Ninoy and his eloquence

DESPITE the rains and the weird and in timidating surges of insistent rainfall, Au gust is a month to be remembered by Baguio’s Catholic Clergy and the Baguio residents in whose minds and hearts still linger memories of the goodness and kindness of a foreign missionary called Father Willy or, Monsignor William Brasseur, the last Belgian Bishop of the Montañosa.

Bishop Willy or William as he was often addressed was ordained Titular Bishop of Agathonica on August 24, 1948. That was seventy long years ago. His Excellency Msgr. O. Dougherty of Manila, assisted by Bishop Santiago Sancho and Bishop Constant Jurgens of Tuguegarao, led the ceremony where many confreres and a big number of people attended amidst the extremely inclement weather of August. The procession of the clergy from the Bishop’s House to the Cathedral was escorted by the Boy Scouts of the Philippines in Baguio, and the cadets of then, Saint Louis School.

The following day, August 25th, at eight o’clock in the morning, the Bishop sang a Pontifical Mass. August is a rainy month with weird surges of rainfall and storms, but on the bright side, it is a month too of good people who filled our lives with memories of hope , cooperation and progress for the Montañosa or now called Cordillera.

As first Vicar Apostolic of the Mountain Provinces, he was officially installed on the 7th of November, 1948, which function he carried for the next thirty three years and beyond, doing much service to our people until his last days in the year 1993.

As Bishop, he adopted a coat of arms with the words Anima Una, meaning, One Soul, his motto which expresses his desire for oneness, brotherhood and cooperation for all the missionaries in the local church of the region comprising at that time, Baguio City, Benguet, Ifugao, Bontoc, and Kalinga-Apayao. His coat of arms shows five

NINOY Aquino was a sort of everything. People will always find something in him to admire. For me, he inspires me with the manner of expressing himself. Whether it was an ambush interview or delivering a speech, he was just so eloquent and articulate.

It is good to have YouTube application today because I get to watch some of his recorded speeches in his time. For sure he is one of the best speakers in the country. His speeches were full of power and command that people hearing it cannot afford to ignore the speaker. I tried to search great speakers in the country because it is just thrilling to listen to them. There are some who have the same level of intellectual superiority when delivering one but not with the same command. You see, there is difference even if a speech is delivered in an intense manner because not all of these are given with the same command and power. Ninoy’s style of speaking was not always loud but it had always a piercing effect.

There is difference in being articulate and eloquent. It is always good to know how a person greatly delivers a speech or when one fluently talks, that is eloquence, while it is always best when a person knows how to deliver it well and knows the rights words to use, that’s being articulate. I have never seen Ninoy in his recorded speeches stutter or stop for long to look for a word in any speech he had given. Every word that comes from his mouth seems right.

One of the many weaknesses of Filipinos is not being or lacking eloquence and articulacy. As my job demands, I speak in front of people but there have been many times when I endeavor to find the right next word/s to say. Like many of us feel, these words are always at the tip of my tongue. It is difficult to master the English language that is often used in academic communications. This is a foreign language and it always mean it is not what we have known from the beginning. Though we are known to be a country with a high level of English fluency, this fluency still require a lot of mastery. That is why we are encouraged to learn and practice more because it was only through learning and practicing that Ninoy achieved his eloquence and articulacy.

We do not only have problems mastering the English Language, we also have difficulty articulating our own national language which is Filipino. When we speak of Filipino or Tagalog, we often pause and use the words “ano”, “kwan” or “ganun’ in exchange for words we do not know. I admit I am not 100% fluent speaker of either Filipino or Tagalog Language though I use them every day. I can relate to people who use both English and Tagalog languages (“Taglish”) in explaining something because of their limitation in both languages. The same weakness is also apparent in using our own local dialects. Do we notice that sometimes we use other dialects or languages even when speaking our local dialect so we could fill up a sentence?

Language expression is very important because it affects how we convey our messages, ideas, and thoughts. When we are articulate, we are easily understood. We become more conversant because other people will find us easy to talk to. We all have something going on in our minds. Many of them are brilliant but we fail to share them many times because we are not articulate. When I was having my training in English Language for a job, my teachers used to advise us to avoid using fillers like “hmm” “usually” or “you know” in a conversation because in using them regularly, we tend to forget the right words for them. Perhaps we can apply this in mastering our own language.

Our weakness in language proficiency is ob-