What is the Hiligaynon Revolution of 2014?

 

It is a call for a new system in the Hiligaynon language advocated by Peter Solis Nery to advance Hiligaynon for the third millennium and the 21^st century, and to accommodate the demands of the globally aware generation. I published my manifesto on “The Hiligaynon for the New Millennium and the Globally Aware Generation” over the Internet on June 12, 2014.

 

What changes do you advocate?

 

Let’s just start with two. First, the adoption of the 28-letter alphabet after the new Filipino alphabet of 1987. And second, the omission of the diacritics or stress marks. I believe that when we have adopted these two proposals, we can truly simplify Hiligaynon for the new and future generations. The 28-letter alphabet is liberally inclusive, and opens up the language to greater possibilities including new concepts and terminologies. The omission of stress marks, already the trend anyway, will prove to make Hiligaynon even more user-friendly. There will be additional changes and guidelines, but at the moment, these two should be popularized with priority. These should be the landmark changes of my language revolution.

 

Why 28 letters?

 

Why not? For Hiligaynon to survive in the third millennium, it needs to adapt, borrow foreign words, and maybe invent new words for concepts that we don’t already have. Globalization is a 1980’s idea that came with technological innovations including the Internet and shipping containers. I think we should call it “globalization” instead of “globalisasyon.” I also think we should call a “cellphone” a “cellphone” and not “selpon” or “silpun.” Hiligaynon users are not illiterate, so why should we dumb down our Hiligaynon spelling? To spell properly, we need the 28 letters.

 

Why drop the stress marks?

 

Because other than the French people, and other Europeans, nobody really uses them anymore. And if we use them in Filipino or Hiligaynon, we are using them differently from what they are in their globally accepted use. We are not up to international standard. Look at the French stressed word “café” for coffeehouse, for example. It is correctly pronounced /kafey/. If you follow the Filipino reading of that stress mark on the letter ‘e’, you’ll read it as /kafeh/. Now, if I want Hiligaynon to be respected alongside other languages in the international community, I would really push for a Hiligaynon that an international community can understand in terms of common stress marks. If our accent marks, called diacritics, are confusing to the international users of the same marks, I just think that they should go, and make our lives simpler.

 

What do you hope to gain with this revolution?

 

Just for the Hiligaynon language to advance with dignity. I want our writers to accommodate global and modern ideas without dumbing down the spelling and concepts for our readers because I think that that is very insulting to Hiligaynon users. Why do you want to spell “seaman” as “siman,” or “autograph” as “awtograp”? Why do you want to perpetuate the joke that Visayans cannot distinguish V’s and B’s, P’s and F’s so the Hiligaynon word for “fairy” is “peyri”? Why do you want to say, “pagpadala sang trabaho sa iban” for “outsourcing,” or “pagpakig-angut paagi sa mga plataporma sang pagtililipon” for “social networking”? I refuse to be insulted anymore. Hiligaynon users are smart people. They can spell correctly, and they can understand foreign words and technical jargons.

 

What are your credentials for starting this language revolution?

 

Do I really need a credential to start a revolution? Admittedly, I do not have a degree in Linguistics. But what I have is something greater, and that is the love for Hiligaynon language, and my devotion to it. Just because I am not in the academe doesn’t mean that I can just be ignored. I speak, write, read, edit, publish, and disseminate Hiligaynon. I operate a Foundation dedicated to Hiligaynon literature. I am a Hiligaynon specialist certified by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. I am working on a Hiligaynon dictionary project, which I foresee as my legacy. Even if anybody questions my “right” to start this revolution, it will not mean anything to me. I will prevail.

 

Why do you want to start a revolution now?

 

Because no one did it before I did! The Filipino alphabet was expanded to 28 letters in 1987—that’s 27 years ago! For whatever reason, Hiligaynon remained forgotten or neglected. It remained stagnant and muddled with slang. The new writers are confused; the veteran writers, quiet or unconcerned. So, let it be put in record that before the Peter Solis Nery’s Hiligaynon Revolution of 2014, the language has suffered a poverty of words and concepts with its 20 letters, and parochial diacritics. After Peter Solis Nery, the language is now fortified to include “coiffeur” properly pronounced as /kwafer/, “immigrants,” “DH,” “OFW,” “calle real,” “años tiempos,” “cellphone,” “same-sex marriage,” “cafe” to mean coffeehouse, “cute,” “like,” “condom,” “eyeball,” “Facebook” not “pisbuk,” among others. Let it also be said that after Peter Solis Nery, Hiligaynon just became a world-class language, not just a regional language/dialect.

 

© Peter Solis Nery and Iloilo Metropolitan Times: [June 20, 2014]

 

What triggered your Hiligaynon Revolution of 2014?

 

Basically just my desire to produce the work of others in Hiligaynon. On the first year of my Foundation, I helped propagate the language by giving an incentive for others to write in Hiligaynon. My Peter’s Prize contests generated a huge literary output from other writers. So my next logical step was to preserve what was collected. Since I am a one-man production company, I had to edit the works for publication. It is while editing the work of the newer writers that I realized that most people have no clue about the orthography of Hiligaynon. So, right there and then, I decided that I should do something about it. I saw the need to revolutionize Hiligaynon as we know it.

 

Do you like editing?

 

Very honestly, no. To edit means to polish what other writers cannot write very well. To spell what they can’t, and to clarify in better sentences what muddled ideas they have originally written. Then, also to feel guilty about mangling their original vision. I know that I can do much, much better, if I were just writing my own stories and poems. Given a choice, I would rather just write than edit. But if I were to be an editor, I would like to be the best editor there is. I want the final work to sound intelligent, and to sparkle like diamonds.

 

What did you discover while editing?

 

First, that new writers tend to write as they speak. For the present progressive “playing,” for example, most new writers just use “gahampang” instead of the correct “nagahampang.” Now, ‘naga’ is an important prefix, as opposed to ‘maga’ and ‘nag’ that differentiate tenses. You loose that accuracy if you short cut the present progressive form to just “gahampang.” So it seems to me that many of these writers do not understand that there is a different discipline for Hiligaynon writing. Now, I am very particular about this because I am a Hiligaynon tester of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. There is a different test for writing, and another test for speaking Hiligaynon. Second, I also noticed a lot of corrupted words that newer writers use carelessly. For “even if,” they use “biskan” when it should be “bisan.” They also use “maskin ano” instead of “maski ano” for “whatever.” My theory is that “maski” comes from Spanish “mas que” literally meaning “more what” that then came down to us as “maski ano” to mean “whatever more” or simply “whatever.” Corollary to that, “maskin” comes from “mas quien” for “more who” or “who more,” so if you use it, maybe you should use “maskin sin-o;” although I wouldn’t use it. The new generation also uses “Ambi ko” for “I thought,” they say it with a careless extra ‘m’ instead of “Abi ko.”

 

That’s when you decided to revolutionize the language?

 

As a writer, I can only be most responsible for my work. But once I graduated from mere writer to editor and publisher of other people’s work, I also gained additional responsibilities. It was like I earned the right and became entitled to initiate the standardization of Hiligaynon spelling. I mean, if I use my own money to publish the work of other people in books, I better believe in them. I better have faith in the writers and their stories, in their spelling and grammar. I better have faith in my readers’ knowledge and intelligence. I don’t believe in dumbing down the spelling and concept for readers. I believe that the new Hiligaynon readers and writers know very well how to read and spell “coiffeur” properly. And to spell “coiffeur” they would need a ‘c’ and an ‘f.’ That’s why I advocate for the 28-letter alphabet that has been adopted by the Filipino language in 1987, some 27 years ago.

 

Do you anticipate a lot of criticism?

 

Of course. And it’ll mostly come from people in the academe and our so-called veteran writers. Because I am not an academician, no MFA or PhD, or specialization degree in Literature or Linguistics, the people who have crowned themselves experts and powers-that-be are threatened by me. Well, they and the senior writers can rant all they want, but I will prevail. But they have to remember that I only waged this revolution because they didn’t do anything for almost three decades. To be very honest, I am not in business for them. My new Hiligaynon is geared towards the new generation of writers and readers who have no recollection of “hunghungan” for “telephone” or “balatangan” for “bed.” My generation is the Facebook and Skype generation, people who frequently go out of the country and have become truly cosmopolitan eating Kentucky Fried Chicken and not just pinirito nga manok, and having the Starbucks cafe experience instead of just pangapekape. My Hiligaynon revolution is the Hiligaynon for the globally aware, and for those who use “post,” “delete,” “like,” “tweet,” “skype,” and “facebook” as activities of daily living. Welcome to my global Hiligaynon.

 

© Peter Solis Nery and Iloilo Metropolitan Times: [June 27, 2014]