Lost for Words

What does it feel like to witness one’s mother tongue in the throes of extinction? As Carmina and Patch discover, there are many of the almost 200 Filipino languages that are endangered. Yet, there is hope. There are revival efforts afoot in the form of community-based projects, cinema, and artificial intelligence, thanks to those who believe these languages are worth saving. Lastly, learn entertaining facts and trivia they’ve collected along the way!

Learn more: Buwan ng Wika: Celebrating Filipino Language Month, The Buwan ng Wika debate, Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino, Ethnologue, Historical Context of Education and Language Policies in the Philippines, OPINION: Revaluating Regionalism, Revaluing Our Languages-Or Why We Need to Advance Linguistic Democracy, UNESCO Levels of Language Vitality, A documentation and description of the Arta language, Opinion: AI will revive endangered languages, Filipina creates AI platform that preserves nearly extinct Filipino languages, Longest Filipino Word, Tagalog Language Origin, Endangered Languages In The Philippines, Deped Use Both English and Filipino, and Film Depicting Panay Epic.

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Transcript

Welcome to FilTrip, a podcast where we explore everything fun, weird, and in between about the Philippines. 

Hi, Patch.

Hi, Carmina.

So Patch, in past episodes, we had a lot of fun exploring origins of our idioms, and we even discussed Beki which used to be a secret gay language in the Philippines that went mainstream. But this episode is a little bit different because we wanted to commemorate Buwan ng Wika, which translated into English means National Language Month. It's celebrated in the Philippines to promote the Philippine national language.

So there's over 170 different dialects and over 120 languages spoken across the islands.

There was a recognition by our leaders that we needed to promote national unity through language. So under our first president, under the Republic Manuel L. Quezon, he signed a memorandum in 1935 that proclaimed a week-long celebration of our national language. In 1940, the Commonwealth Act No. 570 was enacted and became effective in July 1946. That was what created the national language called Filipino. And it was later renamed Filipino with an F in 1973. It was affirmed in 1987 along with English as our official language.

I did want to point out that Filipino was being declared as the national language, included languages other than Tagalog. Filipino versus the Tagalog based Filipino.

So before doing this research, I didn't even know that that distinction was super important. Filipino with a P was seen as too Tagalog centric because this spelling is based on Tagalog vocabulary and grammar. So what seems to be just a cosmetic change actually has a deeper meaning.

Finally, the Filipino concept theoretically allows for more broader inclusion of languages.

And Patch, it didn't used to be a month. This was only a week-long celebration for such a long time. And then when Fidel V. Ramos became president, he made it a month-long celebration in 1997. And the reasoning was because a week was too short to meaningfully celebrate it, especially when preservation of our indigenous and regional languages really became more and more of a national concern. And it was also seen as a tool for national unity because as we kind of plot our timeline, right, like Fidel V. Ramos inherited a very tumultuous administration from Corazon Aquino. So extending it to a month showed goodwill, and on a practical level, it allowed schools, local governments and cultural institutions to prioritize it.

Right. I think it really emphasized, right, the National Language Month Long Celebration was basically a reflection of the growing recognition of the importance of linguistic heritage in maintaining that Filipino identity.

Yeah. And one last thing about it, Patch, even when the change to Filipino was made earlier in this commemoration's history, it was really only in the 1987 Constitution when Filipino with an F was officially designated to be a national and evolving language that draws from all Philippine languages. And that's specifically mentioned in the 1987 Constitution. But in practice, it really remains closely tied to Tagalog, right? And there are really many reasons for it.

Tagalog and English, right? That's true.

Tagalog and English, you're absolutely right. So I guess it really will take a few generations of really focused attention to this because it's gonna be a bit hard to break away from it given that Filipino evolved directly from Tagalog. And that was chosen, as we know, because it was the most widely spoken language in Manila, which was the political and economic center of our country for a long, long time, even during the colonization.

It also has a rich literary tradition, both written and spoken. And then in the education system and national media, we for the longest time again had used Tagalog as the standard form of Filipino. So most textbooks, programs, news, and even official documents rely on Tagalog grammar and vocabulary.

The other reason is it's really challenging to fully integrate all Philippine languages into one common language. Because as you said, right, there's so many of them, hundreds. And most Filipinos really identify with Tagalog because the language they hear in media and formal settings resembles it.

So even non-Tagalog speakers learn Filipino as a second language heavily influenced by Tagalog norms. So having said all of that, Patch, one of the policies that was instituted in the Philippines to address the all-encompassing nature of the Filipino terminology is what's called the mother tongue-based multilingual education, or MTBE-MLE, for short. It was introduced in 2009, and the basic premise is that it uses the learner's first language or mother tongue as the primary medium of instruction in the early years of basic education.

It's actually not unique to the Philippines. It's implemented in many countries around the world, especially in multilingual societies like us. And the Department of Education initially identified 19 major Philippine languages for MTBE-MLE.

But still, 19 compared to the almost 200 that we already have, right? But we have to start somewhere.

Right. So previously, it required the mother tongue as the medium of instruction in early grades, specifically kindergarten to grade 3, which are considered the very formative years in improving literacy. Unfortunately, it met many challenges.

So first of all, there is chronic underfunding. Many schools lack materials, many teachers weren't properly trained, and resources and local languages were very limited. So it seemed that only 9% of schools were deemed prepared to implement this MTB-MLE properly.

Critics blamed this law in the declining of English proficiency of Filipino students. This could be seen in the international test scores where we were always at the very bottom. And so advocates were showing research that children learn better when they're taught the first language, but unfortunately, implementation of this became very difficult.

Recently, the current education secretary, Sunny Angara, is overseeing a major shift in Philippine education policy by formally ending the mandatory use of the mother tongue as the medium of instruction. While mother tongue-based education had potential, its nationwide implementation faced significant problems, and these issues made it difficult to operate the program uniformly across the country. So currently, regional and local languages may still be used as auxiliary tools, but now it's not going to be mandatory to use the mother tongue as the medium of instruction.

I wonder what other countries are doing, because, you know, I mean, is the root cause really the methodology or is it our government's lack of support to make it happen? And I also read, Patch, one of the reasons to why this was meeting a lot of challenges is because the communities themselves sometimes preferred English in their schools, I guess because of the perceived opportunity, like future opportunity of learning English. I mean, I'm mixed about this.

Speaking Tagalog and English are going to have more or open up more opportunities for people who are more proficient in those rather than their mother tongue, right? And you mentioned, what are they doing in other countries? Countries like Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam have adopted policies supporting mother tongue based multilingual education.

And in particular, Malaysia has dominant local languages that are often used as instruction in primary schools.

I guess we'll find out, right, in a few more years whether this plan is sound. Because if the results are still the same, then it's not anymore about whether or not it's English and Tagalog are being used rather than the mother tongue. Because I really do believe the comprehension and the learning of younger minds will benefit if it's being taught in their primary language.

But I'm also thinking of the practical piece of it. Everything that these young folks come across in social media probably is in English or Tagalog, so that doesn't help the cause.

Okay, well, that is a great segue for us to talk about our endangered languages. And the first question that I asked myself is, what even determines when a language is endangered? And I was very surprised that UNESCO has developed a methodology, and they called it levels of language vitality.

There are six levels from safe to extinct. And I'll just quickly mention what they are and the description. So safe is when a language is widely spoken by all generations.

Vulnerable is when it's spoken by most children, but only in certain domains, for example, at home. Definitely endangered, it's when children no longer learn it as a mother tongue at home. Severely endangered is when it's spoken by older generations, but not used with children.

Critically endangered is when only a few elderly speakers remain. And extinct is when there are no speakers left. There are so many Philippine languages that are in the endangered categories.

Actually, it's interesting that you came across the technical categories of what makes the certain language endangered. I actually just found some information on languages that might technically not be endangered, but is facing challenges. So for example, in Aklan, the Aklanon, which is spoken in the region of Western Visayas, most of the migration and exposure to Cebuano, Tagalog and English are influencing younger generations and leading them to shifting language patterns.

And so the Aklanon is becoming more vulnerable to decline. Another one is the Kinaray-a, which we talked about in previous episodes, spoken in the Panay Island and Visayas, in particular Antique province. It's considered to be robust, but some young people are shifting towards to once again Cebuano or Tagalog for broader communication.

Another one is, I'm surprised about this, is the Bicol languages. So, in Central Bicol, which is the largest variety of the language, still has a very strong speaker base. However, varieties like Northern and Southern Bicol may be facing decline due to the language shift, especially in urban areas where Tagalog dominates.

There are a few endangered ones. One is Arta, also known as Edilod. And it's spoken in the Quirino and Aurora provinces.

It's designated as critically endangered. And according to the UNESCO definition, that's when only a few elderly speakers remain. It's got less than 15 speakers left. And they're all over 50 years old.

Wow. We better take care of those 15 people.

I mean, honestly, right? And then, there's the Isarog Agta, only 5 documented speakers as of 2019. The Alabat Island Agta, only 10 remain.

The Sorsogon Aita, 15. And the Ata, only 3 reported in 2019. So it's really severely endangered.

So what all of these things that I've mentioned have in common is that they're related to the Negritos.

Right.

And as we know, right, as far as our indigenous is concerned, to begin with, they were already a relatively small component of the Philippine population from even the very early pre-colonial days. And as colonialism happened, they faced the most discrimination. Their environment, where they live and work, have been ravaged by colonialism, modern life, and many of them intermarried or integrated into mainstream society.

And while the Negrito languages faces a unique set of challenges, there are many other indigenous Filipino languages who are similarly endangered. According to the Summer Institute of Linguistics, the Philippines, as you mentioned earlier, right, are around 180 to almost 200 living languages. Almost 96% of them are indigenous.

And the SIL lists 11 of these as dying, and 28 are in trouble.

Those are very concerning numbers, Carmina.

They are. And you're saying, right, that we better take care of them. There are actually people who are trying to preserve the Arta, for example.

There's a documentation project led by Yukinori Komoto. And it aims to create a digital archive of Arta. It's supported by the Endangered Language Documentation Program.

There's an ongoing Webinary Dictionary that's being developed based on the data that he collected. There's also language education programs, cultural revitalization, and community-based initiatives. And the University of the Philippines is also very heavily involved in it.

But isn't it ironic? It's a Japanese scholar who was doing the work.

It is ironic, but not uncommon.

Not surprising, yeah. And then the only other thing that I wanted to talk about is the Remontado Dumagat, which is the language of the mountains. It's also known as Hatangkayi.

It's a critically endangered Indigenous language spoken in the mountainous regions of the Philippines, primarily in Rizal and Quezon provinces. And the reason why it's called the language of the mountains is because the term remontado is derived from a Spanish word meaning one who has gone back up into the mountains. So the name itself documents the historical journey of these people who were believed to be descendants of lowlanders that had to retreat to the mountains to avoid Spanish colonization.

And they actually intermarried with the existing Negrito populations. I mean, there's various states of revitalization happening. But what are more actionable things that schools and communities can do themselves?

One other project that I found is called Project Marayum. And it's an initiative dedicated to the preservation and revitalization of all of these indigenous languages, launched by a team of computer scientists and linguists from the University of the Philippines in Dileman. And it's led by a certain Mario Carillon.

So some of the key aspects, community-built dictionaries. It provides the platform where these communities can collaborate and create online dictionaries for their languages. It offers accessibility.

The platform is designed to be user-friendly. It allows communities to build these dictionaries without requiring extensive technical expertise. And Project Mariam initially featured a handful of languages, but now they're in the process of adding more.

I think there's quite a few of them. And so hopefully they somehow become connected and so that the database can be extensive. So I really appreciate that these people are doing so much work on this.

Another thing that I was thinking about, obviously we love film and literature, right? And so maybe supporting film and literature using these languages would be really helpful. So for example, there is this film called Sapaglupad Kabano, which is a nine-minute short film directed by Albert Banares, which was released in 2022, telling the story of an old man from the Panay Bukidnon indigenous peoples named Amang Ba-oy and his youngest son, Rohan.

And they sit by the bonfire under the moon when the father chants a portion of the Sugidnanon epic. And it's actually the first Philippine film to have been given the consent by the Panay Bukidnon Council of Elders to do a cinematic translation of portions of the Sugidnanon epics. 

Wow!

Yeah, so I'm really grateful that efforts to preserve are happening in literature and in film like this.

Yeah, that's nice. It's really good. I'm going to try and find that.

Well, the other thing that's happening too, because with the advent of AI, right? There's also a huge effort to try to use AI. And we're going to link to several interesting articles, but one that I really want to highlight is about Ana May U Lamentillo, who invented an AI platform called NightOwLGPT.

It was built to preserve the indigenous languages that we've been talking about. And she's also the founder of Build Initiative Foundation, which is a non-profit that has programs focused on AI language documentation and learning apps. And her motivation comes from the fact that she's a member of the Karay-a Ethnolinguistic Group that you spoke about earlier. So that's super fascinating. You know, AI is really pervading every aspect of our life. Why not this?

I mean, there's many controversies related to AI, of course, but we can't deny some of the positive contributions of AI, like this.

Now, there are a couple of challenges and ethical considerations even with AI use. Like for one, large language models that power AI require a lot of data. And there's already a scarcity, right, to begin with.

So sometimes some of these endangered languages will lack sufficient data to effectively train these AI models. And of course, what suffers to is the accuracy and the cultural nuance. So these AI models really need to be carefully trained and validated with a community.

And there's already such dwindling numbers of them. Like time is really not on our side on that one. And then lastly, of course, community involvement.

The communities themselves have to actively participate in developing these. I mean, it's tricky, but the other thing is, we can put all of these technologies in place, but without people actively using it, it still fades. But it's no reason not to do it, right?

It's definitely a start.

Right.

So you were mentioning, Patch, earlier, the online dictionaries. I was heartened to see the Komisyon ng Wikang Filipino, which is the lead government agency that propagates the national language, has a government website. And I got such a kick out of exploring this site.

I really hope that I had this when I was growing up, because my grandparents, as you know, they spoke deep, deep Tagalog. And this dictionary basically lets you search for a term, and it gives you the meaning as well as a few salient and interesting information about it, like where it originated and all of that stuff. I just remember this one situation when my grandfather was supervising me while I was cleaning our house in the province, and he was trying to make me clean a certain area of the room, and he kept saying, Tumiyad ka, this word tiad.

He wanted me to perform an action to be able to clean this corner that hadn't been cleaned in a long time. And when I tell you that I twisted myself into a pretzel, trying to get in the bodily position that he was instructing me to do, it's not an exaggeration. I was trying so hard, but the problem was I was doing everything but what he was telling me to do.

So he got so frustrated with me because I think he thought that I was just defying him. I actually just didn't know what the hell it meant. And if I had this dictionary, I could have saved myself a lot of tears.

So what does tiad mean?

Okay, so in Tagalog, this is the definition. Paraan ng paglakad na nakataas ang dalawang sakong, at ang itinutuun lamang ay ang mga daliri sa paa. And you know what it is in English?

It means to tip toe. And now, it makes sense, right? Because the corner that he was making me clean was like near the ceiling.

Right.

It's freaking hilarious now that I think about it. The fact that it's standing out in my memory means it was traumatic to me.

Yeah, we definitely could have used that dictionary back then.

Okay, I have one other fun one.

Okay.

What is the longest known indigenous word in the Tagalog language?

Oh, I have no idea.

I had to practice this so many times, so I'm going to say it. Pinaka nakapagpapabagbamdamin.

Wait, that's one word?

That's one word.

Oh, I was thinking pinaka would be one word. Makapagbagbagdamdamin is a second word.

So, the reason why this is so long is because of our uses of prefixes, suffixes and infixes blended into the word. The meaning is the most emotionally disturbing or upsetting thing.

I didn't expect that. Okay, that's interesting.

Yeah, the article that I read said, it's often cited as a linguistic curiosity and can be a tongue twister even for native speakers. And I can attest to that. One other word.

Okay.

Nagsisipag sinunga sinungalingan. Meaning lying.

Or they're all lies.

Right, they're all lies. Yeah, it can have that meaning too. Part of me is thankful that we don't speak like this anymore.

But, and as I was reading these words, I could hear my grandfather's voice and my grandmother's voice at the back of my head because they definitely said these words.

Well, and also you just exemplified one of the difficulties of using mother tongue per se. I mean, imagine learning and reading literature that uses those kinds of long words as opposed to shorter words in other languages. I can imagine that that's one of the difficulties and challenges.

Shortening things just loses the nuance sometimes and the richness of the culture. But we live in modern times, we have to adapt.

Speaking of, I think we talked about this in previous episodes. Like that word, pinakamabagdambdamin. Isn't that what they refer to as hugot now?

Yes!

We talked about this, right?

Right, right. How interesting. And then the last trivia that I just wanted to mention, which dying Filipino language sounds closest to ancient Malay?

Is it Mangyan languages? Part of the Mangyan languages?

The Tausug language was cited, both in terms of vocabulary and potentially phonology. And that's because it's spoken in the Sulu Archipelago and Mindanao in the Southern Philippines. So they're very interlinked with ancient Malay trading networks.

And apparently there's really a significant overlap. It's estimated that nearly 50% of Tausug vocabulary is shared with modern Malay and Indonesian. So there's really a deep historical relationship and borrowing of words over time.

Not only of words, but like food and other aspects of culture.

So that was fun, Patch, as usual. It was really great to learn all of these things.

And honestly, there's so much more about it that we can talk about. And I hope that in future episodes, or maybe next year when August comes around again, we can revisit this topic, but delve into other aspects of our national language.

Right, like the written languages that are also endangered now.

Yep.

Okay, that's a tee up for next year. And I hope also that ourselves as well as our listeners can find ways to contribute to these efforts that are now on-going. I'm very deeply disturbed about Ata who only has that, you know, very small number of people left speaking it.

Yeah, so definitely supporting the work of these people, like the online dictionaries, supporting the film and books that are being published would be very helpful to this cause. 

That's our episode. We hope you join us on our next trip.

O siya, siya.

Ingat. 

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