Wannabe Ilongga

Ti? Oo gani! Kabalo ako sang Ilonggo ba! Ay! Gani!

Indi ka magpati? Oo! Namian ko sang Ilonggo! Oo, amo gani hambal ko!

Indi ka? Ay! Bala ka da!

Yeah, that's right! I speak Ilonggo! This girl who punctuates a lot of her sentences with "yeah" like most Aussies can go and tell you before she leaves "Ga lakat na kami!" This girl who spells paediatrician like so can tell you that the supper you prepared for her was truly namit! This girl who uses expressions like "scandalously azure" and "immensely enchanting" can go tell someone to shut up by just one utterance of "Hipus!".

Yeah, what's that? You're asking me if I'm Ilongga? Well, no, I'm not. I was born and raised in Manila and so have my parents. My bloodline also has not even a smidgen of Ilonggo (Right now, I'm giggling at the fact that I have Hungarian in my heritage but not Ilonggo! Talk about me being mixed!). I'm neither a frequent visitor to the Panay provinces. In fact, the only time I was in Ilonggo territory was when I went on vacation to Boracay (in Aklan. But it's an indisputable fact that it's really tourist-oriented).

But yes, I do speak their vernacular dialect. I'm guessing it started when I was about5 or 6. My governess, a jolly middle-aged woman from the Bacolod suburb of Murcia, had apparently been so used to her Ilonggo expressions that she used some of them unwittingly on then-purely English speaking me. Being the precocious child that I was, I wondered what those magic words of "Ambot sa imo" meant. I asked her but only got a loud guffaw as an answer. That made me ask myself just what magical, secret language this was. For some reason, from that point on, I was fascinated with their words. I've always found Ilonggo very much full of passion and emotion (Don't believe me? Ask an Ilonggo to argue with you and you'll see what I mean!). I've always found it very much bursting with vitality, much like the people that speak it and their celebrations. From that point on, I vowed to plunge into the language and actually learn it (Yes, I was already a wannabe linguist at 5!).

And so, little by little I learnt my Ilonggo by picking up whatever words I could and using context clues (or sometimes asking. Thank God some of the people I asked obliged) to get the meaning. And now --- after 15 years and 5 Bacolod-born governesses/maids --- here I am, actually capable of holding a conversation in the dialect!

And apparently, according to my Ilonggo friends, I sound like them too! I have the accent down pat! Whee!


Okay? I see your gapping mouth and bulging eyes. You're shocked? Oh, yeah! I get it! I mean since when have you seen someone that sounds like a Kylie Minougue-Keira Knightley amalgamation in English say "Waay ko pamangkot"!

No? That's not it? Then what... Oh. That.

You're asking me how my upper middle-class, caramel half-caf non-fat macchiato sipping, Jostein Gaarder and Gabriel Garcia Marquez reading self could possibly want to learn a dialect of Filipino attributed to people who cook my supper (and by the way, what is wrong with that --- associating with them?). You're asking me why I, city-bred, have to learn a language only provincial people understand. You're asking me why I don't just stick to my French or Portuguese or improve my English further. You know, stick to the upper-class languages.

But that's my point exactly. Who says Ilonggo (and Cebuano, Chavacano, Kapampangan --- any language or dialect, really) can not be considered upper-class? In fact, who insinuated a general Caste system for languages anyway? Language is not to be used as status symbol.

If you think about it, all languages are lovely because they are used to express the thoughts of a people. It is the bridge that connects people through the ideas conveyed by it. And that in itself makes any language beautiful --- the fact that it stimulates relationship and connexions betweeen people. The fact that because of it, we can communicate with people. The fact that because of it, we live normally.

Objectively, there is no such thing as a better language, really (BTW, yes, it's still okay to have preferences for some languages. It's just a matter of what appeals to you more, really). They are all the best because they serve their function --- to connect people.

So yeah, it's okay for me to be a wannabe Ilongga!

Now that I've made my point, I'd just like to say to myself "Ay! Kagahod sa akon! Hipus na be, Alexis!"!