Stunningly beautiful but language-challenged

There are language experts who will argue that language confusion leads to a life of confusion. We cannot, for example, count as part of our culture that which we have no word for. Since we do not have distinct words for "brother" or "sister" - we only have the unisex word "kapatid" when referring to a sibling - we often get confused about the use of "he" and "she."

Which brings us to the speech pattern of the Philippines' Miss Universe contestant, Venus Raj in the recently-held Miss Universe contest in Las Vegas. Because Venus obviously thinks in Tagalog but translates her thinking into spoken English, she came up with "major, major" in the most important short speech she had given in her young life in front of a global television audience.

In Tagalog, we often double up on a word to emphasize its meaning. For example, we say "maraming marami" to denote the existence of a humongous crowd, or a humongous collection. We also say "mahal na mahal kita," meaning "I love you so much." We say "ang ganda-ganda ni Tess," when we mean "Tess is so beautiful," or "ang itim-itim ni Popoy," meaning "Popoy is so dark-skinned."

Repetition of a word for emphasis is a distinct Filipino or Tagalog speech pattern. That pattern is the origin of Miss Venus Raj's "major, major" before a global television audience.

We Filipinos are a self-conscious race and I strongly suspect that a lot of Filipinos in the global audience cringed and wished they were elsewhere, drinking a pina colada instead of watching the Miss Universe contest on TV. I strongly suspect this because from the comments I have read on the Internet, that's exactly how a lot of Filipinos felt.

Venus Raj's slip-ups are an indictment on our government's schizophrenic policies towards language development. The Marcos and Aquino administrations' cockamamie decision to mandate the use of Tagalog as the medium of instruction in our schools raised two generations of Filipinos who are barely conversant in the English language. There was a time when you could tell the graduates of U.P. and the old NCAA schools and the exclusive girls academies by their flawless use of the English language. Not anymore. A lot of Filipinos who grew up in Marcos-era and Aquino-era elementary and high schools cannot construct a grammatically-correct sentence in English.

Marcos and Aquino mandated the use of Tagalog in schools, yet they did not mandate the use of Tagalog in business and the professions. This resulted in two generations of Filipinos who think in Tagalog but who speak English in formal company. The result is Tag-lish (a helter-skelter mixture of Tagalog and English) when Filipinos are talking to each other and excruciatingly difficult speech when speaking to foreigners in English. This is evident even among television broadcasters. There are, to be sure, television reporters and anchors who speak flawless English and with ease. There are many more, however, who struggle with the English language every time they open their mouths in front of the cameras.

The nationalistic ones speak Tagalog exclusively, even when answering questions that are put to them in English.

I sometimes watch television hosts interview the famous talking heads in English even though I find it difficult to watch the broadcasts. I sit in my sofa watching the hosts struggle with their questions, carefully framing their questions in a language that is obviously not the language that they think in.

After Venus Raj's unraveling on global television, I became more convinced than ever that Philippine educators must decide once and for all: are we an English-speaking country, which Koreans and others consider us to be, or are we a Tagalog-speaking country? One or the other. We cannot be half Filipino and half-English. If we try to be half and half, we end up with generations of Filipinos like our television commentators and hosts - confused and language-challenged.

(Those of us who live in America and other English-speaking countries are the exceptions. We can think in Tagalog when speaking that language, and think in English when using the English language.)

I don't want to further comment on Venus Raj. Her difficulties with the English language are apparently not of her own making. She is a victim of the schizophrenic policies of the Philippine government on language. In a perfect world, she would be suing the Philippine government for educational malpractice.