ENGLISH.. why are we so "trying hard" to use this language? Filipino people are so different from people from other country. we are so conscious about how we speak English while the people that we are talking to care less about how we say the words. we are so afraid to commit mistakes while we laugh at our fellow people who cannot speak the language fluently. we also laugh at Filipino people coming from Visaya and Mindanao regions. why? what's the difference? we cannot speak their dialect yet we are trying so hard to be very good in the English language. isn't this "colonial mentality?" how come that we strive to be perfect speaking this foreign language and we pay so much just to learn Italian, German, French and Spanish but we don't know how to speak our own language fluently. had Rizal been alive, he would have kicked us in the ass and tell us to get lost in the forest with all the lions, tigers and all.
does anyone know that the Tagalog word for reading glasses is antipara? maybe someone knows it, but not all of us. i just recently heard of that word. how about the word guryon? it's kite in English. do you know what dagitab means? it's electricity. notebook is actualy "kwaderno" in Tagalog.
we don't know our own language that much. it's a very complicated language. much more complicated than the universal language. Tagalog has a lot of branches, just like science. it is actualy science. the word "mahal" could mean a lot of things. it could mean- costly, pricey, love as noun or love as verb, it could even be a name. i hated my Filipino subject teacher back in elementary and high school days.
i had a spinster teacher back in high school named Mila Gallardo. she was so taken for grated because she was very kind. the kindest proctor you would ever meet in La Huerta School. no one gave attention to her whenever she teaches he major subject. all students, except the nerdy and geeky ones, threw paper all around, ran around the class room or went out of the class room to buy food or just did anything to excuse themselves from taking the subject. i was one of the nerdy ones who would stay with her all through out the time she taught. i must admit, it wasnt beause i love the subject but just because i wanted to show token of appreciation for, despite the fact that 90% of the population of our section already ran away to miss the subject, she was still standing there, teaching us and telling us that FILIPINO or TAGALOG is a very lovely language. i listened in her lesson not because i wanted to learn but because i wanted to pass the exams. i answered her questions not because i wanted to have good recitation grades but because i pitied her for not having anyone else in the room to call because no one else was raising their hands.
it wasn't a tough subject though. what she taught was so easy to learn and keep in mind. it was just that we didn't really want to hear what she wanted to teach us because we thought we already knew everything about the language. we were wrong though, needless to say.
i cannot discuss here what i know about FILIPINO language. it would take so much time or maybe i have already totally forgotten what i learned in school.
i dont want to forget this language. FILIPINO is my native tounge and i want to be more knowledgeable about it than in the universal language. i wish i could take back the time so i could have learned more about my language. i took so much time learning English that sometimes, i am already getting fed up speaking it.
i dont want to forget FILIPINO. or TAGALOG. i am not a real PILIPINO if i don't know my own language. i am incomplete and naked without my native tounge.