I Don't Speak Bisaya, But I Can If You Like

If my uncle's anecdotes were to be believed, I was a late bloomer in speech. Despite my voracious appetite as a 3-year-old kid for the written text, which included Sunday comic pages of whatever newspaper came in handy, I rarely spoke a word other than occasional outbursts of "Caltex" whenever we pass by the star-iconed gas station, and would barely respond to inquiries other than my age, with me only managing to flutter my middle three tiny fingers. While it may seem foreboding of my future introverted demeanor as an adult, in my tender years I was on the contrary a pestering brat. And while I may have started late on pestering grown-ups properly parsed questions about why the sky is blue or why old films were in black and white, Looney Tunes peppered with Disney cartoon shorts made certain that I was to make English, or whatever juvenile semblance of it, my first language.

It was with unanimous blessing from the household though. Growing up during my early childhood in Manila and showing a peculiar gift in science and letters, it was deemed advantageous for me to learn English early on. Tagalog came later, thanks on one hand to Bong Pagong & Kiko Matsing, and on the other to the mostrosity that was Babaylan Ida when s/he commands the "Time-Space Warp" activated. I was never bothered to be taught our indigenous tongue from my hometown in the far south. After all, they reasoned, I'd end up learning it later on. I never did, and for a long time I'd keep my impression of "Muslim" as the language old wrinkled women in ornate malongs and veils spoke to one another.

Our family's participation in the public scene would force us to settle back at our hometown, and from then I would continue assmilating the Filipino tongue, although in a rather odd way. Our town was the only place in the predominantly Visayan-speaking south that has adopted Tagalog as the vernacular. It is however a far cry from a purist's Tagalog, as typical sentences heard in our town would go something as:

"Bright man siya sana, kaso sobrang kahambog. Buti nga gani hindi siya ginatuya na bayot!"

Which in mainstream Tagalog would go as:

"Matalino siya sana, kaso ang yabang niya. Buti nga hindi siya tinutuksong bakla!"

(It's a pity he's cocky for a smart guy. He should be grateful he's not bullied a faggot!)

I would not learn the difference way until high school, when I had by then spent over a year back in Metro Manila since I had left years ago as a kid. By the time I briefly returned to our town for a vacation, I would be aghast of the sudden stream of "Bisaya" spewing from the lips of my peers whom I used to be able to speak normally to in "Tagalog". They on the other hand would listen to me in awe, who now for them speaks "deep" Tagalog. I then understood what that upperclassman might have thought during Freshmen Orientation in high school, when she asked me if I "knew" how to speak Tagalog.

Come college though I would experience an entirely different kind of awkwardness, as this time students hailing from the provinces didn't have qualms speaking at each other in their hometown vernacular. So, as my hometown was very little-known yet bore an exact same name as a larger better-known province that was overwhelmingly Visayan (as you could see, I couldn't even tell whether it's Cebuano, Ilonggo, or any other multitude), I had to turn people down every time they start conversing to me in Bisaya. It also had a subconscious, bordering racist, effect to my ego, for while I never came to fully learn to speak my own ethnic group's indigenous language, there's one thing that certainly stuck: for us, "bisaya", through the queerest of etymology, means "Christian", regardless if one was actually Bisaya or was in fact Tagalog or American. And I was certainly NOT Christian.

I have somehow wished by then that I had learned as a child the language my mother would use to speak to a fisherman at the riverside market at my hometown, the same language a great Sultan once used to unite an island against invading Castilians, the language now used by white-capped and bearded men selling "dibidis" and "M2M". I may have de facto disassociated myself with my forefathers, but I still feel nostalgic of our ethnic culture, and my name, or rather my title, would forever remind me of this heritage. On the other hand, I don't think I'll ever be able to converse with any of my family using it. It just feels different.

As trivia, the word my people's language use to refer to non-Christianized mountain tribes is "haylander". I can't help but summon an image of Connor Macleod and his mighty sword (the weapon, not the body part) whenever local politicians mention the word during election campaigns.