An endangered fish

There were also other types of fish that used to abound in the 18 square kilometers of freshwater that comprised Lake Buhi. We had the native tilapia, which we called “atas,” and the native “karpa,” which was tastier than the carp I’ve had in other places. But sinarapan was the star of the show, the one that made our town land a place in textbooks and almanacs all over the world.

Sadly, the allure of capitalism and profit-seeking, when people began farming tilapia species and virtually converted a large portion of the lake into fish cages, has turned sinarapan into an endangered species. The atas and the karpa are both practically gone, while the sinarapan is now displaced from the lake and grown in a separate lakelet. This fish that was part of our staple and was available all year round is now fished only in this sanctuary during a limited period of the year designated as open season for catching it. An entire cultural ecology has vanished, mirroring the tragic consequences of the onslaught of capitalism.

Worse, the frenzy to put up fish cages for tilapia led to an accumulation of feeds at the bottom of the lake that contributed to the yearly fish kill events. Siltation of the lake has caused flooding of lakeside barangay. The building of an irrigation control structure at the mouth of the only outlet of the lake has become a political flash point regarding when to open the gates during heavy precipitation. On regular days, our lake provides a natural reservoir to irrigate rice fields in the fifth district of Camarines Sur. With siltation, the level of the lake easily rises during heavy rain, and hence there is a need to open the floodgates to help stave off flooding in Buhi. But this would mean releasing water that would spell disaster for the farmlands in the low-lying areas of the province. Thus, the question of who would carry the burden of being flooded becomes a political football.

The story of the advance of capitalism and modernity taking its toll on cultures and environments is not unique to Buhi. If at all, what amplifies the threat is the fact that other than sinarapan, which can only be found in our lake, modernization has also threatened the very soul of our town found in its unique language.

People should know that aside from being home to a unique fish species, we also speak a unique language, which for so long has been treated as a mere dialect of the Bicolano language, but for all intents and purposes is a language of its own. And Buhi is the only place in this world that speaks this language.

What is unique in our language is that it is an oral language. It contains sounds that cannot be written using the orthography of Bicolano, or any other dominant Filipino languages. As such, its survival hinged on its use as a medium of oral communication in our town. Devoid of any written documentation, the language faces the threat of disappearing, or even becoming extinct, the moment people stop using it.

I, and almost every native of Buhi, was naturally multilingual at a young age. We converse in our language, but write in the Bicolano language used by Naga, which we can also speak when communicating with other Bicolanos. We learn to speak Filipino, which is actually dominated by Tagalog, and English at school.

The fact is, the language is not even spoken by the entire population of our town. Somebody told me that roughly only a third of the population speaks the language. The barangay bordering Iriga City speaks Irigaynon, while those bordering Polangui speak the Albayanon version of Bicolano. Only the central and lakeside barangay are speaking the Buhi language.

The threat to the language cannot be exaggerated. Its precarious state is further aggravated by the fact that all written documents, from prayers to government documents, are written in another language, mostly English and Naga-Bicol. It is a fact that the language is now threatened by the intrusion of a Filipino language that is dominated by Tagalog not only in schools, but in popular culture. Tagalog is now more widely spoken even in ordinary conversation. I tried speaking to a vendor in our town’s marketplace in our language, and she replied to me in Tagalog.

The only way to protect and save our town’s language from disappearing is to begin writing it. And it is heartwarming to know that an orthography is now emerging not only pushed by homegrown cultural activists, but even by government leaders.

The Department of Education, through the support of the Komisyon ng Wikang Filipino, is about to launch the result of its work on developing an orthography which, while designed as a material to enable teaching using the mother tongue, is a vital resource that can be used to teach not only young children, but even adult native speakers in our town, and those in the local and global diaspora, to read and write in our native language. It is now possible to write using symbols to denote the schwa and voiced velar approximant sounds, among others, in the spoken language.

Every native of my town, regardless of our politics, should take part in this endeavor. We should not allow our language to suffer the same fate as the sinarapan, a fish that is now only seasonally available. We should all learn how to speak and write in our language.