The Importance of Wika (Language)
I grew up my whole life thinking that there was nothing else important to celebrate in a Filipino family other than a karaoke bar and a whole cooked pig with an apple in its’ mouth. I wanted to learn more about my culture than just eating the food and watching Asian dramas at night. As I grew older, I grew more curious, though my parents never took the time out of their busy day to summarize the entire culture and national language so fast. So I fled. I left for the wondrous Philippine Islands at age 13, with experience in Tagalog of little to none.
Over the course of 6 months of living in the Philippines, I eventually became fluent. In writing, speaking, reading, and translating. I had no choice as I was surrounded by Tagalog speakers and they did not allow me to speak English, as they wanted me to learn their language. Occasionally, I still use English with my classmates. They called my English “sosyalin” (professional) English that only those with degrees and rich people use. Being grammatically correct, knowing how to spell words that we may think is easy, like “necessary”, is highly looked at. I usually use that type of English during research, essays, reports, talking to my teacher, or if I wanted to get my point across.
As I stayed there for 3 years, my use of English was slowly starting to fade away. I used Tagalog almost every hour of every day. When I took a vacation back to America, I would slip up and start talking to English speakers in Tagalog. I saw Tagalog as a language of happiness, fun, and laughter. I would only ever use Tagalog around those who I enjoyed being with the most, as there were words and phrases in Tagalog that did not exist in the English language, phrases in Tagalog that would mean something emotionally beautiful, like to “indak” with the person you love, meaning “to dance in time with the music.”
The father of poetry and literature in the Philippines is named José Rizal. We developed the strength of poetry in emotion through the Tagalog dialect that would strike every person’s heart in the room. We started to use the “poetry language” in our everyday life as we saw love as something everyone craved. “Ang pabahagi mo sakanya, ang paborito mong kanta, habang sabay kayo nagaaliw sailalim ng musika.” It was one of the most beautiful poems I’ve heard that everyone had gone crazy over. “Your part for her, is your favorite song, while you were comforting her under the music.”
The most beautiful part of knowing these languages was learning how to be a part of the culture, the personalities, and the adventure. My tadhana (destiny) lies in the importance of language.
