Musings on Filipino

IHAVE a hunch that you can get a reading of the character of a nation from its language. This may be wild speculation but it is worth consideration. In Tagalog or Filipino, the only time the word endings change is in adding a “g” or “ng” to smooth the sound. The Filipino is renowned for his care for smooth interpersonal relations. Next his words can be changed in the beginning and in the middle in many different ways. He is therefore capable of being creative. His poetry can be imaginative and easy to compose. So you have makata who do spontaneous rhyming.

I remember some Filipino loggers in Borneo boasting that they beat the Japanese loggers who had plenty of equipment. All they had was a logging truck and they devised a way for the truck to load itself with logs. We are good in “make do.”

Once, while we were packing some laboratory equipment in Maryland, the donors were thinking out loud that we were wasting our time with the equipment we were sending to the Philippines. My American companion, who had been in the Philippines, told them that they did not know what the Filipino mechanic can do. He would eyeball the problem and come up with a solution. Only recently our car had a hard start. The mechanic could not get the spare part here in CDO. So he removed it and asked us to canvass for it in Manila. Meanwhile, he devised a heater so we could use the car. We are good in improvisation.

We are not good in setting objectives and sticking by those objectives. The words in Filipino do not change endings. This is the opposite of the European languages which change endings more than half the time. English changes only about 10 percent of the time and this is where we make mistakes. Those who are taught Latin or Spanish as young people have good advantage in learning to change the endings of words. They look for endings in their business endeavors. Filipinos are then not natural entrepreneurs who always consider the bottom line.

Added to this, the Filipino picked up the morality that it is below their dignity to sell. To ask someone to buy their products is difficult for the Filipino so that he would prefer to be a salaried 15/30 employee. If we are to progress with industrialization, we have to go against these two tendencies of being ashamed to sell and not watching for the bottom line.

Added to this is the tendency to be satisfied with the good enough, the result of “make do.” It is not laziness but the attitude that good enough is good and not the best that we can do. We also need to look at the big picture, what is best and good for everyone concerned.

In the end these are just tendencies and can be taken advantage of and overcome.

If we are to have something for everybody, we have a long way to go. We are lagging behind our neighbors in per capita income. We also have the tendency to bargain down the salaries of our workers. For the individual firm, this may be savings. But, in the long run and for the economy the more salaries our people have, the more they can spend and boost the economy. I have admired the countries that have high salaries. They seem to be thriving well. It is for the entrepreneurs to earn more so that can pay their people higher salaries.