BY EDISON JOSEPH GONZALES
Buwan ng Wika should not be reduced to school programs, folk dances and traditional songs, National Artist for Literature Virgilio S. Almario, also known as Rio Alma, said, urging Filipinos to use the observance as an opportunity to understand the country’s languages more deeply.
On BNC’s “The Daily Dish,” Almario cautioned that treating the month-long celebration as a theatrical exercise risks overlooking the intellectual work involved in understanding and preserving Philippine languages.
While acknowledging that traditional performances remain an important form of cultural expression, he stressed that they should not be the sole objective of Buwan ng Wika.
Instead, Almario challenged the public to look beyond pageantry and examine the actual structure and diversity of Philippine languages.
He also drew a distinction between regional dialects and distinct languages.
Almario explained that a dialect is regional and geographical, citing regional variants of Tagalog in which speakers can understand one another despite differences in accent and local vocabulary.
A distinct language, by contrast, can prevent mutual intelligibility between neighboring communities, he said, citing Ilocano and Kapampangan as examples.