Tagalog-3

[potet]

What David GIL says is true when it comes to ordinary conversation among
common people. It doesn't hold water though when you broach any technical or
scientific subject. At the present moment, Tagalog is like a tree that has
only grown a couple of branches

In 1964 the UNESCO National Commission of the Philippines asked a team of
Filipino scholars to coin Tagalog terms for sciences. The results were
published as

Gonsalo DEL ROSARIO, ed. (1978)
Maugnaying talasalitaang pang-agham
Manila: National BookStore

In 1985, I planned to assess to what extent these coinages were used by
teachers, researchers, journalists, and the general public. I thought that
about 7 years after its publication, a reasonable number of educated people
should have mastered at least the vocabulary of their fields.

To my great surprise, I couldn't find any. The great majority of the people
I interviewed had never heard of this book. Those who had had never bothered
to use it. They all said they either used English terms in Tagalog or
expressed themselves completely in English. Several expressed hostile views
to Tagalog, claiming English should be made the national language of the
Philippines. Needless to say I couldn't collect any book on mathematics,
physics, or biology written in Tagalog.

I remember a French anthropology student I met then and there. Of course she
didn't believe me, plainly meaning I was prejudiced. Naturally enough she
was looking for books on anthropology in Tagalog, so after visiting
university press outlets, I kindly accompanied her to all the bookstores I
knew. At the end of the day, exhausted, she concluded there must be some
truth in what I said.

For all I know scholars in humanities - literary criticism and  history in
particular - will use Tagalog in some of their publications. Outside
humanities I found only one field  in which Tagalog was somehow at par with
English - law - in so far as the Civil Code of the Philippines, originally
in English, was also available in its Tagalog translation. Also almanachs
for peasants aptly demonstrate everything necessary to agriculture can be
properly expressed in Tagalog.

So, one wonders why, over half a century after Filipinos became independent,
their national language is still undeveloped in the scientific and technical
fields.

All this of course is an outsider's humble opinion. It would be interesting
to have that of  Filipino scholars living in the Philippines about the
current state of affairs.

Best

Jean-Paul G. POTET. B. P. 46. 92114 CLICHY CEDEX. FRANCE.