Advocate's Views

MY MOTHER TONGUE

On The Occasion Of the Linggo Ng Mga Wika

I am so passionate with my mother tongue, the Cebuano, the dialect of the Visayan speaking nation. Sometimes on my extremities, I offended others along the way.  I may not be blamed for that for I am raised in a family who believed that ours is suppressed by the superiority of the national leadership.

My wife totally disagrees with me on that line, although like me she loves Bisaya. I understand my wife because she’s a Psychology graduate and thinks otherwise from a Political Science graduate like me.

One time we found a short story in the internet in Cebuano. I was teary-eyed reading it for it’s a long lost music of love. Its nuances and rhymes narrating is a beautiful dancer, where the forgotten Bisaya words are logically arranged and it is like dreaming, floating ephemerally among the greats in heaven and you want more. Thus, you cried.

I wonder why our modern medium of communications and learning are suppressing our mother tongues. Especially the dreams of our youth to speak like a call center agent.

Society today sometime judged us in the way we speak foreign or other languages or dialects and in some occasions, like in my case, eyebrows are rising when they hear me with my Bisayan accent.  

While in other countries, they have high respect in their own mother tongues like their regional dialects.

Last year, I seated closed with Senator Nene Pimentel. His voice and infectious laughter is Bisayan by all means. And when he asked a Tagalog waitress for more coffee with a strident voice and in our dialect, the beautiful being graciously understood the good Senator.

Nene Pimentel is what he is today, an icon on local empowerment and democracy, because of his great love on where he comes from, on the diversity of our cultures and he’s being proud Bisaya. He’s true to himself, thus his ascent to success in life.

In Germany, students are required to take a test on their competencies of their mother tongues. Studies show that the use of mother tongue among children enhances one’s intellectual, emotional and social competencies.

It’s totally different in our country.Taking it from Senator Nene Pimentel, instead of asserting, we will teach everyone and advocate the beauty of the Bisaya dialect.

To my grandmother, she named the big dipper as Tuwang Bulatik. Maybe stars are not called Bituun but Bulatik, like we call a humbug bulatik.

I regret that as a story listener of the old back then, I never had a time keeping the stories of my grandparents because of procrastination, forgetfulness and preoccupied with the things of my younger days. I hope God will grant me the grace to remember all those things.

So much for that, I am like a Diwanon. My grandmother said it is the estuarine. It is the kind of water, at the mouth of the river, where the sea and fresh water met and mixed. My thoughts are mixing now.

In celebration of the Linggo Na Wika for this month, this piece is in honor to my own, beautiful dialect, Bisaya and I am proud of it.