Filipino or Tagalog

Filipino or Tagalog? What Should It Be?

(A Reaction Paper on the Article “Philippine Daily Inquirer Online Edition”)

            The article dated August 28, 2001 which was posted in the internet expressed the debate between Tagalog and Filipino on what should it be the proper identity of our national language as Filipinos. The article mentioned the three views of Filipinos regarding the Filipino language. First is that, Filipino is just plainly Tagalog and is just another name for the language, along with its older name, Pilipino. Second, Filipino is the amalgamation of all the Philippine languages, with English and Spanish also possible vocabulary sources. Lastly, Filipino is Tagalog with borrowings from English and other Philippine languages and is Tagalog as it is spoken in Metro Manila. Thus, from these arguments I shall give my reactions.

            In the first argument, I believe that it must always be clarified whether Filipino is really the same as Tagalog because there are words in the latter that are not acceptable in the former. So, to avoid confusion and to assert consistency in the mind of every people, it must be clarified. Secondly, by the term “amalgamation” it means “the action or process of uniting” (Webster’s Dictionary, 10^th Edition). Thus, I believe on this view. Filipino is the union, or reduction in isolated cases, of all the existing languages in the land. From this, we must be thankful that as one nation, we were able to create a language of our own that will serve as our basis for national unity and understanding. On the last argument, I say the same, we must give a distinction of what is really Filipino and what is really Tagalog. I believe that we must define their individual or respective phonological, morphological, syntactical, spelling, pronunciation and other linguistic features that will really determine and define the real score for being the national language of our country. We cannot deny the fact that since time in memorial, whether Filipino or Tagalog was really an issue.

            In the end, I believe that whether which of the two languages win, the fact remains that, we still have our common identity as Filipino people and that is our language. We must be proud of it and we must nourish it with all that we can be.

    Linguistic Order

(A Reaction Paper on the Article “The Orthography of the National Language”)

            The orthography of the national language as it was suggested by Lope K. Santos in his ABAKADA and was developed by the Commission on the Filipino Language contributed a lot in the order of linguistic properties of the Filipino language. Because of such product, we are now experiencing linguistic harmony with other foreign languages such as English and other. We can now also write our words because of the letters given in such order. Imagine our literary status without this orthography? I think we will never attain linguistic supremacy without such order of letters.

            From this point of view, I, then, believe that in life we must always have this what we called “order.” We must always have an organization of undertakings that we will follow in order to have a more harmonize and smoother way of living. The same is true in linguistics. I believe that without an order we will have no written literary pieces such as stories, poems, songs, anecdotes, biographies, and others. Without organization I believe that it would be meaningless to have our papers and ink. Thus, I believe that, we should be thankful to those people, to our ancestors, to our heroes, to the government agencies who exerted their effort in coming up with this kind of humble work.

            Lastly, as a Filipino citizen, I believe that we have the responsibility to enhance further this treasure that had handed down to us. We must develop it more to serve a better purpose for our nation.