Tagalog

[Paz B. Naylor]

David, thanks for the 7-page attachment (on the peopling of the pacific)
that
you sent everyone.

Before I present my comments, let me acquaint AN-LANGers of the
background from which the assertions that follow emanate.
First, I am  a native speaker of Tagalog, a  non-native speaker of
Cebuano and Hiligaynon, a trained linguist who has worked on Tagalog
and other Philippine languages for 3 decades, and a professional
Tagalog<=>English translator and interpreter.  I might mention that I
grew up in a quadrilingual home in Manila.  Secondly, my academic
background and experience include getting a B.A. in English and having
been a student of English, Spanish and Comparative Romance Linguistics
and taking comprehensive exams in all 3.  I have also taught English,
Spanish, and Tagalog (having set up the Tagalog Program at the
University of Michigan Department of Linguistics) as well as
Linguistics courses. I am currently working on a book on
"the story of Tagalog".

First and foremost:  the history of the growth and development of Tagalog
under the immense influence of Spanish closely parallels that of the growth
and development of English under the immense influence of Norman French
and Latin.  Who is to say that the English were "unable to express
themselves fully in their own language" - in Chaucer's time,
in Shakespeare's (!!!) and today?

Furthermore, words - vocabulary - do not a language make.  To fellow
linguists, I need say no more.  My late teacher, Charles Fries used to
show the class that nonsense words put together in an English sentence
structure would be understandable and recognizable as English.  As an
example, he gave something like "The uggles woggled the buggles."

The vocabulary of English is only 14% Anglo-Saxon (although these
are the most frequently used words) - yet no one will deny the fact that
 the language IS English.  Sapir had also said that grammar is the most
resistant to change and that in spite of large scale admission of an
enormous number of loans, the language retains its "genius".

Our "own language" is what it has evolved and continues to evolve into.
The process of adoption and adaptation of foreign words and phrases
make them a part of our own language.  They are INTEGRATED and
used in accordance with our own language's rules of grammar, phonology,
and discourse.

Incidentally, the phonological adaptation of Spanish and English words
is not done willy-nilly.  It is done according to rule.  Instinctively, the
(non linguist) borrowers follow the phonotactic patterns of Tagalog
(which, by the way, shows much closer parallelism with Spanish
than with English).  (Jean-Paul's example, "chekó-listó" for checklist
would not be acceptable.)

 As David pointed out, the very large vocabulary of loans are
 "entirely nativized" and when a Tagalog speaker uses them,
he/she is speaking Tagalog [his/her  "own language"]. "Just as an
English speaker is not code-switching every time s/he uses a word of
Romance origin," neither does a Tagalog speaker every time s/he uses
a Spanish or English loanword.  (I have made the same assertions in
the book I am currently writing.)

Of course any multilingual person is bound to code-switch when in
certain contexts another code makes for greater clarity or ease
of understanding, or provides the "mot juste." (Growing up in a
quadrilingual home and without even realizing it, we were switching
from one code to another depending on the demands of the context.)
This does not, however, mean that we were unable to fully express
ourselves in our own language.  We did in the right contexts.

Re coinages, let me remind everyone of the fate of Lope K. Santos'
"salumpuwit" (bottom-catcher) for 'silya' (chair) - it ended up being
the butt of jokes.  So with a lot of his other coinages like "sasakyang
bakal na pakawig-kawig" (iron vehicle that sways from side to side)
for 'tren' (train) or "salipawpaw" for 'eroplano' (plane), etc., etc.

 In the global scientific world of today, with rare exceptions,
coinages that some wordsmith put together cannot gain currency in
a language community.  Coinages appear to gain currency only
when a linguistic void exists as when a new concept is born.  So
why bother with Tagalog scientific coinages when there are English
ready-made terms that most of the world of science have become
familiar with in the course of learning the scientific concept in
question? To be a player in scientific endeavor in today's world,
one MUST communicate in English. Thus, learning such coinages
would be a pointless exercise. (A German acquaintance once informed
us that he was advised by his faculty advisers to write (and publish)
his Ph.D. thesis in Science in English - and so he did as did other
of his colleagues.)

It's not just Tagalog speakers who resort to English scientific
terminology - it's most of the world.  Educated Filipinos do very well
 know the vocabulary of their science fields in which a lot of English
 terms have universal currency.

Tagalog is a fully grown tree.  (As another of my teachers, Kenneth
Pike (recently deceased), who has worked with numerous "exotic"
languages, had said, there is no such thing as an underdeveloped
language - they are all fully developed.)

Borrowing is a form of growth itself.  To go along with the metaphor,
adopting and adapting and integrating loanwords from other languages
is merely making the frond more dense with its enriched vocabulary.

Speaking of Taglish, it must be borne in mind that it is only one
SPEECH STYLE in the repertoire of the Tagalog speaker.  The choice
to use it is also rule-governed and determined by the context.
MODERN TAGALOG is a very vibrant language.  The rise of Taglish
is in fact evidence of this.  It is evolving in a most interesting way and
at a rather brisk pace.  Isn't evolving a way of developing?

Since 1989 when "Filipino" (the alter ego of Tagalog) was redefined by
Ernesto Constantino, words and sounds from other languages -
Philippine and non-Philippine - were welcome to become part of our
language.  Efforts to "intellectualize" Filipino, i.e., to add vocabulary
for academic/scientific purposes, turned out to be ineffectual as a result.
With this freedom to incorporate foreign terminology there was no need
to ARTIFICIALLY develop Tagalog terminology.  Thus teachers could
now teach science in MODERN TAGALOG or Filipino.  By 1994 teaching
science as well as non-science courses in Filipino was strongly
encouraged by the President of the University of the Philippines
(who was himself a native speaker of  Cebuano).  And many U.P.
professors did!

(My sources are reliable - I learned much of this straight
from the horse's mouth in 1995 when I met with Ernesto Constantino
in Manila and in 1996 when I met with U.P. President José Abueva when
he visited the University of Michigan.  Of course there are publications
on the subject in the last decade or so.)

Please forgive the lecturing - just an occupational disease.

Thank you for your attention.   Paz

P.S.  Re Taglish, "Manglish":
I recently read of "Singlish" - English-influenced Singaporean.


Paz Buenaventura Naylor, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor, Asian Languages and Cultures
Faculty Associate, Center for Southeast Asian Studies
Program Associate, Linguistics
The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MI 48109
Home Address:  2032 Winsted Blvd., Ann Arbor MI  48103-6040
             Tel/Fax:  (734) 995-2371








----- Original Message -----
From: "gil" <gil at eva.mpg.de>
To: " AUSTRONESIAN LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS" <AN-LANG at anu.edu.au>
Sent: Friday, April 20, 2001 7:46 AM
Subject: Re: Tagalog


> Dear all,
>
> This may not be directly relevant to the issue of how to translate a
> certain text into Tagalog, but the following passage by Jean-Paul is
> worthy of comment:
>
> > 1) Today's Tagalogs are unable to express themselves fully in their own
> > language. They freely mix up Tagalog and English (the result is called
> > "Taglish"); so much so that scholars, experts and the general public
just do
> > not know the few coinages that exist in the scientific and technical
fields.
> > I even have the strong impression they couldn't care less.
>
> The claim that "[t]oday's Tagalogs are unable to express themselves
> fully in their own
> language" is one that is often bandied about, but in my own experience
> is utterly false. To the best that I can tell, its widespread currency
> is a result of it being true, to a certain extent, with respect to the
> social elites in the Philippines, who, admittedly, may be the prime
> consumers of Mr. Furey's products, but who are nevertheless a small
> numerical minority of the total number of Tagalog speakers.  The large
> majority of speakers of Tagalog speak little or no English whatsoever.
> Of course, they have active mastery of a very large vocabulary of
> English and also Spanish loans into Tagalog; however, these forms are
> entirely "nativized", and when used, the speaker is speaking Tagalog,
> not code-switching between Tagalog and English or Spanish.  (Just as an
> English speaker is not code-switching every time s/he uses a word of
> Romance origin.)  One of my fondest memories from the time I spent in
> the Philippines was in the "People Power" days of early 1996.  Cory
> Aquino, still a hopeful candidate, was in Luneta, the main park in
> central Manila, addressing an audience which was billed to be the
> largest gathering of humanity ever assembled in a single place --
> millions of people.  She was speaking in English, of course, and
> everybody was cheering at the right times and so on -- but the large
> majority of the audience could hardly understand a word she was saying!
> The reason I ended up picking up some Tagalog during the time I spent in
> the Philippines was that I needed it in order to communicate: outside
> the usual tourist haunts, and the trendy upmarket joints, English was of
> very little use.
>
> This issue is not specific to Tagalog and the Philippines.  Living in
> Malaysia for two years, I heard peeople saying the same thing about
> Malays, that they can't express themselves without slipping into
> "Manglish".  Again, this was true in the university department where I
> worked, but completely false in the neighborhood where I lived, where
> hardly anybody knew more than the most rudimentary English (even though
> their language was peppered with nativized English loans).
>
> Cheers,
>
> David
>
> --
> David Gil
>
> Department of Linguistics
> Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
> Inselstrasse 22, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany
>
> Telephone: 49-341-9952321
> Fax: 49-341-9952119
> Email: gil at eva.mpg.de
> Webpage:  http://monolith.eva.mpg.de/~gil/