Anglicization of the Philippine languages

I know this issue has been discussed many times over, yet I still find it fresh and is worth composing. Here goes: the contemporary culture of the Philippines is very much affected with the American colonization more than the Spanish. Americans were here only since 1898 whereas the Spaniards were here since 1521. With that, Filipinos came to be called “little brown Americans”. With the phrase came the imposition of English throughout the archipelago and we even have our own Philippine English.

We all know how English (or how American) we are. Look at our street and store signs: 99% are in English. Everywhere we go, English is alive. From the songs we fondly sing in our videokes to the blogs we post. The major factor in the development of English is of course it's taught in schools at all levels and is by far the medium of instruction and technology is fueling its popularity. Since there are lots of situations where English rules, I’ll point where in the Filipino life English is not used. Today, the local languages even in these areas are hemorrhaging, gasping for its existence --the spoken vernaculars are peppered liberally with English words making them Taglish, Bislish, etc:

• Speaking/socializing. We use the regional languages (Tagalog, Bisaya, Ilocano, etc). This situation now creates a broken language e.g. Taglish and Bislish among the Pinoy educated elite. Examples: (Tagalog) Fluent me mag-English. (Bisaya) Gi-cramps akong feet. This phenomenon happens also with other regional languages. I just don’t know what will happen to the spoken languages in the country, 50 to 100 years from now. But I pray that the regional languages will still be spoken. As what happens to Spanish in Zamboanga or the French in Haiti, I suspect that a creole language will ultimately rise. We will have lots of varieties of it in the country then, since we have seven major languages. Imagine these seven mutating into an English creole.

• Mass media (>50% Tagalog). Yes it’s around that because broadcast media is broken down into TV broadcast (Tagalog majority), AM broadcast (Tagalog), FM broadcast (English). Local cinema is also in Tagalog. However, the print media (newspapers, magazines) is by far circulated in English.

• Schools, churches, the government and commerce. This is quite tricky since it’s given that printed/written texts are exclusively in English in these institutions, but the vernacular prevails in the speaking arena. In schools for example, even for English classes, the teachers switch to the vernacular when teaching i.e. in explaining the concepts. The churches (Roman Catholic for example) have their service in English or the vernacular. The government does its activities primarily in English, but in the vernacular most often in informal and relaxed situations. The situation in the government is more or less the same with commerce and business. Almost all firms in the country speak the vernacular in their day-to-day activities.

That’s all I can say to the status of our local languages. Give it another 50 years and I'm afraid we will find that speaking in the vernacular as it was, is funny. English is so intertwined with our daily lives.

My kind of (boom) town

This is reposted here from this Inquirer article.

By Conrado R. Banal III
Inquirer
Last updated 02:35am (Mla time) 11/01/2007

MANILA, Philippines--In this guessing game of what can be the next “boom” town, or province, in this country that is playing catch-up with its neighbors, my bet goes to this small province in Mindanao called Sarangani.

“Sarang” what? Okay, the province is part of the grouping known as Socsksargen, made up of South Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, Sarangani and General Santos City. Yes, the tuna region!

With its seven municipalities, Sarangani is among our 10 poorest provinces. It is nevertheless rich in culture, natural resources and thus investment opportunities. (Read “culture” as “tourism” please.)

In any poor area, as you know, education is always a big deal. The people know that it is their way out of poverty. And wherever people enslave themselves for education, you can be sure of competent labor force. That’s the biggest ingredient of economic progress.

Still, in my favorite Sarangani, education is like a religion. Students of the Kyumad Elementary School in the town of Maasim, for example, walk for three hours everyday to attend classes. The school has only five classrooms for the 250 or so Grade 1 to Grade 6 pupils, and has only three teachers. At 3,000 feet above sea level, it takes some 10 kilometers of rocky uphill climb to reach the school from the highway. The teachers are never late or absent.

And then you have the agricultural giant Dole Philippines, operating in Mindanao since 1963, to help Sarangani’s education program. Dole regularly sends medical missions to the remotest areas of Sarangani, giving out hygiene kits and providing check-up. Result: lower rate of soil-transmitted disease called helminthes (caused by lukeworms) among the schoolchildren.

To me such an interest of the private sector is always a big factor for things to start looking up in any area. Still, Sarangani is also becoming the front door to the BIMP-EAGA. Let me explain that BIMP stands for Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines; and EAGA, for East ASEAN Growth Area. It is part of a program to create trade and investment linkages between one of our regions and those countries. And Sarangani has an area tailor-made for the program.

It is called the JAGS-CT (or Jose Abad Santos Glan-Sarangani Cooperation Triangle), a cluster of southern towns formed in 2003 to support the BIMP-EAGA. It serves as the vehicle for trade, tourism and investments between Mindanao and the northern provinces of Indonesia.

The area now serves as the model for Mindanao for municipalities to venture into direct trade with other countries near them. Really, it used to be that their trade was done only with Manila.

Fortunately for the Sarangani area, it got investments in road networks, seaports and a special economic zone. Solely run and financed by the local governments of Jose Abad Santos, Glan and Sarangani, the JAGS-CT already completed a P43-million port in the island municipality of Sarangani (Balut Island), while Glan -- which was declared an international port -- is about to refurbish an old trading port.

Interconnecting six of the seven towns of Sarangani are well paved, and may I say well maintained too, road networks that stretch 145 kilometers from end to end, passing through the fast growing port area of General Santos City. Traveling from Glan, which is the easternmost part of the province, to the westernmost tip of Maitum takes just a little under two hours even in leisurely driving. No traffic problem whatsoever!

Let me tell you something else. The provincial government, together with Dole, already turned former bandit lairs and communist movement strongholds in Maasim town into money-making pineapple and strawberry plantations.

Listen to Nolding Lanon, a 32-year-old former rebel turned technician: “Years ago I was with some scores of bandits making trouble in villages here.” Today Nolding is best performing technician of the Polo Samahang Nayon Cooperative, servicing independent pineapple growers in the area.

There are already some 2,000 hectares in the towns of Maasim and Malungon, both former strife-torn, that are planted with pineapple through Dole’s “growership” program. It is working on a 15,000-hectare expansion project running up to 2015.

That town of Maasim, together with two other towns, is being organized into a growth triangle, where an industrial zone will host a P15-billion, 200-megawatt coal-fired power plant, to be built by the Alsons Group. Under its plan, the power plant will be expanded in increments of 200-300 MW, until it reaches a capacity of 900 MW. In short, that’s enough power for a “boom” town.

What then explains the expansion plan for the power plant? Well, I guess it’s the investment record of the area. In the last three years, new investments recorded an annual average growth rate of more than 3.0 percent. The increase in investments in new -- again, NEW -- businesses reached P497.9 million in those years, for an annual average growth of 30 percent, or much higher than the national average of 0.06 percent.

The provincial government also crafted incentives for investments, such as tax holidays of five years. Moreover, the province wrote the incentives down into a “code,” perhaps to cement them well into the future. You know, whoever is in power in the province, the investment code is in force. Something like that.

But just between us girls, here is something different in Sarangani: The local governments are more than willing to provide quick processing of business permits and licenses. It is something rare in Metro Manila, right?

Investment climate is now very excellent, said Sarangani Governor Miguel Rene Dominguez, who is a 30-year-old bachelor. “We have not had any major insurgency or terrorism-related incident since 2004.”

Incidentally, that was the year Dominguez became governor.

Anyway, if you ask bankers, they will tell you that food processing has the biggest potential in the area. More than 7,000 hectares of mango trees dot the province, yielding almost four metric tons last year. Sarangani Bay of course is still an abundant source of seafood. Banana production reached more than 90,000 metric tons last year. The province still leads Central Mindanao in coconut production at 350,000 metric tons last year.

As for tourism, which is considered to be the most promising investment in the country today, Sarangani boasts of white sand beaches in Gumasa town, dive spots in Maasim and Kiamba, and white-water tubing in Maitum. All of those places already attracted investments in new resorts -- not to mention foreign tourists. And of course the job applicants.

The Sarangani Bay Festival, which is staged every May, holds the longest open ocean marathon swimming competition in the country and, most probably, in Asia. The contest is a 15-km swim across the Sarangani Bay.

Okay, do I sound like I am rooting for this poor province to make a go at development? You bet I am. The name itself has a special appeal. Sarangani -- what an exotic name!