My Own "Foreign" Language

Angelita H. Cuevas

Today is the first day of school. I was a bit excited to start the semester. I know that this would mean more responsibilities, but I believe that there's always balance in everything it's just a matter of mastering my time.

I took two sujects, first is Seminar is Reaserch ( Reasearch II ) and a cognate, " Pinulunga'ng Sugbuanu'ng Bisaya" or the Cebuano-Visayan Language spoken by majority of the population of Cebu.

It's really ironic that Visayan is my first language, but I don't know how to express myself in straight Visayan. The professor asked us to introduce ourselves using a straight Cebuano-Visayan Language. I was the second who were asked to go infront and say something about me. It was like I was standing there infront and I don't have any idea what to say.

I'm not saying that I have excellent skills in English than Cebuano, of course not. I just happened to live in a country where According to Ethnologue, there are more than 150 native languages spoken in the country. My parents are both Visayans. Then when they got married they migrated to Mindanao. People in Mindanao have different languages, so when I started going to elementary I had classmates who don't speak my langauge. We call them, "Subano", that means they usually live beside a river. Subano people still have sub dialects. One was "tulot". So, I learned some words from these two ethnic group. When I was about to finish my last year in elementary, our family moved to Zamboanga City, where majority of the people speak Chavacano, a pidgin of Spanish Language. So it's school, I wouldn't be understood if I'll speak Visayan, Subano or Tulot. So, I tried hard to learn the Chavacano language and used it when I'm in school when interacting with people.

I started speaking like words and phrases like, buenas dias, buenas tarde, gracias, quanto, porque and etc. It was really a need for us to speak their language since we are the only family in that place who didn't speak Chavacano yet. Fortunately I learned to speak the language almost like a native speaker in less than a year. It was not that easy. I had lots of troubles, not with learning the language but with most of the boys in my class bullying me. They kept on making fun of my language and there was a discrimination. I encountered some fight, I punched the bulliest of all and he punched me back. I cried and he cried too. Well, it was part of growing up.

In my high school years, I had to study in another town since high school was not offered in our place. Again, I had some troubles with language. I was seated in between with two students who spoke another language. This time their language was Muslim. It was totally new to me. I felt out of place when two of them would talk and I didn't understand a single word they're saying. So, I tried to mingle with other classmates who are Chavacano. But since the two muslim girls were my seatmates, I learned to understand some of their words. Even if I won't be able to speak their language but I understand some of it. Wow! another language learning.

Then when I went to a university, there was no language barrier among students since we were asked to speak English or Filipino inside the classroom. But then it was bigger and there are many students coming from the different provinces. Muslims are still subdivided into sub dilects. There are Maranao, Tausug and Iyakan. I found a new friend who was an Iyakan. She's from the island of Basilan. She was friendly and she spoke tagalog all the time. Sometimes she thought me some iyakan words and since I didn't use them, I just forgot them.

Finally, after graduating from university, I left Zamboanga City and found a job in Lapu-lap City, Cebu. I was confident that I wouldn't be having problems with language anymore since I knew that people speak Visayan language like my first language. When I was already working, my collegues and students noticed that I spoke a different Visayan. I had a different accent and they found that strange. I usually say some words in Chavano and they didn't understand that. When I speak in Visayan my accent is Chavacano, so it was funny. Even if it's in English I still to use the accent in my local city. I enrolled in graduate school and I'm glad since my Visayan and English skills have improved.

During my first meeting with the Cebuano-Visayan Language subject, I just found out that I couldn't express my thought using a straight Cebuano-Visayan words, its structure and accent. What a shame? I even don't the counting numbers from 1-100? We're actually using the spanish uno,dos, tres and etc. So I still need to translate many borrowed Spanish words and English words into Cebuano-Visayan words. I just wonder what will happen in the next 5 months. All I can say is it's hard to unlearn and relearn.