It bleeds my heart almost in pain one Friday afternoon while checking the Formal Themes of my pupils, I saw a nip and tucked sounded word formation with structures I am becoming familiar with. It went like this:
“My mother is their always inside our house to cooking our food while my father is goes to the farm to eat the goats…”
My face started to drench with sweat slowly forming over my pimple-prone forehead. Undesirable discomfort was slowly building inside my chest. Here’s my brain in a “red sign” squeaking siren that encircled my skull like a halo. Suddenly, my hand scribbled red ball point lines my pupils fondly call as “red alert” and “madugo”. I understand what my pupil meant but I don’t know if I wanted to laugh or I preferred to frown. Neither appeared at least. My emotion was in a total hold-back. Again, the necessity called for it, I have to correct it no matter how hard it will be. I was in a long trouble of proofreading. But hey, people, I was beginning to like it.
Of course we laugh. English teachers tend to laugh at the slightest hint of a grammatical, spelling and structural errors from our pupils. But then when they commit the mistakes, we do not usually feel so awkward and disheartened knowing that we still have to proofread, send back to them to re-write and then finalize for the grading period. That’s a lot of job, though. We buy the thought of accepting it as it was since we were teachers, after all. And these mistakes were from pupils, anyway.
But cultural credence or simply a taboo, English language blunder here in the Philippines is marred with so much idealism that whoever commits it is nearly being sentenced to death. Language errors in speech is always subject to loathing. A fault makes even more center-stage when it comes from heads, higher officials or superiors. You would hear people say, “How could she have written that, she’s a supervisor, isn’t she?” or “He’s a principal, right? Is he really?”.
While it is big deal for Filipinos when someone commits English language errors, I am particularly wondering why the original users of the language, the Brits and the Americans, aren’t so meticulous with theirs. Maybe they are just so unconcerned or simply careless, I thought. An example is when one day I was watching Discovery channel’s POWERZONE: Really Big Things with Matt Rogers, someone said, “You has to keep watching for the clogging logs to avoid delays”. No one ever tried to correct it.
Also in MYTHBUSTERS, Jamie Hayneman, a buster, marked a container bottle with the word PERTILIZER as it will be used to contain some fertilizers. Nobody even from the show’s editor corrected it. Neither his co-busters tried to changed P to F. They even used the marked material until the end of the experiment. And it was just fine. No big deal.
As a rule of thumb, they say that committing error while you are speaking is always better and less controversial than when the errors are written. The tendency towards committing mistakes is very likely while speaking rather than in writing. Speech slip-ups are said to be a bit acceptable as most the time even the best speakers are able to commit boo-boos.
Thus, when a grade II teacher submitted her Report on Promotions one day, a panel of checkers were seen nearly rolling in laughter. The report says that the teacher has 41 actual and 3 GOOSE pupils under her credit. Toink!
The same teacher with those goose pupils was once heard with the statement, “You told me to get ‘bolo’ but when I come back, no more you [Inutusan mo ‘kong kumuha ng itak, pero pag balik ko ay wala ka na]”.
Here in the Philippines, even a simple mispronunciation could mean fatal as far as integrity is concerned. Once you commit it, people will never forget it. It will become a local household joke or a domestic humor destined for legendary status.
Another story goes this way:
A mathematics teacher was walking along the school corridor when she heard a male English subject teacher lead his pupils in a lesson with context clues.
“Everybody, read, PYA-KUK.”, Instructed the English teacher.
The pupils, altogether, repeated the word, ”Pya..kuk!”.
Wondering what was that, the math teacher drew herself nearer the classroom and listened behind the windows while the English teacher continued his lesson and even defined what the word means.
Then it hit her. With a sudden burst of annoyance, she yelled coming out of her eavesdropping, “Damn (Expletive, in tagalong) Mister Longhino Makabunsag, It’s not pyakuk, …It’s PEACOCK!
English is considered as our second language, perhaps, not because it is our choice but because it is the accepted main international lingo. And maybe also due to the fact that our country was once under the United States, we were able to grow with the influences of the Americans. But second language as it is, the concentration to it is far more evident compared with the main tongue. In school most of the time, English subject is considered to be better than Filipino subject. A pupil is considered to be better if he is good in English compared to pupils who are good in Filipino.
The problem now is that the language is gradually getting unpopular and seems to be in the brink of being ousted in its pedestal. French, the considered best language as far as style is concerned is now getting much ground in the international arena. Here in Asia, the different dialects of Chinese are gradually taking over the business-economic language with the advent of the Olympic Games this year. Loads of westerners are studying Chinese due to the fact that the dragon financial system of China, they say, is about to roll the new wave of world economic upturns.
With all these, maybe it is about time for us to review our confidence with the local language. How we put so much emphasis with the second language seems to be a kind of neglecting our very own. While we usually condone mistakes in our own balarila, possibly it may not be a big deal that we do the same with English. It would also be better to learn to become more forgiving with others who commit English language errors. Better yet, let us improve our perception to our very own Filipino language by pushing it up over the other by placing it on top of our standards. Who knows, one day, Filipino language will hit the world stage by becoming the next accepted international lingo? It will all be in our own hands, folks.
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