PHILIPPINES-CULTURE: Old, Withering Writing Style Being Revived

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Cris Yabes

BROOKE'S POINT, Aug 13 1996 (IPS) - Banosa Umbali’s hands trembled as he scrawled his name.

Squatting on the bamboo slats where a piece of paper was laid out for his use, the 80-year-old man fashioned shapes and forms indecipherable to millions of his fellow countrymen as he demonstrated the old forgotten script taught to him by forefathers from the Pala’wan tribe.

Only 60 of the natives on Palawan island southwest of Manila can write the original Tinagbanua sylabbic script which originated in the pre-Hispanic period of the 10th century. First used by the Tagbanua ethnic group, it was introduced later to Pala’wans before the second world war.

It is one of only two or three types of ancient Philippine scripts still surviving today: the others have long disappeared.

Last year a team of anthropologists from the National Museum travelled to villages in the interior, scaling mountains on Palawan in search of the surviving scriptwriters.

Their quest: to keep the styles alive by encouraging ethnic groups to teach the skill to children. It is a desperate attempt to revive part of the cultural heritage of a country that is often assumed to draw its identity from the Spanish and Americans who both colonised the Philippines.

It was market day in the village of Amas on the outskirts of this town, Brooke’s Post, when the team from the museum met Umbali. His brown face had deep wrinkle lines. A scar was prominent on his nose. He wore no shoes, his toes were spread out like tentacles and caked with mud.

Umbali walked awkwardly, his back slightly hunched, a pouch slung over his shoulders, his soiled clothes accentuated by a faded NEW YORK METS cap.

The village captain summoned the native scriptwriters for a meeting with the team. Five showed up. Umbali was among them. The team’s preparation for the meeting had been tentative. Unfamiliar with local customs, they played it by ear, hoping not to jar the sensibilities of natives and local leaders, keen to follow the rules of protocol.

And they were careful not to present big ideas and grand schemes. With a limited budget — a private foundation granted less than 200,000 pesos for a three-month pilot project — the project was being carried out quite gingerly.

Its first phase began with a meeting in late June. If the project is a success, Tinagbanua script will be introduced into public schools.

“There’s a danger that the script will disappear,” Elsie Raqueno, 37, told the small group. Speaking in fluent Tagalog, she added: “Our children will have to learn the script. We came here to Amas because this is where most of the writers are. You should all be proud that you can write the script.”

The adwkwardness and uncertainty with which the team was met showed the obstacles left to be overcome. The project is unique in that it gives importance to the legacy of ethnic groups categorised as indigenous. Comprising about 18 percent of the 68 million population, these groups have long been marginalised and neglected.

In many cases they had been robbed of land and rights, resulting in sometimes bloody political conflicts and social disputes.

It is only recently that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) sought to grant indigenous people’s claims to ancestral land. As of the first quarter of this year, DENR had issued land claims covering an estimated 10,000 hectares. It plans to complete the process, involving 400,000 hectares, in four years.

Groups in 15 provinces, including the Palawaan tribes, have benefited from the programme, which has served to highlight the plight of the country’s ethnic groups. The National Museum project is part of attempts to let them recognise their cultural value.

During the exchange in the the quiet fields of the village here, with chickens scampering around, the anthropologists explained their plan to the natives, encouraging them to participate in the project. They sought suggestions from the people, who all spoke Tagalog, the national language, as to how to make the syllabary more adaptable fo current use, thus making it more suitable among Tagalog-speaking Filipinos.

The script has vowel and consonant sounds similar to Tagalog. It is almost the same language, with the exception of some words and usage. Howaever, some word definitions would still have to be reconciled to make the language comprehensible.

One problem is the absence of a terminal consonant: there had been attempts during the Spanish colonial days when linguists tried to adapt the ancient script to the Roman style of writing. Ten years ago, a foreign anthropologist intoruduced a hook-shaped sign after a symbol to eliminate a sound.

Thus the name Lopez is written as Lo-pe in the ancient script. To add the ‘z’, it would have to use the symbol of ‘sa –‘ to read ‘Lo-pe-sa’. But an improvised symbol could make it read ‘Lo-pe-s’ — that is, without the vowel.

There was a pause in the exchange. The natives took a lunch break of chicken in coconut sauce, lifting their energy, and thereafter seemed more eager to participate. As an incentive, the team’s leader Leo Batoon, suggested holding a contest in the future. “Whoever wins gets a prize”, he said enticingly.

At the end of the meeting, Umbali went up to Batoon and asked him if he could have some paper and a pen to practice them with. Leo obliged immediatedly. Umbali put the sheaves of paper and the pen in his pouch and began walking barefoot to his hut up in the mountains.