Philippine English: Linguistic and Literary

5. ‘When I was a child I spake as a child’: Reflecting on the limits of a nationalist language policy

5 ‘When I was a child I spake as a child’: Reflecting on the limits of a nationalist language policy D. V. S. Manarpaac Introduction This essay examines the limits of the nationalist language policy in the Philippines which is aimed at dislodging English from its privileged position in the controlling linguistic domains.1 Following the suspect adoption of Filipino (a.k.a. Tagalog) as national language in the 1987 Constitution, the Philippines has witnessed a resurgence of nationalist rhetoric in defense of the privileging of one of the country’s more than eighty languages as the de jure lingua franca. To the extent that English in the Philippines has evolved into a distinct variety, the essay advocates its institution as sole official language of the country, even as it urges the maintenance of the vernaculars, including Tagalog, as integral part of the Filipino people’s multicultural heritage. Unlike Tagalog, which is viewed with skepticism by other ethnolinguistic groups, Philippine English has established itself as an indispensable medium of social and intellectual exchange and a legitimate vehicle of the Filipino people’s vision. The historical background The Philippines is an archipelago that consists of some 7,100 islands and boasts more than eighty languages. That the Filipinos need a language in which to communicate with one another is an imperative recognized by everybody. The first attempt to formulate linguistic policy came at the height of the Philippine war of independence from Spain, which coincided with the Spanish-American War. The so-called Malolos Constitution of 1898 spelled out a provisory language policy that adopted Spanish as official language of the country, even as it provided for the optional use of ‘languages spoken in the Philippines’ (1899 Constitution, Title XIV, Article 93).2 The Philippines, of course, did not become independent in the aftermath of that war but was sold by Spain to 88 D. V. S. Manarpaac the USA. The new colonizers, in turn, promptly implemented their own agenda, which included the teaching of English, its use as medium of instruction, and its adoption in other public domains, particularly in government, commerce, and trade. When the status of the colony was changed into that of a commonwealth in 1935, the Philippines drafted a new constitution which provided for the continued use of English and Spanish as official languages while Congress ‘[took] steps toward the development and adoption of a common national language based on one of the existing native languages’ (1935 Constitution, Article XIV, Section 3). This marked the birth of the idea of a national language that was expected to unify Filipinos after they received their independence from the USA in 1945. It is important to note that the original wish of the delegates to the 1934 constitutional convention was to craft a language based on all indigenous languages (Sibayan, 1986: 351–2), an undertaking which was admittedly formidable in nature, but was cognizant of the multilingual character of the soon-to-be independent republic. But, as history would have it, the nationalist delegates won the upper hand, and three years later, in 1937, President Manuel Quezon, who had earlier negotiated the date of Philippine independence, proclaimed Tagalog as the sole basis of the national language. After that, one arbitrary move led to another. In 1940, the Department of Education decided to start teaching the national language in the senior year of high school, even before that language could actually develop and become recognizably distinct from ordinary Tagalog as spoken in the region (Sibayan, 1986: 353). In 1946, the still nameless national language became a compulsory subject at all levels of primary and secondary education. Finally, in 1959, Secretary Jose Romero of the Department of Education took the liberty of naming the national language Pilipino in a desperate attempt to create at least a nominal difference between the regional language Tagalog and the phantom national language (Sibayan, 1986: 358). Tagalog suffered a temporary setback in 1973, when a new constitution reverted to the original 1935 idea of developing a national language based on all the languages in the Philippines. Ironically, this came as a result of President Ferdinand Marcos’s usurpation of political power and subsequent tampering with the constitution to lend legitimacy to his unlawful regime. The new constitution gave the national language a new name, Filipino (with an ‘F’), but provided for the continued use of Pilipino (with a ‘P’) and English as official languages of the country ‘until otherwise provided by law’ (1973 Constitution, Article XV...