i am not good in english. and i write "e.e. cummings" style.
in fact don't remember any grammar rules except the mantra-like statement "verb is an action word", which i learned back in grade school.
yet for the sake of writing (and keeping myself sane) i resort to er, writing.
see, i have lots of things in mind that i just wish to share to anyone who would care to listen. had these things have analogs (o kasing-kahulugan) in tagalog (or filipino if you must) then we wouldn't have any trouble would we?
english. is this a wise choice of a topic for a first blog entry? quite so. in my home country, the philippines, we pride ourselves as being "fluent" in english. three years in kinder-level education, six years primary, 4 years high school, 4 years college, english as a curriculum is inescapable as the guantanamo prison. assuming 14 years of english education, would that automatically make me a good english speaker? no. see, in the context of philippine culture anything that will sound funny, qualifies as funny. funny as in not to be taken seriously. imagine yourself sitting in a classroom of 80 boys and girls your age and then teacher asks you to recite a line from an essay. after an eternity, you say some painfully unfamiliar word(s) only god knows from where and then the entire class bursts into laughter. shit-in-pants moment. where you want to choke to death with your bare hands the guy/girl who laughed the loudest and vanish from existence until judgment day so help you god.
discouraging, yes. that's just how it works these days. pag di ka marunong mag-english gagawin ka nilang katatawanan (it's as if all those who laugh and jeer were born with the entire tomes of webster and oxford inscribed in their tongues) and you being the butt of jokes in your childhood grows a distaste for english and refuses to use it unless demanded by necessity (exam, job interview, etc.)
admit it, english brings about an air of authority to a person when he speaks it correctly. just shows how we remained ass-kissers of our american colonizers. couldn't it be just the same if you speak filipino with fluency? but alas, no. we worship english with a passion that it becomes embedded in our society even to the most trivial of situations. tinatawanan natin si pacquiao at melanie m, but have we heard ourselves speak english? or write facebook posts in english perhaps? can we say with certainty that we are indeed fluent? think again.
no, i don't hate english, believe me. what i can't stand is how it is being viewed: like a status symbol. i can name a dozen government crooks who speaks english fluently and yet managed to steal money and get away with it. and we remain ignorant simply because we were busy admiring how this guy finished law or post grad in some ivy-league school abroad and speaks english with a dazzling accent. sarap suntukin sa ilong e! akala mo como nage-english e pagkahusay-husay but at the end of the day we got robbed of tax money and he goes home with a fat paycheck. 'nuff said.
now on a lighter note, it is a fact that we have a natural talent for languages. english in particular. i know some people unschooled in language or grammar rules and yet they craft the most beautiful sentences in english. how? they watch english films. they listen to english songs. they read english broadsheets. they love english books. and the best thing is, they enjoy every moment of it. i forgot to say they watch english series. which, sadly but true, makes more sense than your average fantasy-filled, regular pack of pinoy primetime crap. i'm not being unpatriotic. i just happen to think that we need to up the ante in all media possible. make high-value shows that feeds the intellect, in a family-oriented but highly entertaining fashion. we can do better. we can make pinoy soaps patterned from "house m.d." or "csi" or "jag" or "the mentalist" or "the tudors". name it. we can do better than just recycling foreign series in tagalog. trust me, we can.
i strongly believe in the use of english as a tool (and not a status symbol for showing-off). likas naman tayong matalino in artistic and technical aspects. coupled with decent english let's make it a combo.
teka lang, primetime bida na pala.
