The Filipino language: A debatable identity?

I should have insisted, “Filipino is my native language not Tagalog, and yes, it’s called the same as my (former) citizenship, and it cannot be the same as American is to English (language).”8 But cornered by the crisp tone of the Tagalog reviewer’s written comment, I felt my limbs deliquescing as the proverbial shadow of a doubt took over my being.

Into what small courtroom had I stumbled? Well, it’s the world of haiku poetry where my fate seems sealed by a gift of words. And the case in question concerns a suite of four bilingual haiku that I submitted to an international journal.

With much care, I had mixed published and unpublished poems that I dared translate from/or into Ilocano and Filipino. I’ve gotten away with my few published pieces but apparently I would not in Ardea, a journal dedicated to multilingual poetry.

The editor acknowledging my submission also asked if I could recommend a reviewer/translator for Ilocano; he had one for “Tagalog” as in all the other languages, because “as luck would have it,” (his own words), he chose the Iluko haiku (about which he asked me to send a translation in Filipino).

In the ensuing brief discussion where I strived to explain nuances, I told him rather embarrassed that in truth, I don’t know much about either my native and/or Mother tongue. When do I speak or even write in any of the two in full sentences much less in paragraphs and not in fragments, anyway?

Born in Ilocos of pureblooded Ilocanos, my sister and I switched to Tagalog when we moved to Manila, retaining our mistaken bilingual world with English as the language with which we wrote, thought, and analyzed like most Filipinos do. But none of this has really bothered me, until my submission to Ardea.

The editor emailed me the translator’s review and comments a week later. Exhilarated by the acceptance of two of my poems for publication, I replied with much gratefulness. Later that evening, tossing in bed, bothered by my joyful outburst, I wrote him this:

“Something about your reviewer’s comment on why she changed Filipino, with which I labeled my translated haiku, into Tagalog is keeping me awake.

Indeed, I accepted your reviewer’s notation because how she wrote it sounded authoritative; it made me suddenly doubtful about what I know to be correct. And so, just now, I searched for the National Commission for Culture and the Arts website.

I found in it the confirmation I needed, the information I have learned in school and took for granted in my working years, as follows: as embodied in the 1937 Constitution: “…the committee recommended Tagalog to be the basis of the national language (officially called “Pilipino” since 1959)…”

Following more debates that led to the 1973 Constitution and later the 1987 Constitution: “…FILIPINO, the national language of the Philippines was finally settled in the 1987 Constitution…”

Deeply mortified for not having reacted instantly, I added that though, “I stand by what I know to be correct, I also respect your reviewer’s knowledge of it.”

My submission “is still a go, this letter notwithstanding.” But I still quake from my awakening that I’m not really bilingual because this means that I should be not only fluent but also proficient in both; I am not in my native tongue, but sadly only in English.

Indeed, why have I forgotten how I raged the first time I couldn’t find Filipino shelves in a lineup of literature among countries at the Vancouver Central Library? There I found them hidden, shared with Vietnamese, the shelves labeled, “Tagalog.”

I still would want to wage a movement to identify our language, Filipino, correctly. Yet, in my heart, I know I would be met with unsettled debates or indifference; maybe I’m wrong or otherwise those who should would have done it years ago.