this, I always go back to the question I mentioned above. This feeling further
deepened when I started learning literature in my Filipino classes such as Ibong Adarna, Florante
and Laura, Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. Unlike my other peers, I had to take an
extreme amount of time reading these which usually took weeks to several months. I had to
translate them from Filipino to English word by word in order to understand the whole story.
While translating them, I noticed that there are some phrases or words that lose their meaning
once they're translated into English. This made me notice the significance of my own language
and also drove me to start speaking Tagalog, albeit rather slowly. For now, I still can’t speak
Tagalog straight and I am still not confident in using it for my school works. But I slowly started
incorporating Tagalog in informal meetings, when I recite in class, or even in my everyday life
when conversing with other people (Taglish, to be exact). Although I started later than others, I
still have a lifetime to master my country’s language.   

References:
Galletes, F. (2019 August) UP Talks | Wika at Kultura [Video File]. YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dj6R04h3lq4