Linguistic gymnastics

For about a decade now, there have been numerous scientific studies demonstrating links between exercise and benefits for cognitive learning including comprehension, memory, and problem-solving, all of which are essential to language learning. Moreover, the potential benefits aren’t just for classroom language but also for rehabilitative speech therapy, for example, for patients whose speech was impaired by strokes.

Not surprisingly, businesses, especially in the Philippines, have been cashing in on these findings and offering language and speech rehabilitation classes combined with exercise, aerobics in particular.

Linguistics has always been an interest for me, part of my training in anthropology, and this interest has intensified through the years, more from an applied perspective. As a school administrator, I’m well aware of the many challenges we face in the Philippines in relation to language. More than 80 years after President Manuel L. Quezon issued an executive order declaring a Tagalog-based national language, I still have students who can’t speak that national language, upper-income kids because English dominates home and school life, and lower-income kids outside of Tagalog areas who are more comfortable with their local mother language.

Every year, in August, we have the Buwan ng Wikang Filipino (National Language Month), and students are required to launch cultural presentations in which they wear national clothing and perform folk dances. I continue to wonder what that did to promote a national language.

At a college I run in Cavite, our faculty have agreed to make every month a month of Philippine languages, pushing for activities (including signages and language booklets) that will introduce a non-Tagalog Philippine language and getting native speakers to spearhead its use, mainly to “teach” their mother tongue to their schoolmates.

For a four-year degree program, a student would get exposed to almost 50 languages spoken in the Philippines (yes, we will include Spanish and Creole languages such as Chavacano), enough for the students to appreciate common grammatical rules and vocabulary and how we might make Filipino a truly national language, drawing from different languages spoken locally.

I’ve thought about such a project for years now but found myself even more determined this year because, in the last month, I’ve found myself joyfully entangled not just in linguistic aerobics but in linguistic gymnastics, yes, inspired by Carlo Yulo’s stellar performances in the Paris 2024 Olympics.

When you’re exposed to several languages, as many Filipinos are, you just need to be methodological, as in gymnastics, to get the benefits of using the languages, that is, of conditioning your brain to rather intensive, but fun, routines.

More is better with languages and I was fortunate to have been exposed to many languages with a multicultural clan, and with work—here and overseas—that involved interactions with many nationalities. I learned to love languages with their diverse musicalities and nuanced meanings, accompanied by culture-specific body gestures.

Memories of a lifetime of encounters with people and their languages came back over the last month when I took on an assignment to monitor fellows in a leadership training workshop around health inequities. The fellows came from 11 countries, speaking their national languages and varieties of World English (e.g., Tagalog English, Thai English, etc.).

Most of our activities were in Cebu and being away from home added to the experience of waking up in the morning and wondering where I was, which I would link with who I had dinner with the previous night. One time I woke up totally convinced I was in Thailand because dinner had been with a large group of Thais managing the workshop.

Mostly, I found myself translanguaging, cutting across several varieties of English, plus the bits and pieces of Asian languages as workshop participants bombarded each other with “what’s this in your language?” There were surprises, too: one time, in the restroom, I overheard two fellows speaking in Portuguese. Both were from Timor-Leste, which had been under the Portuguese.

It doesn’t matter that you haven’t mastered a language. Especially in Asia, friendships sprout quickly when you use phrases you’ve picked up. Eyes light up even as you explain your limitations, showing with your fingers your grasp of the language, whether “gamay lang” in Visayan or “basit laing” in Ilokano or, my favorite, “sidikit dikit” in Indonesian, truly minuscule as your voice becomes child-like.

It’s all in the effort.

All the linguistic gymnastics and translanguaging that week was good for my senior citizen brain but I don’t think these exercises should be limited to senior citizens. We need more linguistic gymnastics for people of all ages, new friendships and old.

Folk dances? Sure, why not, that’s exercise, too, but don’t forget to add a few language lessons.

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mtan@inquirer.com.ph