The problem with English

Roperos: The problem with English
By Godofredo M. Roperos
Politics Also

It’s possible that hardly five percent of students in the elementary and secondary schools of the country can speak the English language well, with the rest exasperatingly, if not shamelessly, uttering distorted grammar or English that is not understandable at all.

How can this be possible in a country that used to be the first and only English-speaking people in Southeast Asia? Your answer to the question may be better than mine.

But lately, I have listened to pupils in elementary schools and in public high schools struggle with the English language, jolting us with their ungrammatical sentences, and yet continuing to strive hard to communicate with it.

I am not sure where the fault lies, or how they were able to reach the grades they are in now with hardly the capability to communicate in English, and even the skill to speak in the national language.

What seems to be happening with our system of education is that we are pushing our youth to ride on two language horses, hoping that they will be able to ride efficiently in both of them. Unfortunately, the result is not what we expected, or hoped to achieve.

I am not sure though about the Tagalog-speaking Filipino young on whose native tongue 90 percent of Filipino or the so-called national language is based.

In the early ‘50s, when Pilipino was being formulated in Manila before it became Filipino, the ideological rationale the “formulators” held was that it would make Filipinos more nationalistic and conscious of a national identity.

I know because I was with the University of the Philippines and circulated with the group of so-called nationalists that claim a strong fervor for the Philippines. English was blamed for our lack of patriotism, and the so-called “split” identity.

None thought that a Filipino could be as patriotic and nationalistic speaking in Pilipino as he would speaking in English. But most students from the Visayas and Mindanao were able to communicate in English better than in Tagalog or “Pilipino” in and outside the classroom and they were not, for the life of me, less nationalistic or less patriotic than those from Luzon. In those days, there were about 40 percent Cebuano-Visayan speaking Filipinos compared to the 24 percent Tagalogs.

But that is not really the point I wish to drive at. Right now, when the most lucrative and attractive employment young Cebuanos could aspire for is a job in a call center, only about five applicants, I was told, can be taken out of a 100 simply because none of them could speak English well.

True, there are aliens, especially South Koreans, who are in Cebu to be tutored in English but it does not mean we have better English speakers now. It merely highlights the fact that there are still a few among our educated young who can make a living tutoring aliens how to speak English. Besides, one of the reasons South Koreans come to Cebu for the purpose is that it is cheaper here than in Manila, or even much cheaper than being in the United States.

But really, Cebuanos would have been able to speak better English had they not been confused with what is more important means of communication for them in order to survive—English or Filipino? Will they love their country less if they speak better English?

On this count, I challenge those who pushed for the so-called national language to prove it.