Today I tried to give a talk about Philippine history to a bunch of Americans and ran into a wall of language. It was a white thing, really, that room of Americans doing good for their father’s sins, and I thought I saw the chastened ghosts of McKinley and Bell, and Otis and Howlin’ Jack Smith walk in. I started with the Spanish and had no problems there. I got an attentive, even sympathetic, hearing. But when history turned, as it always must, to the Americans, the ghosts stirred uneasily and the wall slammed in place. It was formidable and tall, bricked with impregnable verbs, impossible idioms. On it rested the ruins of foreign accents used as scaling machines. At its feet the foiled battering rams of gutturals and sibilants. Caught on its barbed wire of nuance, truth. But history heeds more than language, and I brought blood and gore of my forebears, marrow of their crushing, spit of their muzzled insurrection. Let Americans play deaf behind walls. I will not give comfort to their ghosts. —Fidelito C. Cortes, “English as a Second Language”
Posted on: Mon, 29 Jul 2013 05:39:24 +0000
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