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IREMEMBER that a Latin American scholar — I do not know from which country — angrily claimed at an academic congress that because of the Spanish conquest, many indigenous languages went into extinction. That kept me thinking a lot about the strong connection between language and identity and why the scholar — using plain Spanish — was so angry about the issue. Maybe he thought his identity was blurred given his incapacity to speak Quechua, Aymara, Guarani or any other language. I answered that if he really felt that the loss was so big, he was still on time to learn the indigenous language of his birthplace and then give it to his children. But clearly he was not willing to do that: depriving his children from connecting with a community of more than 500 million speakers would undoubtedly affect their chances to prosper.
The Philippines has the opposite situation. After 333 years of Spanish presence, the language is almost totally gone. When I first asked some Filipinos why that happened, I was told "Spaniards did not want us to learn it." The answer did not satisfy me: that would be quite unuseful even from the point of view of the colonizers. Other people gave me a more elaborate answer: "The only Spanish figure in many provinces was the Spanish friar and he did not want the people to learn so he could keep power being the middle person between the government and the natives." That sounded more logical, but it actually ignores one very important factor: how languages are learned and spread.
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© Provided by The Manila TimesThe life and death of the Spanish language in the Philippines
Nicholas Ostler is a British scholar specializing in endangered languages. He published in 2005 a fascinating book, Empires of the Word: A Language History of Languages, in which he traces the biography of the languages that have mainly dominated the world through certain periods of history, namely Sumerian, Akkadian, Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, French, etc., and tries to explain what processes make languages prosper and spread, to be later left and forgotten. He claims that many factors, like the influence of a very powerful language group, epidemics, war or natural disaster can lead to the decimation of the speakers of a single language. But above all, there is one thing people usually do not think of: when parents do not teach children their language.
Language is not only an identity tool, but a practical one for everyday life. There have been incredible attempts to recover dead languages, most of them unsuccessful. An exception to this is the revival of Hebrew, led by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and followed by a strong Zionist movement in Palestine. The recovery of the language was seen as an unavoidable task in order for Jews to grow and prosper and enhance their sense of community. This identitarian view about language is not an exception. But in the Philippines what prevails is the view that language is just an everyday tool. There are parents who speak to their own children in Tagalog, despite being native speakers of Ilonggo, Ilocano, Waray or any other minority language. Many Manileños need the mediation of an uncle in order to talk to their grandparents when visiting them in the province. I have even seen children in Metro Manila who speak only English, their parents refusing to talk to them in Tagalog. The reason for this is clear: they want to provide their children with a language that can be actively used throughout their lives. There is also the idea of social status behind that: languages are seen hierarchically, English being on top and small indigenous languages at the bottom.
Nicholas Ostler claims too in The Last Lingua Franca (2010) that the future of English does not seem so bright: like Latin, it will slowly cease to be spoken — but not in a short time, for sure — and that it will be used as a language of knowledge before it fades away. The reason for him is clear: languages are learned from parents and in terms of native speakers, English is not growing. From one billion speakers of English, only 330 million are native speakers, and this population is not spreading.
Coming back to the Philippines, many factors can explain the disappearance of Spanish:
First, the Spanish presence in the Philippines was relatively weak in terms of native speakers. There was no point in learning a language you could not use. The number of Spaniards living in the archipelago was always quite low.
In order to learn a new language, you need motivation to make the effort and also opportunities to practice what you learned. Both of them were lacking here.
Second, the reason for the friars to not teach Spanish was merely practical: it was easier for a foreign person to learn the indigenous language than force 5,000 people to learn the language of a single person. It was quite logical. Moreover, missionaries carried out an excellent job documenting Filipino languages with their grammars, dictionaries and translations. If it happened that later on they used this knowledge to exert power, it was something more circumstantial than premeditated.
Third, the Laws of the Indies were quite clear about the importance of spreading Spanish in the colonies but this was more of a good desire than a factible goal. It was only with the implementation of the public educational system in 1862 that Spanish could take root in the archipelago.
Fourth, it bears reminding that Spanish was not a widely spoken language in Spanish America either until their respective constitutions declared it, after independence, to be the official language, and until education was implemented freely and became compulsory. The creole elite wanted their language to be the official language of the country. Anyone willing to be successful in business, get a high formal education or climb socially had to learn it. Something like that could very well have happened in the Philippines had not the Americans interfered with the process in 1898.
Lastly, the Americans wanted a fast Americanization of the archipelago. With that purpose was depicted a dark picture of everything Spanish and discouraged the use of the Spanish language. Although there was fierce resistance from the Filipino intellectual class, they finally gave up: their grandchildren did not speak Spanish any more. And the very reason that this happened was that they stopped talking to their children in Spanish at home.
An example: if there were — let's say — around one million Spanish speakers in the Philippines by 1898 and the population had so far multiplied by 10, there would be right now at least 10 million Spanish speakers, or even more, given that those speakers belong to the intellectual, business and political class and the lower classes tend to pick up the habits of the ones from the higher class in order to improve their lives. But they just stopped talking to their children in Spanish, and it curiously happened when Spanish became more widely spoken — around the 1920s and 1930s of the last century. They probably did not feel so attached to the language from an identitarian point of view. But most importantly, they did not think their children would need the Spanish language any more in order to grow and prosper. The world was shaped by the Anglo-Saxons and the Philippines was under US dominion: Spanish started being seen as a relic, a vestige of the past, whose display was only done in order to take pride in their Spanish blood.
Many Filipinos blame the lack of official status for the loss, something that only happened in 1986. The issue is more symbolic than relevant: the Spanish language was in decay in the Philippines several decades before it was stripped from the Constitution. As a multilingual society, parents often choose to transfer one of the languages they speak, and Spanish was, with a few notable exceptions, clearly not the favored one.
I have met many Filipino students of Spanish who blame their parents for not talking to them in the language of their ancestors at home. Probably they did it with the best of intentions, since it has been only from the 1990s that the Spanish language started to be recognized as a very useful language internationally, both in business and international organizations, and providing thousands of well-ρáíd jobs in the call center industry. Time changes everything and now Filipinos are learning Spanish again, this time as a second language. It is a historical paradox that only after Spanish had been almost lost in the Philippines that there are thousands of Filipinos coming back to learn the language in the universities, at Instituto Cervantes, in private schools or as an optional subject in high schools. For most of them it will be an opportunity to improve their lives with a hidden ingredient of the Filipino identity.
FROM: THE MANILA TIMES
The Philippines has the opposite situation. After 333 years of Spanish presence, the language is almost totally gone. When I first asked some Filipinos why that happened, I was told "Spaniards did not want us to learn it." The answer did not satisfy me: that would be quite unuseful even from the point of view of the colonizers. Other people gave me a more elaborate answer: "The only Spanish figure in many provinces was the Spanish friar and he did not want the people to learn so he could keep power being the middle person between the government and the natives." That sounded more logical, but it actually ignores one very important factor: how languages are learned and spread.
You do not have permission to view the full content of this post. Log in or register now.
© Provided by The Manila TimesThe life and death of the Spanish language in the Philippines
Nicholas Ostler is a British scholar specializing in endangered languages. He published in 2005 a fascinating book, Empires of the Word: A Language History of Languages, in which he traces the biography of the languages that have mainly dominated the world through certain periods of history, namely Sumerian, Akkadian, Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, French, etc., and tries to explain what processes make languages prosper and spread, to be later left and forgotten. He claims that many factors, like the influence of a very powerful language group, epidemics, war or natural disaster can lead to the decimation of the speakers of a single language. But above all, there is one thing people usually do not think of: when parents do not teach children their language.
Language is not only an identity tool, but a practical one for everyday life. There have been incredible attempts to recover dead languages, most of them unsuccessful. An exception to this is the revival of Hebrew, led by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and followed by a strong Zionist movement in Palestine. The recovery of the language was seen as an unavoidable task in order for Jews to grow and prosper and enhance their sense of community. This identitarian view about language is not an exception. But in the Philippines what prevails is the view that language is just an everyday tool. There are parents who speak to their own children in Tagalog, despite being native speakers of Ilonggo, Ilocano, Waray or any other minority language. Many Manileños need the mediation of an uncle in order to talk to their grandparents when visiting them in the province. I have even seen children in Metro Manila who speak only English, their parents refusing to talk to them in Tagalog. The reason for this is clear: they want to provide their children with a language that can be actively used throughout their lives. There is also the idea of social status behind that: languages are seen hierarchically, English being on top and small indigenous languages at the bottom.
Nicholas Ostler claims too in The Last Lingua Franca (2010) that the future of English does not seem so bright: like Latin, it will slowly cease to be spoken — but not in a short time, for sure — and that it will be used as a language of knowledge before it fades away. The reason for him is clear: languages are learned from parents and in terms of native speakers, English is not growing. From one billion speakers of English, only 330 million are native speakers, and this population is not spreading.
Coming back to the Philippines, many factors can explain the disappearance of Spanish:
First, the Spanish presence in the Philippines was relatively weak in terms of native speakers. There was no point in learning a language you could not use. The number of Spaniards living in the archipelago was always quite low.
In order to learn a new language, you need motivation to make the effort and also opportunities to practice what you learned. Both of them were lacking here.
Second, the reason for the friars to not teach Spanish was merely practical: it was easier for a foreign person to learn the indigenous language than force 5,000 people to learn the language of a single person. It was quite logical. Moreover, missionaries carried out an excellent job documenting Filipino languages with their grammars, dictionaries and translations. If it happened that later on they used this knowledge to exert power, it was something more circumstantial than premeditated.
Third, the Laws of the Indies were quite clear about the importance of spreading Spanish in the colonies but this was more of a good desire than a factible goal. It was only with the implementation of the public educational system in 1862 that Spanish could take root in the archipelago.
Fourth, it bears reminding that Spanish was not a widely spoken language in Spanish America either until their respective constitutions declared it, after independence, to be the official language, and until education was implemented freely and became compulsory. The creole elite wanted their language to be the official language of the country. Anyone willing to be successful in business, get a high formal education or climb socially had to learn it. Something like that could very well have happened in the Philippines had not the Americans interfered with the process in 1898.
Lastly, the Americans wanted a fast Americanization of the archipelago. With that purpose was depicted a dark picture of everything Spanish and discouraged the use of the Spanish language. Although there was fierce resistance from the Filipino intellectual class, they finally gave up: their grandchildren did not speak Spanish any more. And the very reason that this happened was that they stopped talking to their children in Spanish at home.
An example: if there were — let's say — around one million Spanish speakers in the Philippines by 1898 and the population had so far multiplied by 10, there would be right now at least 10 million Spanish speakers, or even more, given that those speakers belong to the intellectual, business and political class and the lower classes tend to pick up the habits of the ones from the higher class in order to improve their lives. But they just stopped talking to their children in Spanish, and it curiously happened when Spanish became more widely spoken — around the 1920s and 1930s of the last century. They probably did not feel so attached to the language from an identitarian point of view. But most importantly, they did not think their children would need the Spanish language any more in order to grow and prosper. The world was shaped by the Anglo-Saxons and the Philippines was under US dominion: Spanish started being seen as a relic, a vestige of the past, whose display was only done in order to take pride in their Spanish blood.
Many Filipinos blame the lack of official status for the loss, something that only happened in 1986. The issue is more symbolic than relevant: the Spanish language was in decay in the Philippines several decades before it was stripped from the Constitution. As a multilingual society, parents often choose to transfer one of the languages they speak, and Spanish was, with a few notable exceptions, clearly not the favored one.
I have met many Filipino students of Spanish who blame their parents for not talking to them in the language of their ancestors at home. Probably they did it with the best of intentions, since it has been only from the 1990s that the Spanish language started to be recognized as a very useful language internationally, both in business and international organizations, and providing thousands of well-ρáíd jobs in the call center industry. Time changes everything and now Filipinos are learning Spanish again, this time as a second language. It is a historical paradox that only after Spanish had been almost lost in the Philippines that there are thousands of Filipinos coming back to learn the language in the universities, at Instituto Cervantes, in private schools or as an optional subject in high schools. For most of them it will be an opportunity to improve their lives with a hidden ingredient of the Filipino identity.
FROM: THE MANILA TIMES