Language, federalism

This month is Buwan ng Wika, declared to honor the “father” of the national language, Manuel L. Quezon. The debate on the shift towards a federal form of government should open profound discussions on the language policy in our country.

Amending the language policy stipulated in Article XIV of the 1987 Constitution would clarify the national identity of our country based on a single national language derived from Tagalog called Filipino.

The current unitary system provides a pretextforf our national leaders to impose Tagalog as the national language. Amending the language provision in the constitution by letting regions control their linguistic landscape will allow areas populated by non-Tagalog speakers an opportunity to preserve their languages from virtual extinction by the propagation of Tagalog by the national government and the mass media. Time to revisit what constitutes a Filipino nation. If we take from historical origins, the term Filipino was not even originally meant for the native Christianized Austronesian Filipinos who constitute an overwhelming majority of current Filipino people, but was for Philippine-born Spaniards or insulares. The current single Filipino political entity was only conceived when Spanish conquistadors like Miguel López de Legazpi were able to establish a permanent colony in Cebu in 1565 and claimed the entire archipelago for the Spanish Empire.

As a result of centuries of territorial consolidation and cultural acculturation by the Spaniards, the Filipino national identity was conceived by the end of 19th century and it continued until present time.

Thus if we take our historical and cultural foundations, Filipino nationhood lies in Spanish colonialism and not in indigenous-based tribalism. Thus, our national language policy should not have been based on certain ethnolinguistic identities but on legacies left behind by the founding colonizers, the Spaniards.

On the other hand, ethnolinguistic groups should be considered, too, as nations and they can set their own customary laws under the umbrella of the Philippine state.

In setting up language education policies, all Filipino citizens ought to learn Spanish as the language of the common Filipino confederative state, English as the language for international communication, and the dominant regional language for the areas where he/she resides.

The educational system should be overhauled too by setting up integrated schools for English or Spanish language immersion in every community with 10,000 inhabitants aside from existing barrio schools across the country. Foreign language education should be offered too on on-demand basis by schools.

Our country should recognize the multiplicity of ethnic demography and recognize them as separate nations under common Philippine confederate umbrella. Our country shall have three-layered language policy where the first-layer will have English and Spanish as common official confederate language, the second-layer will have regional languages as national languages in the regions, and the third-layer will have languages like Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Malay recognized as heritage languages.--Joseph Solis