Tuesday, January 15, 2008 Tantingco: Kapampangans in Bataan By Robby Tantingco
JUST before the holiday season ended, I drove to Bataan with no clear destination in mind, just driving around wherever my wheels would take me, or, as the song goes, "where the four winds blow" (in Kapampangan, that would be amianan, abagatan, aslagan and albugan, or north, south, east and west).
I used the megadike road which is shortcut from Porac to Bacolor, although I found out later that I should have taken the old road between Porac and Floridablanca which would take me immediately to Dinalupihan.
Anyway, it was my first time to pass through the megadike road, which more or less followed the course of the Mancatian River (known downstream as Pasig-Potrero River). I heard that when the Clark-Olongapo road is finished this year, it will further cut down travel time to the Bataan Peninsula.
First town I reached after leaving Pampanga is Hermosa, where I ate fried tilapia and tinola in a roadside turo-turo. When I spoke to the vendor in Kapampangan, she replied in Kapampangan, and that's when I realized I was still in Kapampangan territory. In fact, the parish priest of Hermosa is a Kapampangan, and so are other parish priests in Bataan. That's because Bataan became a separate diocese, independent from the Archdiocese of San Fernando, only in 1975; up until then, priests in Pampanga were routinely assigned to parishes in Bataan and those caught in the transition decided to stay instead of return to Pampanga.
When I drove to the next town, Orani, I still found many Kapampangans in the town plaza. Then I drove farther south to Samal, then Abucay, and to my surprise, almost everyone I met still spoke Kapampangan, or at least understood every Kapampangan word I said although they replied in Tagalog.
This was a big surprise to me, because all along I thought that, since we lost Bataan politically in 1754, we had also lost it linguistically to the Tagalogs. It made me wonder why people living so far away from the provincial borders retained the Kapampangan language when so many of us living in the interior of Pampanga itself have begun losing it. The theory has always been that the encroachment of Tagalog from Bulacan, Nueva Ecija and Bataan is what will eventually kill Kapampangan. If Kapampangan remains alive and widely used in these supposedly Tagalog areas outside Pampanga, it means that Kapampangan is strong and vibrant enough to withstand a dominantly Tagalog environment.
Then why is the Kapampangan language dying?
I have two theories: one is that the decay is happening in the heart of the province, in the urban centers where the migrants, the schools and the businesses are; and two, Kapampangans who live away from home (like those living abroad and in provinces that have been politically disconnected from Pampanga) are the Kapampangans who value the language most and will keep it alive as their remaining emotional link to their lost heritage.
The thought made me both happy and sad—happy because our language, after all, is not sick and dying but is, in fact, alive and kicking and needs only a little help from us; but also sad, at the same time, because we are not doing enough to help it.
I don't know if what I observed in the Kapampangan-speaking areas in Bataan is also happening in the Kapampangan-speaking areas in Nueva Ecija and Bulacan. I have no worry about the Kapampangan-speaking areas in Tarlac because they are well entrenched there and the threat is Ilocano, not Tagalog.
In Bataan, up until the province was put under a new diocese in 1975, the parishes were using the Kapampangan Missal, which probably contributed to the enduring presence of the language. But now that the diocese of Balanga has been created, whose official language is Tagalog, our language there has lost a faithful ally.
When you come to think of it, borders and boundaries are only visible on the map; when you go from Lubao to Hermosa, for example, or from Floridablanca to Dinalupihan, you do not feel the change in territory.
Many Bataan folks go to market in Guagua, attend relatives' birthdays in Lubao and spend weekends in malls in San Fernando. When you mingle with the folks in Orani, it's as if you never left Pampanga.
In fact, their Kapampangan there is still the old variety: speaking to a little boy, I said, "Lawen me pin keta," to which the seven-year-old reply, "Binatiauan ku ne pu."
That's because they got their Kapampangan from their old folks from Pampanga.
But I suspect that the deterioration of Kapampangan in Bataan will quicken in the next few years because, as I found out, many households there have shifted from pure Kapampangan (while their grandparents were still alive) to mixed Tagalog-Kapampangan (while their parents are still around) and soon, to pure Tagalog (when the children take over).
But that's a future concern. Our present worry should be our big population centers within Pampanga—Angeles, San Fernando, Mabalacat, Guagua—where many non-Kapampangan migrants have put up residence.
When Kapampangans are in the company of non-Kapampangans, they are quick to use the language common to both of them (Tagalog), instead of insisting on Kapampangan and let the other adjust.
In schools, they teach the different subjects in the language of the academe, which is English. In stores and shops and commercial establishments, they communicate in the language of business, which is Tagalog. In the media, they use both English and Tagalog. So where does that leave Kapampangan? In the countryside, like the border towns in Bataan.
The irony of it is that the death of the language will not come from the outside crawling in. The death of the language will start in the very heart of the province, like a cancer eating its way out to the rest of the body.
