But, will she?
After one hundred years since the Thomasites landed all that was achieved is the replacement of Spanish as the country’s official language. Aside from this we have the almost secret policy to force into phonetic Tagalog the unphonetic base of English, as pointed out by Henry Ford. This is now being done by ramming the entire English alphabet into Tagalog and into almost all the other major native languages by a DECS circular without any clear objection from the Commission on Filipino.
What could be tragic and funny is that this deliberate alphabetical cross-breeding is resulting into a pidgin called Taglish that may just further deteriorate the common use of English as it definitely and officially damages what used to be standard Tagalog or Filipino.
But the Filipino is said to be profitably entering the global village, albeit as a derided DH and as an entertainer, with English, or Taglish. This slave-like situation of Filipino migrant workers demeans all the previous efforts of the Thomasites. Filipinos today are being “educated” with compulsory English by the tyranny of the Jones law of 1916, the country’s foreign debt and the present Philippine Constitution, just to end up as virtual slaves and prostitutes in other countries that neither have English as their language.
Is this why the teaching of another international languages like Spanish is deliberately being withheld by the U.S. WASP dominated Philippine government of today?.
Is this why a foreign language course, with credits in units in the college curricula, can not be included by the now controversial Philippine Commission on Higher Education (CHED) so that either Mandarin, Spanish and Arabic may be placed within the reach of today’s Filipino student?
Is language tyranny a part of the legacy of the Thomasites?
*** Guillermo Gomez Rivera is a Premio Zobel awardee, a member of the Academia Filipina and former National Language Committee Secretary, Philippine Constitutional Convention 1971-73.
About Guillermo Gomez Rivera
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