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The
Filipino’s superior ability to communicate in English,
the only truly international language, is recognized
worldwide. British life insurer Pru Life UK believes
that this is the Filipino’s competitive advantage, and
is committed to enhancing and nurturing this valuable
skill through this campaign, with the help of the best
writers and experts in the language. Promoting good
English is our unique way of caring for the future of
our fellow Filipinos.
****
NOT long
after the Philippines decided to throw away its
competitive advantage in English-language proficiency,
the rest of the English-speaking world redoubled its
efforts at mastering the language. The Philippine
rejection was inspired by the Indonesian fiat to erase
every vestige of Dutch and replace it nationwide with
Bahasa. We missed something there: Indonesians gave up
Dutch, but we gave up the language of modernity.
That
English was the language of the former colonial masters
should not have been held against it; indeed, the surest
sign of independence is the complete arrogation of the
language of domination by the formerly dominated. The
most effective national assertion vis-à-vis other
countries, especially former colonial masters, must be
made in their language so they get it. Hence, the
jealous retention of English despite the immeasurable
grief of Indians under their colonizers.
Now, the
effort to sustain English proficiency by
English-speaking nations is paralleled by the larger and
more determined endeavor to master the language by
peoples that never spoke it before; e.g., the Chinese,
Japanese, Vietnamese, Russians, Uighurs and Borat’s
Central Asian cousins.
Part of
the motivation behind this English-language frenzy is
obvious: Next to India, Filipinos are the world’s
favorite in the business-process outsourcing industry.
Some
still call it neocolonialism. If it is that, it has been
made to stand on its head; it pays better than ever. The
colonizer now wants educated, entrepreneurial,
free-thinking “natives,” if you will; computer
programmers with the kind of edge that English
proficiency alone confers.
That
cynical view notwithstanding, there is every good reason
for Filipinos themselves to want to retain whatever
English edge they may have, and better still, enhance
it. The good jobs, not just out there but even right
here, are more readily available to those who know the
language well.
Two
years ago Patricia Evangelista bested—in England, no
less—thousands of students worldwide in the
International Public Speaking Competition. This year,
again in the UK, Philippine Science High School student
Gian Karlo Dapul turned the indelicate topic “Fish Mucus
and Foot Fungus” into an eloquent, extemporaneous
English-language speech and wowed the judges.
Yet,
these are but two outstanding talents in an ocean of
young people, equally if not more gifted in other
respects, struggling to show their talents in a language
the world and the workplace appreciate.
The
call-center boom won’t last forever, though it has still
long to run; but if we don’t aggressively work to
maintain and enhance our so-called English edge—daily
eroded by SMS (texting) and grammar-free,
stream-of-unconsciousness blogging, we could lose what
we have. Take it from Lynne Truss, the stickler for
punctuation whose humorous presentation of the perils of
parlous punctuation was rewarded with bestseller tags
for her series of the lovable Panda who “eats, shoots
and leaves”—miscasting the sexually lethargic mammal as
a deadbeat who pays with bullets before walking out on
the check. “By tragic historical coincidence,” she says,
“a period of abysmal under-educating in literacy has
coincided with the unexpected explosion of global
self-publishing.”
There is
nothing wrong and everything right about getting your
message out there as fast as possible. It is equally
important—and you have everything to lose, otherwise—to
get your message across. To do that, there are rules to
be learned and observed, in a language to be mastered,
that everyone concerned uses.
It may
not be one’s first language, nor even second, but it
must be the language that the people you want to
reach—and who you want to reach you—speak and write. And
that, by the accident of history, just happens to be
English: the First-World language.
This is
not about anything grand as becoming a famous English
writer. It is about understanding more people and
getting more people to understand you. It is about
overcoming solitude and helplessness; about
self-empowerment and self-realization, which comes best
by playing a more popular game on a grander field. Out
there, in a Central American jungle, there are
descendants of the Mayans who play the original ballgame
like their ancestors did. But the only spectators are
the tarantulas.
Nor is
it about snobbery. “There is no such thing,” Twain said,
“as the ‘Queen’s English.’ The property has gone into
the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk
of the shares.” H.L. Mencken wrote a three-volume
masterpiece on The American Language.
The
world of English, contrary to prophecies, did not pass
away with the British Empire; neither did it wane with
the so-called eclipse of the American. Quite the
contrary, countries that wish to replace both struggle
to master the imperial tongue because empire is not just
about territory; it is about control, and not just of
subject peoples, but in this day and age, of one’s own
destiny.
Planet English is neither endangered nor shrinking. For
this has become a world where individual and national
differences still and will always divide. Thank God, or
we’d die from the monotony. But it is one where
differences cry for expression in a language all others
must understand. That is how being different in
everything else turns decisively on being the same in
one respect. Language. And that happens to be English. |
