[ACCORDING TO THE Internet, Nabaloi, Kalanguya, Iowak, Kankana-ey, and Ikarao all belong to the “Pangasinic” family of languages. Arelidunno who’s the author of this Info, but check and you’ll find it, but] Seemapoint?

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NOR DOES IT say in the Constitution that we cultivate only one Filipino language, and that one language, be necessarily Tagalog. Or does it?

“BUT SINCE WHEN has the Constitution been ‘consulted’ on matters of cultural concern, nation-wide?” Butts in my ever-listening SF (or Skeptiker Freund, you’ve met him once or twice before, in this same angle). And he pursues with:

“LOOK AT OUR policy-makers, they’re the best ‘models’: they speak but one language when they make official sorties. They speak Tagalog when they go to Mindanao, when they go to the Ilocos, when they come up to Baguio! But we all know they’re not Tagalogs!”

TO CALM THE adrenalin of Skeptiker Freund, I just said: “well,they do manage some few lines of Bisaya in Mindanao – our policy-makers who are Visayan in descent, I mean – and so with those who are Ilokano-descended: they try (of sort) to speak Iluko in the Ilocos and in Baguio; but yes, they still continue or finish their talk in Tagalog”.

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BUT FROM OUR own stances – yours and mine – and in relation to “today” or in these times: what have we done to the linguistic fibre of our Youth, in general?

YES, WE MAY have succeeded where we may have failed in English and now: shall we join the “winning band” e.g. the Central body of the media, our think-tanks in the movie industry, and the like-alikes? Shall we join them, and proclaim: Hallelujah! we have attained Literacy – in Tagalog, at least?

[SURELY, IT IS not Literacy, in the Filipino non-Tagalog’s own language e.g. Many Igorots or Ilokanos claim “it is difficult” to text in their own respective languages, and “much easier” to text in Tagalog, but nevertheless, let’s call it] “Literacy”?

WAIT! DID I say “we have failed in English”? No, I said “~ where we may have failed in English . .” Although in some ways, we did succeed in English too; and to give you a current, glaring situation-example of how: some Filipinos – believing in their own consciousness that they have gained “Mastery” of English – now distance themselves, literally or latently, from the rest of their co-Filipinos who use or speak English: “with a regional accent”, with a matigas influency, with an “Indian twang”(wonder what they mean), and so on; while reserving for themselves, with self-comfort, their so-called command of an “American-English accent”!

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AGAIN, I CANNOT forget that instance when, one sunny day, three men were seated in a restaurant. I was going to pass by where they were when one said, “Isna tako, Kailian Morr, en kape tako.” (Lit. “Sit with us, Kailian Morr, let’s have coffee”).

SO, I SAT with them and talked with them. Another one in the trio said [in Kankana-ey, but let’s translate]: “What you express–worry about in your writings re the eventual loss of the Nabaloi language is the same case for the Kankana-ey… our children… some of them… hardly speak it with fluency!”

“IS THAT SO?” [I countered, but I saw no joke in their faces… the other two were nodding; then the same speaker said]. “Yes, that’s it. A while ago, we were discussing what you wrote last issue; by chance, you came and we called you. Let’s hope things will get better as time goes!”

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IN A CLASSROOM, dismissal time, I asked a student whose family name begins with an F, since I am aware that one beginning with an F and ending with the Northern [languages] locative suffix –an was a “mountain indigenous” name, the likes of: Forosan, Fanglayan, Fangayan, etc, which could either be: Ifontok, Kalinga (Tinglayan), or Ifenget.

WHEN THE STUDENT said she was from one of those groups, I tried to speak my not-so-fluent Central Kankana-ey – even saying to her, we may even be relatives if she was the daughter of Daniel F., whose father is Ifontok, but whose mother is Ibaloi. She blushed(!) and she said [In Iluko but let’s translate]

“IM SORRY SIR, I understand but I can’t speak Ifontok; and my answer is: Yes, your relative, Atty. Daniel F., is my father’s cousin, father-side.”

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BUT BACK TO Benguet and the Ifalois, those in Baguio particularly. Judy Cariño, in her Preface of the newly-published book, A Handy Guidebook to the Ibaloi Language, © TEBTEBBA, EED-TFIP, 2010 by Olga Joy Anton, re-echoes what we have been articulating all along in the campus to wit:

“…Many families have chosen not to teach their native language to their children. Thus, we are now confronted with the endangered status of the Ibaloi language in Baguio City, though it is hoped that the language has retained its vitality in other Ibaloi towns such as Kabayan, Itogon, Tuba, etc.” (Ibid., p.ï).

FROM THE ITALICIZED (emphasis mine) “though it is hoped..”, my plain observation is: it is still there, but we cannot be sure how long will the language stay in its “pure” form. For example, 25 years ago, the Ibaloi of Bokod or Itogon or Kabayan – college ages 17-22 – spoke “rural”, “undiluted”, “deep” Nabaloi; now, his counterpart in college, of those age brackets, etc., speaks a “modified”, “adjusted”, “less-native” form or “version”. With other groups – not his Ibaloi Kailianes – he (or she) speaks [Modernish] Tagalog! What else?