Twisted tongue

Despite our insistence that she speak Cebuano at home, my daughter still finds it a bit hard to talk in what is supposed to be her native tongue. She mumbles the words and only has very basic vocabulary.

That is largely due to her schooling where speaking in English need not be enforced by way of fines. As about half of the student body consists of foreigners, even the bisdaks have become accustomed to speak casually in English among themselves on and off the campus.

The kids, after all, belong to the new generation of middle class Cebuanos who grew up speaking English at home, watching mostly foreign channels on cable TV, and doing most of their reading online.

And so I wonder how the recent move by government to use the mother tongue as medium of instruction in the first three years of school will work with  these kids who actually grew up speaking a foreign language that even their own mother (and/or father) had forced upon them.

Still it remains our only chance to keep the language alive. And with this in mind, other groups are doing their part in the promotion of  Cebuano or Bisaya (as non-Cebuanos would prefer to call it) as a language. Perhaps time will come when Bisaya will be recognized as a second national language, side by side with Tagalog.

Our own group Bathalad, an organization founded by young poets in 1969 to promote literary writing in Cebuano, has been working with different groups in this advocacy.  In fact, it has contributed much to the movement that soon led to the use of the mother tongue in primary education.

Recently, the Ludabi, a much bigger group promoting Bisaya in the Visayas and Mindanao, gave an award to Bathalad in a ceremomy held in the Provincial Capitol as recognition for its help in the common goal of language advocacy, particularly in the field of literature.

This came shortly after we were invited by the Arts Council of Cebu to conduct a basabalak (poetry reading) for students in Abellana National High School. Cebuano poetry is often associated with sentimental verses we often hear on radio using archaic words and traditional forms, so we chose to read our balak in contemporary styles and street-level Cebuano.

This helped  make Cebuano poetry less intimidating and look enticing to young people. We also asked Beejay of the local hiphop group 6000 Goonz to perform a sample of rap in Cebuano in order to show that poetry can come in different forms.

The more literary-minded rappers in the Cebuano hiphop scene are also trying to prove that their music is an attempt to revive the Cebuano tradition of poetry as something better sung or performed than read. The so-called rap battle that is so popular among young people is  in fact not so far from the balitaw, which is also a spontaneous exchange of wit set in music.

Both Bathalad and Ludabi have chapters in the Visayas and Mindanao, proof of just how widespread Bisaya is as a language. Recently, I joined Bathalad president Jeremiah Bondoc to represent the group in the Taboan satellite literary festival sponsored by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts  held in Holy Name University in Tagbilaran City,  Bohol. Bondoc spoke to an audience of Boholano writers and students about the “crosspollination of arts” as a recent phenomenon in the literary scene in Cebu.

The Boholano writers share the enthusiasm of Cebuanos for poetry in their shared language, a case of rediscovery for many young writers who admittedly started writing in English.

A question was raised about what makes Boholano or Bol-anon literature. Or if there is such thing at all. This led to even longer discussion that reminded me of how Cebuanos themselves debated about the same question of native identity in literature not long ago.

But the poet Merlie Alunan, another resource speaker, said that Boholano or Cebuano literature is broad enough to include every kind of literary writing done in Cebu or Bohol or about Cebu and Bohol, even if they are done by people who are not born in the place. In fact, it has to be argued whether that should include works in the native language done by foreigners.

But beyond these concerns for native identity and the writer’s sense of place is the goal for literature’s universal appeal, Alunan said.

The festival ends with a poetry reading and barbecue dinner by a bonfire in the university sports field. Listening to the students read their poems in Bisaya, I could sense a familiar struggle to pick the right words and to pronounce them without an English accent.