Friday, October 03, 2008 Yap: Juan English By Januar E. Yap Meanwhile
THIS was in grade school. Our class president diligently recorded all the Cebuano that we spoke in class. By the end of the day, he’d give us a breakdown of all our sins with their corresponding fines, fifty cents for every sentence. If you couldn’t pay, you’d compensate by waxing the floor or hauling the trash bin to the compost pit.
Coming from an inner city neighborhood, I have Cebuano as my default language, and I don’t remember dreaming in English. By default, I mean I don’t say “ouch” at the hint of a hurt. I’d say “agay!”
Our school was known for kids who spoke in a language that could grow jeepneys a great deal of goose bumps, like “Paki-step lang sa brake, noy” or “There lang sa corner, manong.” There’s a kind of bilingualism that I like, but not that one. I like “Nag-recede na imong hairline,” but I dislike “So gamay na lang your hair.” It’s hard to explain, I just play it by the ear.
I despised the policy and, stuck to my dislike, I teased the class president by speaking in English that sounded like Cebuano. Say, for instance, “Oh, no, those trees!” which sounds like “uno, dos, tres.” He’d look at me, and threatened to log it on my sin list. He outsized me, but knowing that I was from Sambag Uno, he didn’t dare.
A bit of other things must’ve happened in the classrooms since then. Today, we see the young using Cebuano words to name their school activities, organizations, batch names, etc. They go out to places with Cebuano names at night. They listen to Cebuano songs, even as they go crazy over David Cook and all. The young are also writing poetry and shorts stories in Cebuano. At least, from my view, there’s a renewed interest in the language among them, some sense of pride.
However, while some are looking at it with optimism, something lurks on the other side. Rep. Eduardo Gullas is trying to pass his English Bill, an act that revives the use of English as medium of instruction in the schools, in Congress. The irony is that one of the staunchest brains behind the Cebu Pop Music Festival, the perennial highlighter of things Cebuano, is the one authoring it.
It’s understandable though. Our young’s competency in the language needs a little bit of rescuing. I oftentimes tease my students that their essays sound like a succession of telegrams. Apparently, there is a need for Gullas’ bill. Even as studies show that learning comes best when knowledge is imparted in your own language and the whole issue of cultural assertion, English whether you like it or not is the language of transaction in a world gone, to use Thomas Friedman’s term, flat.
I don’t know what’s best, really. Writing in two languages, I am oftentimes plagued by some syntactical osmosis of sorts between English and Cebuano, risking my Cebuano into sounding like English, and vice versa. It’s a tough balancing act. The advice is that you think in the language you want to write.
Unfortunately, you can’t partition your brain like a portmanteau. You don’t have an automatic switcher to facilitate the shifting of mental codes.
But, yes, the bill comes in the vigorous age of Bisrock, when there’s a zealous interest among the young in their own language. The bill, despite its good intentions, puts all the verve on the brink of erosion. Maybe, Rep. Gullas can also file another bill, something that also preserves what is close to home: the Cebuano.
