Our Worst Language Teacher
By Jose A. Carillo
We don’t have to look far to see why Filipinos are having a serious problem learning their Filipino and their English. Taglish, the popular pidgin of Filipino, English, and Spanish, has been the language of choice of the major TV and radio networks for several years now. With this choice, and without meaning to, the Philippine broadcast media have become the most influential but the worst language teachers of the Filipino people. Through their indiscriminate use of Taglish, they have actually been promoting a language that runs roughshod over the form, grammar, and pronunciation of both Filipino and English. They not only hamper and negate the efforts of Filipino-language or English-language teachers in the country, but also undo the progress of even the most capable learners. The major broadcast networks have, in fact, unwittingly made Taglish the default language of the Filipino, there to be heard and seen even without the asking. It should really be no surprise why many language teachers cannot even get their own Filipino and English grammars and pronunciation right, much less teach their pupils and students good Filipino and English.
It is a terribly lopsided language war in favor of Taglish. When we wake up in the morning, even if we didn’t want to listen, what do we hear from the leading TV and radio networks? Not music to inspire, nor instruction to learn a new thing or two, nor entertainment to start the day right. Instead we get bad news, shallow opinion, and malicious gossip, merrily delivered in Taglish—a Taglish that is getting looser, more audacious, and more pedestrian as the networks fiercely wage their audience-ratings war. Daily we are treated to a sordid spectacle of talk show hosts trying to outshine one another in their off-the-cuff Taglish, flexing the morning news whichever way they wish, and further adding to the Babel by coaxing viewers or listeners to chip in with their own uninformed opinions.
And this penchant to get uninformed opinion goes to ludicrous extremes: in one network, a gaudily dressed female correspondent chatters nonstop in particularly crude Taglish, runs wild along city streets, clambers up jeepneys, and sashays into wet markets, thrusting microphone onto the mouths of unwitting respondents and forcing them to blurt nonsense on-camera. But not to be outdone, one network features a regular gossip portion hosted by two gays who use pure swardspeak—a breezy, outlandish Taglish—to smear and skewer unnamed movie and TV personalities, government officials, and anybody who takes their fancy. These are, of course, only for the morning wakeuppers. More atrocious Taglish are to come in the TV networks’ noontime variety shows and evening sitcoms.
No amount of formal Filipino and English teaching or linguistic engineering can counter this relentless onslaught on the Filipino’s ears, eyes, tongue, and psyche. Taglish, a language that requires little intellection, offers the line of least resistance to the people. It is all too pat and easy; you can get away with bad thinking and bad grammar and still look intelligent. So why choose the harder road to learning the formal structures and grammar of good Filipino and good English? But give five to ten more years of this Taglish pummeling, and we probably will have a whole new generation of Filipinos totally incapable of speaking and writing in correct Filipino and correct English.
Can we do something about the situation?
Two countries similarly confronted by the growth of pidgin in their society are fighting it with the language gatekeeping approach. To protect Icelandic from the inroads of English, the government of Iceland has created the Icelandic Language Institute to “immunize” Icelandic from English by coining new native words for English ones. The Singapore government has launched a “Speak Good English Movement” to curb Singlish, its own Pidgin of English, Malay, Tamil, and Mandarin. In a country like the Philippines, however, admirable bureaucratic efforts like these will probably take too long to take off and get things done. The Taglish problem probably needs a more frontal approach.
The general public and the government can take the first crucial step by impressing on the major TV and networks that their role is not simply to mirror society with all its quirks, foibles, and predispositions and to take undue advantage of these in their programming. It also has the obligation to provide their audiences with enough shows and role models for what is good and desirable for the country and its people. They must be made keenly aware that their “mirroring society” model, along with the much-vaunted media freedoms, cannot forever justify the unbridled use of Taglish and “infotainment,” which is often a simplistic, misleading mix of news and uninformed opinion masquerading as public service. In short, the broadcast media, as a social institution strongly imbued with public interest, should serve not only their mercantile interests but the public interest as well—like using good Filipino and good English instead of Taglish for starters.
This essay first appeared in Jose A. Carillo's "English Plain and Simple" column in The Manila Times and subsequently formed Chapter 14 of his book English Plain and Simple: No-Nonsense Way To Learn Today's Global Language, ©2004 by Jose A.Carillo, ©2008 and Third Updated Edition ©2023 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
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*PAGGAMIT NG TAGLISH NA SALITA, TINUTULAN NG KWF
by DWIZ 882 September 3, 2022
Tutol ang Komisyon ng Wikang Filipino (KWF) sa paggamit ng publiko ng Taglish o yung pinagsamang Tagalog at English. Ayon kay Arthur Casanova, Chairman ng KWF, ibang lebel na ang paggamit ng TagLish dahil nasisira nito ang istruktura ng dalawang wika. Nilinaw naman ni Casanova na hindi niya sinasabing huwag gumamit ng English, pero gusto lamang niyang bigyang-diin ang pagpapahalaga sa Wikang Pambansa.
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