June 14, 2007 · Posted in: i Report Features
Voices from afar
IN a country that has more than 100 languages, vernacular writing is alive and well, says Vim Nadera Jr., director of Likhaan: Institute of Creative Writing at the University of the Philippines. But as he points out in the latest article in the i Report series on Literature and Literacy, it is writing that has yet to attract the national audience it deserves, in part because there is weak support for the national language that could bring it that attention. And it’s no help that English is once again the medium of instruction in our schools.
Concerned groups and institutions have managed to encourage regional writing by holding contests and workshops through which vernacular literatures have been enriched. Yet unless these are successfully brought outside of their linguistic boundaries, the rest of the nation would remain deprived of writings that can only help illuminate who we are as a people.
As Sining Kambayoka founder Frank Rivera says, “Regional literature, including theater, is the base of almost everything we are as a people, that makes our works today more substantial than many works of art that are not based on past experiences.”
Read on at pcij.org.
6 Responses to Voices from afar
ryebosco
June 14th, 2007 at 2:28 am
“And it’s no help that English is once again the medium of instruction in our schools.”
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There is nothing wrong with the Philippines’ multi-cultural diversity in language, arts, music, etc. At this point however, we are in a period in our history wherein economics should be our priority and we need a unifying, common, practical language to uplift our country and compete internationally–that is English. Once we attain economic prosperity, we can worry and focus on the literary and theatrical contributions of the Ilocanos, Ilongos, Cebuanos, Tagalogs, Capampangan, etc.
DJB Rizalist
June 15th, 2007 at 6:02 am
Well at least Dr. Nadera is acutely aware of the supreme irony in having to write so passionately and eloquently upon this topic, in the hated language of the colonizer:
“When our seeming Babel of local literatures is revealed to be a repository of beauty to even those outside of literary circles, we may realize that art forms that are indigenous to our peoples are more important to us as a nation than even the most popular ones from the West. That these are more vital to us as a people — and surely more relevant than this essay written for readers in English.”
(I guess he’s talking about PCIJ, in the last phrase.)
I agree that beauty exists in all literatures, but it’s a fallacy of aboriginalism to reject as “foreign” the parts of our cultural heritage that are Spanish and English and deem as more “authentic” or “native” the parts that are Arabic or Malay.
Surely 350 years under Spain, and even more surely the 100 already just past, count for as much in our cultural inheritance as anything from pre-Hispanic days of which we know mostly about only because of the diligence of friars and other foreign travelers in these parts.
I strongly disagree with having the government going around promoting “regional literatures” in the hopes of artificially giving them a “national context”.
I am afraid the enterprise of trying to create a “national language” exclusively from the native dialects and that actually excludes English is doomed.
It misunderstands the inherent borderlessness of languages and human communication, and ignores the ineluctable reality of the world’s lingua anglica.
Like species, languages evolve under survival of the fittest. Some will live and some will die. Just look at Greece and Rome. Yet Greek and Latin live on don’t they, in the living languages?
There is thus no reason at all for Nadera’s aboriginal sentimentality.
Bruce in Iloilo
June 18th, 2007 at 10:04 am
I hope that you will excuse my nitpicking but the tendency to add “s” to make nouns plural which have no plural is a pet peeve, poor writing, and changes the meaning of the word in a significant way. The word “literatures” in the above is not a proper English word. “Literature” is an uncountable noun; it has no plural. One cannot say 1 literature, 2 literatures, 3 literatures, etc. One must say 1 piece of literature, 2 pieces of literature, 3 pieces of literatures, etc., or 1 story, 2 stories, or 1 poem, 2 poems, or 1 book, 2 books, 3 books, etc. Other examples of uncountable nouns, which cannot be made plural, include furniture, luggage, research (the noun), seafood, fruit and paperwork. Adding an “s” to any of these is improper. Furnitures, luggages, researches (the noun), seafoods, fruits, and paperworks are all incorrect.
David Stewart
June 18th, 2007 at 3:35 pm
About the article concerning the national languages, make sure all of the writing is stored on computers. It is important that indigenous languages are preserved for the people of the future. In the world, far too many languages have been lost forever.In my country we have lost an estimated 8000 dialects of the indigenous peoples. In Indonesia, Malay and the Philippines they say Salamat, Go in peace. Preserve it!
isaganicruz
June 18th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
For your information, Bruce, the word “literatures” appears in various academic sites. For example, go to http://vos.ucsb.edu/browse.asp?id=2719 and search for “literatures.” Major institutions (such as the University of Chicago and University College London) use the term. “Literatures” is very much a proper English word.
Read Or Die Weblog » Blog Archive » The republic of one hundred languages (2/2)
June 19th, 2007 at 1:36 am
[…] A commenter to the PCIJ blog post linking to Vim Nadera’s article derides his ‘aboriginal sentimentality’ and questions why Filipino advocates like Nadera insist on rejecting the ‘foreign’ parts of our cultural heritage in favor of the ‘native’ parts which are deemed ‘more authentic.’ Well, I don’t know, can it be because we are–Malay? […]