Nothing shakes me up in the morning than when a barrista in a coffee shop that I frequently drive through says “thank you, po” after taking my order.
I always tell the barrista that I’m a Cebuano and that I can be thanked without the last word. The person is just trying to be polite, I’m sure, but the Cebuano language doesn’t actually use the word in expressing courtesy. We instead have textual clues, voice tone, facial expressions or even body language to convey so.
Sadly, this “po” habit has been picked up and spoken regularly by Cebuanos for some time now, becoming almost like an intrinsic part of our language. Just like how the Tagalog words “ate” and “kuya” have creeped into the Cebuano vocabulary.
I have nothing against polite expressions in whatever tongue, but the prevalence of “po” along with other non-Cebuano words like “dapat,” “dira” and “bawal,” among others, in our everyday conversations has become disturbingly too common.
I am also aware that any lingua franca is eventually bound to evolve by absorbing words from other languages, but the gradual erosion of the Cebuano lexicography is something that verbal gatekeepers shouldn’t ignore.
The situation is not just confined to Cebuano, however, as many other native tongues are under threat. Already, it has been reported that out of the more than 180 languages and 110 dialects in the Philippines, 11 are now considered endangered while four have sadly gone extinct.
The month of August is declared as “Buwan ng Wika” or Language Month, in accordance with Proclamation No. 1041 signed by President Fidel V. Ramos in 1997. I am thus raising the need to preserve whatever is left of the Cebuano lexicon in our everyday conversations.
For instance, have you ever noticed how the Tagalog “na” is displacing the Cebuano “nga” in our daily communications?
In both Tagalog and Cebuano, the word “na” means “Already” or “Now” as exemplified by “Tapos na” or “Human na (Done already)” or “Tayo na” or “Adto na ta (Let’s go now).” It can also mean “Anymore” or “No longer” when paired with negative words such as in “Hindi na” or “Dili na (Not anymore)” or “Ayoko na” or “Dili na ko (I no longer want to).”
In Cebuano, “nga” is a grammatical mark between words where one is considered the head which determines the core meaning (Example: “Daku nga balay” or A big house), often shortened into “ng” which is attached to vowels (Example: “Dakung gasa” or Big gift).
Tagalog, on the other hand, uses “nga” as confirmation (Example: “Oo nga” or Yes indeed) or as an expression of urgency (Example: “Kunin mo na nga!” or Just get it!).
But nowadays, many of us are using the Tagalog “na” in place of the Cebuano “nga” without realizing the difference between the two, as in “hinog na mangga (ripe mango)” or “dahon na laya (a withered leaf).” Once an inter-generational phenomenon, this habit which is also called malapropism has contaminated even mature Cebuanos who are now treating the word interchange as something normal.
We should stop normalizing such mistakes. Adopting errors as the new standards in any language can permanently alter grammatical structures, threatening to dissolve original linguistic rules completely.
From 1940s to the 1960s, Cebuano was the country’s top language by native speaker volume, comprising around 25 percent of the total Philippine population. This has drastically reduced today, as media institutions are generally centralized in Metro Manila.
