TWO OLD DICTIONARIES. At left is a bound typescript of the Vocabulario de la Lengua Bisaya by Father Mateo Sanchez, SJ, completed in Dagami, Leyte, around 1616 and published in Manila in 1711. At right is a photo reproduction of the Vocabulario de Lengua Tagala by Franciscan Father Pedro de San Buenaventura, published in Manila in 1613. Original copies of both dictionaries are preserved in the British Museum.


A never-ending debate over Bisaya
or Tagalog as RP language


By Rolando O. Borrinaga

(Published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, August 21, 2004, p. A17.)



THE DEBATE between Bisaya and Tagalog, the two main languages of the Philippines, started centuries ago when Spanish missionaries started to take sides on the issue.

The earliest to take a position was Jesuit Fr. Pedro Chirino, who was among the first missionaries of his order to serve in Leyte and in the Tagalog areas. In his Relacion de las Islas Filipinas (Rome, 1604), Chirino noted that the Bisayan language was extensive and used on all the islands of the Pintados (i.e., the Bisayan Islands, where many people were tattooed).

Sadly, Chirino wrote something else that belittled the language. It was cruder than Tagalog, in which one found phrases of good upbringing, reserve and courtesy, he said.

The case for Bisaya worsened after Chirino's opinion was affirmed some 60 years later by another Jesuit, Fr. Francisco Colin, in his Labor Evangelica, a report of the Jesuit missions published in 1663 that expanded an unpublished Historia ... earlier written by Chirino.


Uncontested

As fate would have it, the position of the two Jesuits in favor of Tagalog remained uncontested within their order for nearly three centuries. This happened because the work of Jesuit Fr. Juan F. Delgado, titled Historia General Sacro-Profana, Politica y Natural de las Islas del Poniente Llamadas Filipinas, which was written and completed in Samar in 1754, would not be published until 1892.

Delgado contradicted the opinions of his predecessors:

"Courtesy is the same in all languages, although Fr. Colin said that the Bisayan [language] is cruder because it does not add to each [sentence the phrase] seņor mio, as Tagalog [had done]. Certainly, the Latin and Castilian languages are not crude, although these words [i.e., seņor mio] are not added. And even for that reason, Fr. Colin added to say that he did not seek to disapprove of [the omission], because each language was respected by the natives and had their beauty and elegance. Although he [Fr. Colin] was alone in adding seņor mio to each sentence, it did not seem that there was more elegance than he had thought of in Tagalog.

"Before their type of speaking was affected [i.e., diluted by Spanish], Tagalog was not as solemn as Bisaya. In more than one or other language, they speak in the third person with people of honor, and the word guinoo (lord or mister) is common in Tagalog and Bisaya. But as we would note in another place, Tagalog is more effeminate due to the addition of po, co, or seņor mio.

"Bisaya is more solemn and more masculine; its speakers would give a masculine sound to the o and the u when pronouncing their words, and they do not have the i that is used in Tagalog. For example, Tagalogs call the teeth ngipin, and the Bisayans, ngipon. And thus, many other words and passives end in -un in Bisaya, and -in in Tagalog, from all of which could be inferred that the Bisayan language is more noble, although it does not have the sweetness of the Tagalog i, nor the po, co that are repeated in every sentence."


Bisayan root

In a different timeline, Abbot Lorenzo Hervas y Panduro, presumably an Augustinian friar, also made a case on behalf of the Bisayan language in his Catalogo de las Lenguas de las Naciones Conocidas, which was published around 1800.

He said: "If we examine the meanings of the names of the islands in the Philippines, we would find that almost all of them are of the Bisayan language: for its seems that the Bisayans, also called Pintados (tattooed), were their first residents. The biggest island is called Luzon, an old name according to Argensola. (Note: Fr. Bartolome Leonardo de Argensola published The Conquest of the Mollucas in 1609.)

"Colin had it that, in the language of the natives, the word means the pylon or mortar in which they pounded or cleaned the rice that is their ordinary bread. In Bisaya, Luzon [i.e., lusong] means 'mortar'; in Malay it is called leson ...

"The name Mindanao, for the second largest island, comes from the Bisayan words min, danao. The first word is a particular composite, and the second means 'lake,' which in Malay-Tagalog is called tasse (sic). Danao comes from dagat, sea. The island of Mindanao has plenty of lakes.

"Samar is the name of an island in the Bisayas, in their language it means 'wound.' Suluan is the name of a deserted island to the southeast of Samar; it means '[sea] water full of currents,' which surrounded the island of Suluan, and would make it very difficult to reach there. These currents had drifted lost vessels [in the Pacific] to usually land in Samar, where natives of Palau had arrived, according to Tornos and (Jesuit Fr. Pedro) Murillo (Velarde) on different occasions. In another arrival, as Tornos had told me, a Japanese vessel, which was welcomed with a major reception, had its [lost passengers] converted to the sacred religion [Christianity]. (Note: Tornos was Archbishop, later Cardinal, Charles Maillard de Tournon, who came around 1700 to settle the dispute on the Chinese rites.)

"Bantayan is the name of an island [north of Sugbu]; it means 'guard [station]' or 'sentinel [station].' Palau, the name of the island of the Palaus, comes from the word palai, meaning 'rice.' Sulu is the name of an island subject to the sultan of Jolo; it comes from Sulug that, in the language of Jolo, which is a dialect of Bisaya, means 'current of [sea] waters.'

"The clear significance that many names of islands and of principal towns in the Philippines were derived from dialects of the Malay language proves that the first residents of these places were Malays. Consequently, the negros (blacks), which common tradition throughout the Philippine Islands had said were the first residents here, could have spoken the Malay language."

Now which side do you take: Bisaya or Tagalog?



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