Writing in Pangasinan
Posted on September 11, 2006 - Filed Under Punch Forum |
Ms. Ric
11 Sept 2006
It’s all in the mind, you say, Emmanuelle? At least you have your phobias to blame. Me? Its plain ignorance and lately – utter laziness. My early exposure to written Pangasinense were my brother’s attempt at scoring those big seven-letter words on Scrabble using Pangasinense or Ilocano words for lack of better tiles. Then those good old Dominican nuns came along, and Tagalog was it. And before I could master that, its “speak in English or else” happened. I read somewhere that you have to be fluent with one language first before you can learn another. This might explain why I’m constantly getting my singular nouns getting together with my plural verbs, or confuse my gender pronouns, or God forbid, my tenses are not agreeing. And how about those conjunctions and run-on statements! The fact that I can’t spell even if my life depended on it doesn’t help either. Whoever patented the spellchecker has my undying gratitude. I also read somewhere that English is one of the hardest languages to learn. But I think you and I will agree that Pangasinense or Ilocano is enough to make us scriptophobic. I admire the likes of Mr. Villafania, whose words like masamiong, lioaoa, anlonge’y ooze out with fluidity rather than these jarring inventive spelling I’ve often tried. I agree, to speak the language is one thing, but to be able to write it properly? This brings us back to English. You have an uncanny style of writing. You remind me of E. E. Cummings who blatantly broke all rules of convention. Have you, by any chance, written any books? If you haven’t, you oughta’ try it.
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