Malansang Isda by Rosalinda Olsen Essay Example for Free

Malansang Isda by Rosalinda Olsen EssayAng Hindu nagmamahal sa sariling wika ay masahol pa sa malansang isda is atomic number 53 of the most often quoted of Rizals writings. Why, then, did he write his cardinal novels, Noli me tangere and El Filibusterismo in Spanish? In his dedication of theNoli me Tangere, Rizal wrote, I will strive to reproduce thy condition faithfully, without discriminations. Surely, the national hero of the Filipinos was not somebody who said wizard thing and did the opposite.Both novels portrayed the social and political conditions of the time through characters that stand for a cross section of Philippine societythe natives who were called the Indios, the Peninsuslares or the Spanish who were born in Spain, and the Filipino or the Spanish who were born in the Philippine Islandsimmortalized in the characters of Crisostomo Ibarra and his beloved Maria Clara, Elizas, Padre Damaso, Dona Victorina, and the sinister Padre Salvi. These characters represent ed the ideal and the despicable, the funny and the tragic, the truly comic and the merely ridiculous.There was enough in the novel to satisfy the Filipinos appetite for a good laugh and a love falsehoodthe much sentimental, the betterserving as a thin layer to hide the bitter satire. It can be said that Rizals cardinal novels awoke the slumbering political passion of his countrymen so successfully that it quickened the birth of the Philippine Revolution. If this were Rizals aim, which most decidedly was not, he would have written the novels in Tagalog. Not only when would this have been understandable to most good deal in Luzon, it would have hidden the revolutionary intent from the Spanish.As it was, the novels had to be distributed in secret among the Indios beca uptake the Spanish regimen banned those books. Which leads to the question of whom his target au authorizence was in, order to answer the first question of wherefore he wrote the Noli me tangere and theEl Filibuste rismo in the lyric of the Spanish colonizers. So a lot has been written approximately Rizals extreme reluctance for revolution as the solution to the social cancer that was destroying his country, in contrast to his passionate advocacy of raising and political reform.Evidently, the Spanish colonizers were Rizals primary target audience, hence, he wrote in their delivery. The Indio could have been a secondary target audience, perhaps in the hope that the ilustrados would turn on for the socio-political reforms that were clearly indicated in the novels. There was no need to reproduce the social conditions of the time to the Indio who knew it only too well and constantly suffered from it. Rizal wrote the novels in Spanish because that was the divert language for his intent.Language is basically a tool, a means to express ideas and to communicate these, but before be a tool, language is first a reflection of ones objective reality. Language is a symbol that represents the materi al objects in ones environment. If an object does not exist in ones material universe, one would have no word for it. For example, a person in oceanrch of gold in a authoritative area might show the natives a gold piece and ask what the natives call that metal and where he could find it.If there is no word for gold among the natives, it either means there is no gold in the area or the natives have not seen or heard of that metal before. When Rizal wrote the famous lines Ang hindi nagmamahal sa sariling wika ay masahol pa sa malansang isda, he was not referring to language merely as a communication tool but as an expression of ones identity, of ones individual and social consciousness. In the novels, Dona Victorina represents the type of Filipino who rejects her identity as Indio and who would do everything to deny it in every form, particularly in affectedness and language.More than a hundred years have passed since Rizal wrote his two novels but the social and eco-political str uctures remain basically the same. Only the ruling class has been changed, Filipinos have replaced the compound masters. At the tip of an inverted pyramid is the very small minority of the agency class that consists of the affluent and the Catholic hierarchy. At the top of this pyramid is about 80% of the population that have been assessed by the World Bank-IMF as living below poverty level. Between these two main groups is the middle class that shows no sign of increasing in number.Only a miracle would keep this unnatural pyramid from toppling over, but that belongs to another article. Undoubtedly, Pilipino (supposedly the expanded and enriched form of Tagalog) is not the language of the power class. Most of them speak English and some prefer to speak Spanish. The masses can shoot and speak Pilipino, as it is a required subject in crop, but chances are, they speak their cradle tongue among themselves and most of the time, which would be any of the major languages and the numerou s dialects.The language of the middle class is an odd mix of English, Pilipino, and their radle tongue. Since language is a reflection of ones identity, could we then say that the Filipinos have one national identity? Without a common identity, there could be no real sense of nationhood. This is what Rizal meant by that famous quotation that is often quoted but only the surface level. Pilipino is the national language but the preferred working language of government, business, and education as well as the mass media remains English. There would be nothing amiss with this if it were not for the great majority of the population whose fellowship of English is not functional.It is not surprising that government can get away shamelessly with graft and corruption because the masses have little taste of what is going on. Clearly, language in Philippine contemporary society is the one big wall that divides the powerful from the masses of poor people, notwithstanding all the calls for peop le empowerment. One would think that the entertainment industry, specifically the movies and the television, might be a vehicle for uniting the people because the movies are still affordable and one could incessantly go to the neighbors to watch television.Just take a quick look at the commercials most of them are in English. Noontime and evening motley shows are probably the worst because the language used by the hosts and participants reflects the jargon of the lost tribe aka Manila people, which is a horrible porridge of English and Pilipino with an even more horrendous lack of grammar or logical syntax. So much for the local role models, lets take a look at the take system. According to a DECS ruling, Pilipino should be the mode of classroom instruction.So far, this has worked, in some fashion, in the elementary grades and to a lesser extent, in the secondary and the third levels. Textbooks in Pilipino have been published and used in the schools, but all the references remain English. In fact, teachers find it impossible to use Pilipino in teaching mathematics, algebra, chemistry, or physics, philosophy, etc. Not surprisingly, the pupil is subjected to a kind of mental lobotomy and eventually their person is truncated, amputated, or dichotomised.Brave souls who perhaps wanted to make a difference in the academe, have attempted to write their undergraduate or graduate thesis in Pilipino. Some succeeded, but one cant help wondering if their theses would ever be taken down from the library shelves to be read and enjoyed. Few would have the courage to admit that they would rather read Rizals novels in English, not just because it would be easier for them but because the Pilipino translations are so antiquated that one would read it only under duress, which is to say, only because the school requires it.The Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia got their independence from their colonial masters at about the same time. All three countries created a national language that would be the expression of the national soul and, thus, be a unifying element. Sadly, Pilipino has not succeeded in being the language of the government and the governed, in contrast to how Indonesia and Malaysia has used their respective national languages. Indonesia does not use Dutch as the language of government, education and commerce.Neither do the Malaysians use English as their working language. An anecdote would illustrate this. A friend was on holiday in Kuala Lumpur. One day, she took a cab and, naturally, spoke to the taxi driver in English. In polite but cold tones, the driver asked her, Madam, why do you talk in English? We are all Malaysians. Nonplussed, she said she was Filipino and the taxi driver apologized and explained that she looked Malaysian.It might be an excellent thing for Philippine politicians to have experienced this, but then again, they would be more likely to hire a limousine (at Filipino taxpayers expense, of course) and lose the chanc e of being told to speak the national language by a lowly taxi driver. Is the Filipino then a malansang isda? Using the isda analogy, the Filipino might well be like a fish out of water, in the sense that Filipinos are supposed to be living in one countrythe big seathat has become an alien territory to citizens whose ties have remained regional or tribal rather than national.A fish out of its natural habitat would quickly die and stink. Rizal did not have all the answers to Philippine problems, but he has practically said it all. For the young, he collected folk stories and legends. For the more mature, he wrote the novels, Noli me tangereand El Filibusterismo, the two long essays The Indolence of the Filipino and The Philippines a Century Hence as well as poetry and countless articles. Jose Rizal is the national hero and his portrait is in the lowest denomination of Philippine paper money.Every Filipino knows Rizal, but do they understand him? Those who have read his novels remembe r only the love story of Ibarra and Maria Clara, the antics of Dona Victorina, and the pathetic Sisa. High School and college graduates are obliged to take the Rizal course as a requirement for graduation, but how many of them understand the two long essays relative to what is happening in the Philippines today, if they read it at all? Rizal has been iconized and even idolized by a sect that calls themselves Rizalistas, but the Filipino has however to realize and actualise his relevance.