An article published by James Soriano made it rounds online, bashing the Filipino Language

James Soriano’s article saw the light of day for a few hours only.

The author of the text quoted below is written by James Soriano. He’s a 21 year old columnist
of the Manila Bulletin since 2008. Mind you, he’s so confident in his English writing talent that
he, James Soriano published an article on Manila Bulletin entitled Language, learning,
identity, privilege – just in time when most Schools, Colleges and Universities are about to have
their Buwan ng Wika Culmination

Language, learning, identity, privilege

By JAMES SORIANO
August 24, 2011, 4:06am MB

I think English is the language of learning. I’ve known this since before I could go to school. As
a toddler, my first study materials were a set of flash cards that my mother used to teach me the
English alphabet.

James Soriano from Manila Bulletin

My mother made home conducive to learning English: all my storybooks and coloring books
were in English, and so were the cartoons I watched and the music I listened to. She required me
to speak English at home. She even hired tutors to help me learn to read and write in English.

In school I learned to think in English. We used English to learn about numbers, equations and
variables. With it we learned about observation and inference, the moon and the stars, monsoons
and photosynthesis. With it we learned about shapes and colors, about meter and rhythm. I
learned about God in English, and I prayed to Him in English.

Filipino, on the other hand, was always the ‘other’ subject — almost a special subject like PE or
Home Economics, except that it was graded the same way as Science, Math, Religion, and
English. My classmates and I used to complain about Filipino all the time. Filipino was a chore,
like washing the dishes; it was not the language of learning. It was the language we used to speak
to the people who washed our dishes.

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We used to think learning Filipino was important because it was practical: Filipino was the
language of the world outside the classroom. It was the language of the streets: it was how you
spoke to the tindera when you went to the tindahan, what you used to tell your katulong that you
had an utos, and how you texted manong when you needed “sundo na.”

These skills were required to survive in the outside world, because we are forced to relate with
the tinderas and the manongs and the katulongs of this world. If we wanted to communicate to
these people — or otherwise avoid being mugged on the jeepney — we needed to learn Filipino.

That being said though, I was proud of my proficiency with the language. Filipino was the
language I used to speak with my cousins and uncles and grandparents in the province, so I never
had much trouble reciting.

It was the reading and writing that was tedious and difficult. I spoke Filipino, but only when I
was in a different world like the streets or the province; it did not come naturally to me. English
was more natural; I read, wrote and thought in English. And so, in much of the same way that I
learned German later on, I learned Filipino in terms of English. In this way I survived Filipino in
high school, albeit with too many sentences that had the preposition ‘ay.’

It was really only in university that I began to grasp Filipino in terms of language and not just
dialect. Filipino was not merely a peculiar variety of language, derived and continuously
borrowing from the English and Spanish alphabets; it was its own system, with its own grammar,
semantics, sounds, even symbols.

But more significantly, it was its own way of reading, writing, and thinking. There are ideas and
concepts unique to Filipino that can never be translated into another. Try translating bayanihan,
tagay, kilig or diskarte.

Only recently have I begun to grasp Filipino as the language of identity: the language of
emotion, experience, and even of learning. And with this comes the realization that I do, in fact,
smell worse than a malansang isda. My own language is foreign to me: I speak, think, read and
write primarily in English. To borrow the terminology of Fr. Bulatao, I am a split-level Filipino.

But perhaps this is not so bad in a society of rotten beef and stinking fish. For while Filipino may
be the language of identity, it is the language of the streets. It might have the capacity to be the
language of learning, but it is not the language of the learned.

It is neither the language of the classroom and the laboratory, nor the language of the boardroom,
the court room, or the operating room. It is not the language of privilege. I may be disconnected
from my being Filipino, but with a tongue of privilege I will always have my connections.

So I have my education to thank for making English my mother language. ##

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Anti Filipino article reaps the whirlwind
AS I WRECK THIS CHAIR
By William M. Esposo
The Philippine Star / Sept. 4, 2011

In his August 24th Manila Bulletin article (Language, learning, identity, privilege), James
Soriano reaped a whirlwind of protests and condemnation from many Filipinos. The backlash
was such that the Bulletin removed Soriano’s article from its archives. Soriano drew flak for
writing, among other controversial assertions, that Filipino is not the language for learning.

Soriano wrote: “English is the language of learning. I’ve known this since before I could go to
school. As a toddler, my first study materials were a set of flash cards that my mother used to
teach me the English alphabet.

My mother made home conducive to learning English: all my storybooks and coloring books
were in English, and so were the cartoons I watched and the music I listened to. She required me
to speak English at home. She even hired tutors to help me learn to read and write in English.

In school I learned to think in English. We used English to learn about numbers, equations and
variables. With it we learned about observation and inference, the moon and the stars, monsoons
and photosynthesis. With it we learned about shapes and colors, about meter and rhythm. I
learned about God in English, and I prayed to Him in English.

Filipino, on the other hand, was always the ‘other’ subject — almost a special subject like PE or
Home Economics, except that it was graded the same way as Science, Math, Religion, and
English. My classmates and I used to complain about Filipino all the time. Filipino was a chore,
like washing the dishes; it was not the language of learning. It was the language we used to speak
to the people who washed our dishes.”

Soriano further wrote: “Filipino was the language of the world outside the classroom. It was the
language of the streets: it was how you spoke to the tindera (store keeper) when you went to the
tindahan (store), what you used to tell your katulong (helper) that you had an utos (order), and
how you texted manong when you needed “sundo na (fetch me now).

“These skills were required to survive in the outside world, because we are forced to relate with
the tinderas and the manongs and the katulongs of this world. If we wanted to communicate to
these people — or otherwise avoid being mugged on the jeepney — we needed to learn
Filipino.”

He closed with this statement: “Only recently have I begun to grasp Filipino as the language of
identity: the language of emotion, experience, and even of learning. And with this comes the
realization that I do, in fact, smell worse than a malansang isda (rotten fish). My own language is
foreign to me: I speak, think, read and write primarily in English. To borrow the terminology of
Fr. Bulatao, I am a split-level Filipino.
But perhaps this is not so bad in a society of rotten beef and stinking fish. For while Filipino may

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be the language of identity, it is the language of the streets. It might have the capacity to be the
language of learning, but it is not the language of the learned.

It is neither the language of the classroom and the laboratory, nor the language of the boardroom,
the court room, or the operating room. It is not the language of privilege. I may be disconnected
from my being Filipino, but with a tongue of privilege I will always have my connections.

So I have my education to thank for making English my mother language.”

Soriano correctly described himself as a split-level Filipino. Soriano demonstrated the mentality
that transformed some Ateneo Blue Eagles into Blue Vultures when he said: “I may be
disconnected from being Filipino, but with a tongue of privilege I will always have my
connections.” He overlooked the greater values for what provided him convenience.

The pressures caused by our economic deprivations are making some Filipinos adopt very
narrow-minded perspectives to the language debate. They failed to appreciate these:

1. The nation pays a greater price for the loss of its identity when we allow a foreign language to
replace what is the very soul of Filipino communication — our native tongue. The Chinese, once
behind us economically, pushed for a national language — Mandarin — knowing the need for a
national language to weld a national aspiration.

2. The Japanese did not need English to excel economically. On the contrary, the Japanese never
had a language problem and they’re a great country because of a language that promoted one
mind, one heart in one Japanese nation. In contrast, our counter-productive language debate
reflects our damaged culture and the deep divisions in our sick society. Countries that are on the
march to progress don’t have this embarrassing debate while those that are basket cases never
progressed by shifting to another language.

3. Both Filipino and English can be learned and this need not be at the expense of losing the
natural language of the Filipino mind and soul. A country’s native tongue need not be sacrificed
in order to have a facility in English.

4. Technical terms that may not be in the Filipino language are easily adopted. Even the English
language adopts foreign terms emanating from non-English minds. Rolando Tinio, the late
National Artist for literature and one of the greatest artistic minds of our race, proved in his
translations of the classics of Shakespeare, Shaw, Ibsen, Sophocles and so forth that Filipino is a
great language and can easily retain the essence of foreign classic literature.

5. We’ll be lucky to have five percent of Filipinos thinking in English. Many who claim to be
proficient in English actually think in Filipino. They may be able to translate their thoughts in
English but the fact remains that they think in Filipino. Note how the Thais, Chinese,
Singaporeans, Malaysians, had all overtaken us even if they had never been as good as us in
English in the ’50s and the ’60s. English did not get them to where they are.

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6. English can never capture the Filipino national spirit. Try singing the old national anthem —
Land of the morning… — in English and compare that to the flood of emotions that the singing
of Lupang Hinirang draws from your Filipino soul.

7. More Filipinos can achieve levels of excellence when taught in the tongue they’re most
familiar with. The worst-case scenario is to have Filipinos studying engineering, for example,
under teachers who speak defective English. In such a case, neither learning English nor learning
engineering is facilitated. Using English as medium of instruction merely adds another
impediment to progress.

8. We can never trade our national identity and the language of our Filipino soul for the sake of
better job opportunities overseas. Those jobs overseas will not be there for us forever.

We’ve closed our eyes to our festering social gangrene. The sooner we accept the reality, the
sooner we’ll be able to address it. We’re like a basketball team that’s blaming our rubber shoes
for our losing streak, when in truth we’re losing because we’ve not been playing as a team.

This is the state of Team Philippines. When we don’t really know our problems, we tend to
arrive at ridiculous and illusory solutions. We then become our greatest enemies.

***

Chair Wrecker e-mail and website: macesposo@yahoo.com and www.chairwrecker.com

Pinoy Tambay.com

Sagot ni Benjamin Pimentel

Editor’s Note: In the fourth week of “Buwan ng Wika” last month, an Ateneo senior wrote that
Filipino was the language of the streets and that English was the language of learning and
privilege. James Soriano’s article drew criticisms from Filipino Netizens, prompting a newspaper
website that posted the material to remove it. The newspaper later reposted the article. We are
running the article as it appeared on blogs and Manila Bulletin’s website, and a response of a
Filipino-American journalist to encourage debate on how the use of Filipino, English or another
language affects us as individuals and as a nation. Benjamin Pimentel’s piece appeared on
INQUIRER.net’s Global Nation.)

SAN FRANCISCO – My wife and I decided early on that Tagalog was going to be our sons’
first language. It wasn’t easy. In his first days in preschool, our firstborn was miserable,
intimidated by a world in which pretty much everyone spoke English. But his pediatrician said
not to worry about it. Experts said not to worry about it. They even said that it’s good for kids to
be exposed to many languages, that they, eventually, will adjust and adapt.
And my son did.
It didn’t take long for Paolo to be fluent in English, although he later, sadly, lost his Tagalog.
His younger brother grew up with a kuya who spoke to him in English. They had some funny

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moments. Anton would struggle to tell his big brother, “Eh kuya, I just ano … uh … because …
maglaro naman tayo.”
But like his kuya, it didn’t take long for Anton to shift from Filipino to English. And sadly, he,
too, lost his Tagalog.
Well, they didn’t actually “lose” it.
It’s still there. They can understand, but would not speak it.
But the spirit of my mother tongue is still part of them. I hope someday that they get a chance to
use it again, to be immersed once again in that world. It’ll be up to them.
Which brings me to James Soriano, the Ateneo senior, whose essay on his own struggles with
English and Filipino sparked a heated controversy, especially on the Web.
Now, this may surprise many, but I’m glad he wrote that essay. It inspired me to write him a
letter.

Letter
Dear James,
Unang una, maraming salamat.
Mabigat ang dating ng sinulat mo. At alam kong bugbog ka ngayon sa mga puna at batikos.
Pero dahil sa iyo, nagkaroon ng debate. Dahil sa ’yo, pinag-uusapan, pinag-iisipan ang papel ng
wika sa buhay natin, sa bayan natin, lalo na ng mga kabataang tulad mo.
Ipagtatanggol ko ang karapatan mong sabihin ang sinabi mo. Salubungin mo lang ‘yong mga
puna, ‘yong mga ideyang kontra sa mga pananaw mo. Kung hindi mo tanggap, OK lang. Pero
harapin mo pa rin.
Ganyan naman tayo umuunlad at natututo.
Ngayon, tungkol doon sa sinabi mo na Filipino “is not the language of the learned” – sakit mo
namang magsalita p’re.
Classy, lowbrow
Do you really believe the implied equations in what you wrote?
English = Classy, smart people.
Filipino = Stupid, lowbrow, very emotional people.
For I can share with you several instances when knowing just English (and Filipino) really made
me feel unlearned.
One was when I was in Cotabato in the late 1980s as a reporter covering the lumad, the tribal
Filipinos struggling against militarization and social injustice. I don’t speak Cebuano. They
didn’t speak English or Filipino.
We needed help.
And that help came from an unexpected source – a kind-hearted Italian priest named Father
Peter Geremia, who spoke Italian, English and Cebuano. (I’m guessing he also speaks Tagalog
since he had lived in Manila where he got involved in the protests against the Marcos
dictatorship in the 1970s.)
It was one of the oddest interviews in my career as a journalist.
Here was this white dude from Europe helping me understand and communicate with my own
people. He knew their language. I didn’t. My grasp of English couldn’t bridge that gap.
Father Peter was the learned one. Not me.
Like a chore
Sabi mo, “Filipino is like a chore, like washing the dishes; it was not the language of learning. It
was the language we used to speak to the people who washed our dishes.”

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Pag nagkita tayo, Tagalugin mo ako. Kasi, bagama’t ang hanapbuhay ko sa Amerika e nakabatay
sa kakayanan kong umingles, kasama ng buhay ko dito ang paghugas ng pinggan.
Oo, may dishwasher sa bahay namin. Pero, alam mo, pag mga malalaking kaldero ang katapat,
puno ng mga latak ng mantika at tirang ulam, kinukuskos ko nang husto ’yon, p’re.
Condescending view
Obviously, many got upset because of what they felt was your stunningly condescending view of
those who speak Filipino.
Well, I must confess, I also once had an intense bias against another language: Spanish.
You see, when Filipinos of my generation were in college, we had to learn Spanish, four
semesters of it.
We hated it. We thought it was useless. We were offended that we had to learn the language of
the conquistador, of the Padre Damasos and Padre Salvis. Of the coño kids!
Regret
Then I moved to California.
Boy, do I regret not taking those Spanish courses seriously.
For Spanish may have been the language of the hoity toity back home. But in California, it’s the
language of middle-class and working-class people, of immigrants like me. Many of them may
seem like the people you somewhat derisively referred to in your essay as the tinderos and the
katulongs.
As a journalism student, I had to run around the US-Mexico border and came face-to-face with
poor Mexicans and Central Americans in Tijuana and Mexicali.
How I wished I could speak really fluent Spanish then.
As a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle I was assigned to cover immigration and
affirmative action, which took me to Latino neighborhoods all over the Bay Area.
How I tried to find the Spanish-speaking me.
But there was no such person. There was only English. And English couldn’t help me out.
Knowing English didn’t make me feel learned.
‘Unang nobela’
Binigo rin ako ng Ingles noong unang pagtatangka kong sumulat ng nobela.
Sa Ingles ko unang sinubukang buuin ang “Mga Gerilya sa Powell Street.” Sa San Francisco ang
setting, kaya, siyempre, inisip kong dapat Ingglisin.
Pero ayaw makisama ng mga tauhan. Iyong mga beteranong nakatambay sa may cable car stop
sa San Francisco, ayaw umIngles. Kahit anong gawin ko, hindi umuusad ang kuwento.
Para bagang sinasabi ng mga matatanda, ‘E bakit mo ba kami pinag-iIngles Boying, e mga
Filipino kami.’
Kaya kumambyo ako. Sinulat ko sa Filipino. Saka umarangkada ang kuwento. Nabuhay ang mga
tauhan.
Sarap ng pakiramdam.
Fil-Ams’ yearning
You want to know why I wanted our children to learn Tagalog? Because when I moved to the
US, I met many young Filipino Americans who were disappointed, a few were even angry, that
their parents didn’t teach them Filipino, didn’t expose them to Filipino culture.
It’s really strange, in a way.
Here you are declaring that Filipino is “not the language of the learned … not the language of
privilege.”
But here where I live now, thousands of miles from our homeland, young Filipino Americans,

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who yearn for the privilege of speaking that language, are searching for ways to embrace
Filipino.
Baybayin script tattoo
They take Tagalog lessons, even learn the Baybayin, the original Tagalog script. They even have
Baybayin script tattooed on their bodies.
Joey Ayala, the folk singer who lived in Berkeley for a time, put it best when he told me,
“Things that are distinctly Filipino are often more valuable to Filipino Americans. Filipinos in
the Philippines look to the American dream. Filipinos in the United States have the Philippine
dream.”
Quite a stir
You caused quite a stir with what you wrote, James. I’m sure you’re still reeling from the
criticisms.
But like I said, I’ll defend your right to express your views, even if I disagree with many of them.
That’s how we learn, after all. I’m guessing your views may still evolve, grow wings, take flight.
Good sign
I actually see the backlash as a good sign. It tells me that young people feel strongly about these
issues, about language, culture and society. (I don’t get Jejemon, but hey, that’s part of the
debate, of the process of finding answers.)
And it’s important to remember that culture and language are not static. They change.
Consider some of the big changes over the past 20 years.
When I was growing up in Manila, pretty much all the TV newscasts were in English. When I
was growing up, we got fined for speaking in Tagalog on campus. Five centavos a word!
Well, OK, I hear that still happens in some schools. But I also hear there’s a congressional bill
trying to put an end to that silly practice. Progress!
Even my eldest son’s attitude toward his first language has been changing. He used to tell me
that he really didn’t want to speak Tagalog anymore, “Because it’s not cool, Tatay.”
Apl.de.ap’s Bebot
Well, when the Black Eyed Peas’ apl.de.ap’s “Apl Song” and “Bebot” became hits that changed.
Suddenly, Tagalog was “cool.”
And during our last visit to Manila, he even realized the value of his Tagalog-speaking self when
he witnessed a street fight in Ermita.
“I understood what they were saying, Tatay,” he said. “One was saying, ‘That’s mine. ‘Akin
’yan.’”
I imagine that he could very well have been talking about his Tagalog.
For while it’s buried within him, it’s still his. It’s still there.
Nandoon pa rin.
(Pimentel is a US-based Filipino journalist, novelist, author and blogger. He studied at Ateneo de
Manila University and University of the Philippines-Diliman before moving to the United States,
where he earned a master’s degree from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. A
former editor-in-chief of The Philippine Collegian, he worked as a reporter for the San Francisco
Chronicle for 14 years until he moved to MarketWatch, where he covers the Technology
Business news. Among his published works are “UG, An Underground Tale,” “Pareng Barack:
Filipinos in Obama’s America” and “Mga Gerilya sa Powell Street.”)

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The Filipino is Multilingual
By Mila D. Aguilar - Published in Facebook

When I was born in 1949, my father, Jose V. Aguilar, was conducting what became known as
the Sta. Barbara Language Experiment. Before I turned two years old, he had already proven
through this experiment in a remote town in Iloilo, the island of Panay, that pupils who were
taught in their mother tongue during the first two years of school learned better than those who
were shocked into learning through the medium of English.

But that does not mean that I grew up entirely using my mother tongue, Hiligaynon. My father
was wise enough to speak to me purely in English, while he bid my mother and siblings to speak
to me purely in Hiligaynon.

Did I grow up confused? No. I grew up versatile in both languages. When I transferred to U.P.
Diliman with my family at the age of four, I learned my Tagalog from playmates. By the time I
reached Grade 1, I was speaking it fluently.

When, at the age of 25, I was assigned to the underground of Mindanao and consciously mingled
with the urban poor, I learned Cebuano in a month. When I made a week-long foray into the
hinterlands of Samar at the age of 34, shortly before I left my beloved movement, I was able to
get the rudiments of Waray and would not have forgotten it had I stayed in Samar a bit longer. I
also know a smattering of Kapampangan and Ilokano from friends both within and without the
underground.

The Filipino is multilingual. You can see that from 10 million Filipinos all around the world,
learning the languages of their adopted countries so quickly, you could hardly hear them
stuttering. And most of these Filipinos aren’t rich; they’re masa, domestic helpers, drivers,
janitors, seamen, nurses with hungry mouths to feed.

As to whether they become grammatical or not is not the point. The point is, they could
communicate with anyone in any language. So what’s this “revelation” about living a princely
life with English?

There is nothing new to it. During the Spanish times, the conquistadores herded the datus and
their families into town centers and cut them off from their barangays, the better to prevent them
from staging rebellions. They brainwashed those datu families into thinking they were a
privileged lot by teaching them Spanish, among other things. The datu families began to think
they were princes, living a princely life using Espanggol. No different from our “princes” today,
who think they’re so lucky to be born privileged. But then this shows that life today is no
different from life centuries ago. We still have a privileged class bragging about how good they
are in the language of the conquistador.

This is not to disparage James Soriano, a young man who may have learned German, but hasn’t
yet seen the world in all its gritty detail. I wouldn’t quarrel with him, especially since I’m a very
old woman of 62; but I would love for him to learn a thing or three about his country.

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In English, because that is the language he understands. But I could very well switch to Filipino,
which serendipitously combines all languages with Tagalog as base; or Hiligaynon, or Cebuano.
But he wouldn’t understand.

I have written underground tracts in Tagalog and even tried to translate Bible verses into Filipino
right on Facebook, so James can’t say that our languages are meant only for informal
conversations. And has he heard U.P. professors teaching biology, physics and chemistry in
Pilipino?

Truth is, English is not necessarily the language of connection, because a full three-quarters of
the world don’t speak it anyway. One does not have to connect using English; one connects by
communicating with the eyes using one’s Filipino smile. The language, whatever language that
is, comes after. That is what Filipinos all over the world, from Europe to Asia to the Middle East
to Latin America to Africa, have discovered.

Oh yes -- I left out the U.S. That’s because it’s perhaps one of the few countries in the world left
that is largely monolingual, and bilingual only among first and second generation immigrant
families. That they’re teaching second languages like Spanish now is a recognition not only of
their Latin American migration problem but of their scientific finding that monolingualism
makes for a dumb population.

No, English is not a universal language, I teach in TESOL. Does God, who rules the universe,
and the multiverses as well, speak in English? Of course not. He speaks to you Spirit to spirit, in
any language you can accept with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.

At most, English is the language of world commerce. If that is what the upper classes of
Philippine society need it for, then so be it. Let them deal with Japanese and Chinese CEOs in
English. But let me tell you what happened to this language of commerce in the 1950s, after my
father had so painstakingly shown, through his Sta. Barbara Experiment, that the mother tongue
is a better medium of instruction for efficient learning in Grades 1 and 2.

A man named Clifford Prator, from the University of California in Los Angeles, came up calling
vehemently for a return to English as the medium of instruction on all levels in Philippine
schools. His reason was, in a word, in my view, something like: Ah basta! English is superior.
Subsequently, my father’s findings were twisted statistically to show that, indeed, his findings
were wrong: English was really the better medium of instruction on all levels.

I’m sure these same tactics are being used and will be used again and again to push the
superiority of the English language in the Philippine scene, including and especially in the
Constitution. Sige, go ahead. Meantime, I will use the language of the reconquistador to shout
down its proponents.

So have I connected?

Read more: http://everythinginbudget.blogspot.com/2011/08/mila-d-aguilar-in-reply-to-

james.html#ixzz1XyMvdYYg

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