“English, The Great Language Of Democracy” – Who Said That? Manuel Luis Quezon!

 

“English, the great language of democracy, will bind us forever to the people of the United States and place within our reach the wealth of knowledge treasured in this language.”

I am celebrating PH President Manuel Luis Quezon’s (MLQ’s) birthday Thursday, 19 August, with him saying that[1] 30 December 1937, Rizal Day. In the same breath, MLQ said:

The fact that we are going to have our national language does not mean that we are to abandon in our schools the study or the use of the Spanish language, much less English…. English, the great language of democracy, will bind us forever to the people of the United States and place within our reach the wealth of knowledge treasured in this language.

Even Quezon, your favorite nationalist, acknowledged the power of the English language in the matter of knowledge!

Me, a full-blooded Ilocano, informally adopted (American) English as my primary intellectual language sometime in the mid-50s when I was 1st year high school in my hometown Asingan, Pangasinan, exulting mentally with the well-stocked library of the HS Dept of private Rizal Junior College (RJC) full of American and British classic books of fiction and history, and the American magazines LOOK, Newsweek, Reader's Digest (my favorite), and TIME. RJC’s was a poor boy’s library of the world full of truth & fiction.

The latest related news is: “Philippine High School Students Win Historic 1st Gold In World Debate Championships[2]” (17 August 2021, Margo Hannah De Guzman Quadra, Good News Pilipinas). The victory was achieved in the 2021 “World Schools Debate Championships” virtually held in Macau from 26 July to 06 August 2021. Via China, young Filipinos were/are teaching us old Filipinos!

The champion Philippine team members were Robert Nelson Leung (Philippine Science High School, Cordillera Administrative Region Campus – Gold Medal); David Bloom, International School of Manila; Jake Peralta, Southridge High School; Riva Fong, De La Salle Zobel; and Chanel Ang, Immaculate Conception Academy.

If we want to continue to excel in our country and abroad, we must make English the National Language of Filipinos!

Sorry, MLQ. But I thank you that your Executive Order 134 “Proclaiming The National Language Of The Philippines Based On The ‘Tagalog’ Language” also states:

Such an adoption of the Philippine National Language shall not be understood as in any way affecting the requirement that the instruction in the public schools shall be primarily conducted in the English language.

In the lower image above, MLQ is quoted as saying:

I would rather have a country run like hell by Filipinos than a country run like heaven by the Americans, because however a bad Filipino government might be, we can always change it.

Now then, we have a bad national language, I now move that we change it!

English is the language of modern (and ancient) knowledge – those nationalist Filipinos who insist that we talk to each other in a Tagalog-based language are trying their best to keep Filipinos' knowledge of the world in the 1940s, left out in time!@517


[1]https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/1937/12/30/speech-of-president-quezon-on-filipino-national-language-december-30-1937/

[2]https://www.goodnewspilipinas.com/philippine-high-school-students-win-historic-1st-gold-in-world-debate-championships/?fbclid=IwAR2Lt1BFj6pEczrN1FvOcP64CJwlsfjo-mddrE8hZZkQV8tKnViz48sRb-8

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