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An Account of the Ternate Dialect
Vol 2 (1923)Excerpt
In the catalog of Philippine languages nobody has as yet ventured to include the speech of a certain community the ancestors of which, originally dwellers in a far distant region, came to settle in the Philippines under peculiar circumstances of which history has preserved a fairly accurate record.
Whatever may have caused the disregard of this dialect, be it the insignificant number of the speakers, the gradual disappearance of the dialect itself, or the lack of a sufficiently interested recorder willing to spend his time on the task of its exploration, it seemed a proper undertaking for a member of the class in Philippine linguistics to make a record of whatever could be ascertained as to the present and, if possible, the former status of the dialect in question which is none other than the so-called “Ternate-dialect”.
The Ternate dialect is spoken in the town of Ternate, a locality in the province of Cavite more often alluded to in the surrounding region as “Barra”, a Spanish term denoting a bank at the mouth of a river. Also the word “Wawa”, which is a Tagalog name for the mouth of a river on the sea-coast, is sometimes heard applied to the place. Ternate was formerly a barrio, — a more or less detached subdivision of a pueblo or town in the Philippines — of the larger town of Maragondon, and is situated on the northeastern bank of the Maragondon River, near its debouchure on the coast of Cavite Province.
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On the Boak Tagalog of the Island of Marinduque
Vol 1 (1923)Excerpt
Generally speaking, we Tagalog inhabitants of the central part of Luzon do not recognize any special Tagalog ‘dialect’. Similar to other people all over the world, we distinguish our richly developed literary language, as to be found in such classical works as ‘Florante at Laura’ by F. Balagtas, ‘Wilhelm Tell ni Schiller’ by Rizal, ‘Pagsusulatan nañg dalawang binibini’ by P. Modesto Castro, from the plainer forms of our colloquial speech. Even when born or residing in Manila, we look upon the Tagalog used in the Province of Bulakan, north of Manila, as upon the best spoken Tagalog, while we easily recognize certain individuals by their intonation — ‘punto’ or ‘puntillo’, as we call it — as belonging to this or that other specific region or locality. Yet we may go pretty far afield in almost all directions where our language is at home, without encountering any real difficulty in conversing with our peasants, mountaineers, or coast dwellers.
With all this, there are found in the Tagalog provinces certain peculiarities of expression which, while not constituting a special dialect, contrast with what has just been indicated as ‘Standard Tagalog’, and are worth being investigated by the linguist.
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On the Influence of English on the Tagalog Language
Vol 3 (1924)Excerpt
To speak of the influence of one language upon another is to speak of the influence which one group of men exercises upon another such group of different speech. It need hardly be said that this influence presupposes contact of some kind, nor does it require any further explanation that, if such contact takes place under the distinct predominance of one group over the other in political, intellectual, or economic respect, the influence will be almost wholly one-sided.
These general considerations apply to the influence of English upon the Tagalog language. The ascendency of the former in the Philippines began at the time when considerable bodies of men from both sides first came into contact after Dewey’s victory in Manila Bay on May 1, 1898. This contact having now lasted in ever increasing degree, for fully a quarter of a century, we may well pause a moment by the side of the road — so to speak — which the representatives of both peoples concerned have since been traveling together, in order to review the changes wrought upon the speech of the younger wayfarer in his contact with the older traveling companion and guide.
A treatment of the question as to the degree in which the older comrade has been able to teach his language to his younger companion in substitution of the latter’s native tongue, is not here attempted. I circumscribe my task to treating the influence of English on Tagalog as it expresses itself by the presence in the latter of loan-words and colloquialisms taken from the former.
For a proper appraisal of my study I should make it clear that the collection of my material was made exclusively in Manila. While it cannot be claimed that all expressions listed by me are equally current in all parts of the Tagalog provinces, it should not be overlooked that the capital Manila acts as the intellectual distributing center in political, commercial, scholastic, and general social regard for the whole archipelago; that thruout the latter it has made Tagalog to a certain degree the leading native language; and that linguistic innovations begun at Manila are thus apt to find their way to quite remote districts.