GUMIL Metro Manila

We, members and officers of GUMIL Metro Manila (Ilokano Writers Association of the Philippines – Metro Manila), also known as Gunglo Dagiti Mannurat nga Ilokano iti Filipinas – Metro Manila, hereby state:

We are concerned with the present state of language education and language use in the country’s educational system, where most of our young people know some English, a great deal of Tagalog, but nothing of their mother tongue and/or the lingua franca spoken in their communities;

This situation in our communities where non-Tagalog and non-English languages are the lifeblood of our communication and relationship has not been recognized as a matter of educational, cultural, and linguistic rights;

Because of the foregoing, we are unnecessarily losing our people to the forces of illiteracy by reason of the deprivation of their language and cultural rights in the domain of education, mass media, popular culture, social services, health services, the law, and other basic services; and

We are alarmed that unless drastic measures would be resorted to and thus bring back the mother tongue or the lingua franca in the public life and discourse of our people, our ethnolinguistic communities would soon get extinct which would spell out our death as peoples in Northern Philippines, and those already out of the physical boundaries of the north, either still at home or already abroad.

As writers and cultural workers, we have witnessed how this continuing denial of our linguistic and cultural rights has resulted in the denigration of our languages and cultures. We believe we cannot go on like this. Our languages should be allowed not just to survive but to thrive and flourish by making them the medium of instruction as an effective tool of communication.

We issue this statement today, 23rd of November 2008, during our emergency meeting at Juan S. P. Hidalgo, Jr. residence at No. 14, Juan Luna St., Area 2, UP Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines.

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