Monday, August 27, 2007
Towards a Revolutionary Creole Politics
The Philippines is so linguistically hodge-podge it's just crazy... It's kinda cool, but makes it very confusing for someone like me trying to learn the language. There's even a debate as to what the name of the actual national language is! Filipino vs. Pilipino vs. Tagalog. I'm just going to settle for "Filipino" which is mostly Tagalog-derived, but also incorporates within it several hundred loan-words from Chinese and Arabic, about 5000 loan-words from Spanish, and about 1500 loan-words from English - at least according to one source. This makes Filipino a real creole, which matches the country's very dynamic creole culture! A common saying is that the Philippines spent 400 years in the convent and 40 years in Hollywood (referring of course to the Spanish and U.S. periods of colonisation respectively), and now it doesn't know where it is.
What's bizarre to me is that scholars, when talking about the Filipino language, refuse the terms "creole" or "patois"... I wonder why? Maybe it's because traditional scholars see Filipino's "impurity" and "inauthenticity", not as things to be celebrated or rejoiced, but rather, as things to be glossed over. Language purists try to maintain a pretence of a "pure" language, when Filipino is anything BUT... and who cares! Why not celebrate its dynamism and multiplicity? Purity is for Nazis! I'm all about autheticating "inauthenticity"!
You know, Filipino language textbooks are so damn dishonest, and pretend that this type of "impurity" doesn't exist. They will give formal Tagalog ways of saying things, which nobody on the street actually uses! For example, here, everyone just uses the English word "sorry", but the phrasebooks and textbooks will tell you to say "Ikinalulungkot ko", which is basically obsolete!
I'll give you a few more examples of the diversity, multiplicity and dynamism of the Filipino Creole (and why it's so damn confusing to me!):
1)The university where I am on a Visiting Research Fellowship is sometimes referred to as "Unibersidad ng Pilipinas" (Spanish and Tagalog derived), and at other times, simply "University of the Philippines";
2) Sometimes the cops are referred to as the "Pulis" (English-derived), and at other times, the "Pulisya" (Spanish-derived);
3) My dictionary says that the way to say "exam" in Filipino is "iksamen" (derived from the Spanish "examen"), but my Filipino tutor says it's "Pagsusulit" (old Tagalog), while kids on the street just say it the straight-up English way: "Exam"!;
4) On the news the other day, they used the word "Populasyon". The "-syon" suffix is usually used in Spanish-derived Filipino words to replace the Spanish suffix of "-cion". The only thing is, there's no such thing in Spanish as the word "Populacion"! The Spanish translation of the English "Population" is actually "Poblacion"... So in Filipino it should be "Poblasyon", not "Populasyon", but it's all confused due to the English influence!;
5) And then there's the counting! Filipinos will count in three different languages (Tagalog, English, and Spanish), depending on the context and what they feel like moment-to-moment... Kinda crazy, but it definitely takes virtuosity to manage such multiplicity so effortlessly!
On this topic of multiplicity, something a security guard said to me the other night struck me as particularly poignant and indicative: "Sarado ng gate", meaning "The gate is closed". What struck me about this is that, in the space of one short, pithy sentence of but three words, there were three different linguistic origins!: 1) Spanish (The Filipino "sarado" is derived from the Spanish "cerrado"); 2) Tagalog ("ng"); and 3) English ("gate")! Wow!
One academic here tells me that there are two main schools of thought in Filipino linguistics: The University of the Philippines faction, and the La Salle University faction. From what I remember, one of the factions argues that modern Filipino should look more to Spanish (as a source of loan-words for concepts that don't exist in Tagalog), while the other argues that it should look more to English. I think there are some other real old fuddy-duddies who argue, in addition, that Tagalog should go back to its deep roots and reclaim old, antiquated concepts, or, where they don't exist, to invent them. What all these positions lack is an acceptance and embrace of diversity; of the true nature of the Philippines' creole culture, and it's vibrant CREOLE language. No one will admit that Filipino is a CREOLE!
Anyway, another thing that fascinates me about Filipino is that it will take both Spanish and English words, but will conjugate them in a Tagalog way, thereby indigenising them. No longer is it mere borrowing - It becomes appropriation! It occurs to me that it is much the same with ideas! For example, there is a feminist and childrens' rights organisation in Olongapo City called the Yokubari Foundation. It has adopted the international (UN-derived) rhetoric of rights, but has made it its OWN; An act of "reterritorialisation" of sorts.
An example of the type of "Tagologised" conjugation of foreign words is as follows: "Puwede magpaprint dito?" You see, I needed to print something out at an internet cafe, and I asked my mother how to say "Can I print here?" in Filipino... And in the Filipino creole, "puwede" (derived from the Spanish "puede") remains unconjugated. In Spanish, in the context of this sentence, it would become "puedo". Meanwhile, the English word "print" becomes conjugated Tagalog-style as "magpaprint"! This kind of thing is so fascinating to me! ...And it's metaphorical, perhaps, not just of the indigenisation of foreign ideas (as I was talking about earlier), but also of a "POLITICS OF DIFFERENCE"!
Yes, this is it! We need a CREOLE revolutionary politics! Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (in their book Multitude) actually argue that language is the perfect metaphor for "the commons" - where diverse people come together to create something in common... And in the Filipino Creole, we see, despite all the multiplicity and chaos, that it actually works! So too might it be with a new global post-capitalist society; a new global "commons" where we are all Many, but also One...
Posted by JAGUARITO
The original site is http://insurgelicious.blogspot.com/2007/08...e-politics.html
It's just interesting to me.. I don't think we're creol although he has good points. Thoughts people? reminder, I didn't write this.