The following article is taken from:
Pangilinan, Michael R.M. (2009). Kapampangan lexical borrowing from Tagalog: endangerment rather than enrichment. 11th International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics (11 ICAL), 2009 June 21 – 25, Aussois, France.
PDF download at 11ical_Pangilinan_Lexical-Borrowing-from-Tagalog
During the Spanish colonial era, the different ethno-linguistic groups within the Philippines, at least the major ones, were regarded as “nations” by the Spaniards (Morga, 1609; San Agustin, 1698; Diaz, 1745 and Bergano, 1860). The Spaniards took advantage of these differences and pitted one nation against the other. For instance, the Kapampangan people, who were highly favoured by the Spaniards, made up the bulk of the Spanish colonial armed forces and were used to quell various ethnic uprisings all over the archipelago (Henson, 1965 and Corpuz, 1989). One Spanish friar wrote, “One Castillan plus three Kapampangan is equal to four Castillans” (Diaz, 1745, see also Henson, 1965; Tayag, 1985 and Corpuz, 1989).
When the Philippines declared its Independence from Spain in 1898, their constitution defined “nation” simply as “the political association of all Filipinos” (1899 Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines). The “Filipinos” at that time saw no commonality among themselves except a shared historical experience of being a Spanish colony. It was a Tagalog, in the person of Manuel Luis Quezon, the Resident Commissioner of the Philippine Islands under the United States and later president of the Philippine Commonwealth Government, who envisioned and laboured for the creation of a Filipino “nation” that is unified by one common language and identity (Gueraiche, 2004). In 1937, Quezon proclaimed Tagalog as the basis of the national language through an Executive Order (Bautista, 1996). The teaching of Tagalog in all schools became obligatory by 1940 (Gueraiche, 2004).
Through the years, an educational system and language policies were designed to mould and unify the population according to Quezon’s vision of a Filipino nation, with one language and one culture. In 1959, Education Secretary Jose Romero issued a department order renaming the Tagalog-based national language as Pilipino (Bautista, 1996). It was later spelled Filipino under Article XIV of the 1987 Constitution. This naming game was a clever doublespeak tactic aimed at distracting possible opposition to the use of Tagalog as the national language.
Through conditioning in schools, students learned that to be Filipino, one ought to speak Filipino (which is actually Tagalog). To speak Kapampangan or any other Philippine language is deemed unpatriotic. Nationalism and patriotism has been equated to speaking Pilipino/Tagalog. During the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos in the late 1960s to the early 1980s, the Kapampangan homeland became the hotbed and breeding ground of the nationalist and anti-establishment movement. However, the language they used was Tagalog and not Kapampangan. To prove their patriotism, Kapampangan nationalists became well-versed in the Tagalog language. The best publicly known Tagalog speaker to date, who is a product of that time, is the nationalist Professor Randy David of the University of the Philippines, a native Kapampangan speaker.
After the fall of the Marcos Dictatorship, Tagalog has finally replaced English as the second language of the Philippines (Anicia del Corro, pers.comm., May 9, 2009). Through decades of conditioning in schools and the broadcast media, Tagalog has become the dominant language even within the Kapampangan homeland.
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Gueraiche, William. (2004). Quezon, an opportunistic nationalist? Pilipinas, No. 42.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/5999916/Quezon-An-Opportunistic-Nationalist-By-William-Gueraiche.
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Pangilinan, Michael R.M. (2009). Kapampangan lexical borrowing from Tagalog: endangerment rather than enrichment. 11th International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics (11 ICAL), 2009 June 21 – 25, Aussois, France.
PDF download at 11ical_Pangilinan_Lexical-Borrowing-from-Tagalog
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1899 Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines. Chan Robles Virtual Law Library.
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