Language body hit for text tampering

MANILA, Philippines—“Pasaway” (stubborn) was how Civil Service Commission (CSC) Chairman Francisco Duque III called the Komisyon ng Wikang Filipino (KWF) for tampering with the official messages of the CSC and three other government agencies on last month’s celebration of the National Language Month.

In the 96-page souvenir program titled “Wika Natin ang Daang Matuwid (Our Language Is the Language of the Straight Path),” the Office of the President-attached KWF altered the word Pilipinas to Filipinas in the messages issued by the CSC, as well as the Department of Tourism (DOT), Department of National Defense (DND) and the National Commission on the Culture and the Arts (NCCA).

Duque furnished the Inquirer a copy of his original message, where he noted: “Bagaman mayroong humigit-kumulang sa isang daan at pitumpu’t-pitong diyalekto sa Pilipinas, at bagaman hinango ang kalakhan ng Filipino sa Tagalog, pagsasama-sama ito ng kulturang ating nakasanayan mula sa iba’t-ibang bansa. (Although there are more or less 177 dialects in the Philippines, and although Filipino was largely taken from Tagalog, the language is an integration of the culture we have been accustomed to from different countries.)”

Name change

However, the word Pilipinas became Filipinas when Duque’s message came out on page 17 of the KWF publication.

“I can’t recall using the word Filipinas in the message we sent to the Komisyon,” said the CSC head.

In the KWF souvenir program, the term Filipinas was also used in the respective messages of Tourism Secretary Ramon Jimenez Jr., Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin and NCCA chair Felipe de Leon Jr.

In the original DOT, DND and NCCA messages, “it’s Pilipinas, not Filipinas,” said KWF insiders.

The same sources referred to page 23 of the souvenir program which carried the official invitation to the KWF’s first ever congress on the Filipino language, held on Aug. 19 at the Ateneo de Manila University in Quezon City, with President Aquino as guest of honor and speaker.

In the invitation, the commission changed the country’s name Pilipinas to Filipinas.

“In the plaque presented to the President during that congress, it’s also Republika ng Filipinas,” observed an KWF old timer.

Law needed

On Thursday, the Inquirer tried but failed to reach KWF chair Virgilio Almario for comment.

Almario, National Artist for Literature, earlier admitted in an interview that Malacañang had yet to give the agency the go-ahead to change the Filipino translation of the Philippines from Pilipinas to Filipinas. He acknowledged that such a change would require the passage of a law.

But he asserted the necessity of promoting the “P to F” campaign to explain the wisdom of adopting Filipinas as the country’s international name.

Almario pointed out that Filipinas, as the corrected spelling of Pilipinas, was an “application of the national orthography,” or the standardized system for writing words using letters according to established usage.

President’s speech

Last month, the Palace took to task Almario for tampering with Aquino’s official message on the recent 225th birth anniversary of the poet Francisco Balagtas.

Undersecretary Manuel Quezon III of the Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning Office (PCDSPO) asked the KWF boss to make the necessary corrections in commission publications and refrain from altering the original message of the President.

“Any message of the President cannot be changed or revised without permission from the Office of the President,” Quezon said in Filipino in his Aug. 16 memorandum.

The PCDSPO had gotten a copy of the KWF publication Araw ni Balagtas, where the word Pilipinas in the President’s message was changed to Filipinas.

Citing the Constitution, Quezon pointed out that the official title of the President is Pangulo ng Pilipinas, not Pangulo ng Filipinas.

“It is Pilipinas if you are referring to the country’s name,” he added.