The Thing About Language

by: Joan Abigail N. Pelpinosas

         Our world is changing day by day. For us people, it’s amazing how we create new ideas or build big dreams into reality just to improve our quality of living. Well, things are pretty dynamic these days. Even one’s culture is changing… and even the language we use today is also “changing”.

And speaking of language, we Filipinos are very “flexible” when it comes to that topic. We are known as natural linguists. And we have that certain skill in which we invent words that seems to be strange yet amusing to hear at the same time.

         In our country, we usually speak 3 languages: Tagalog, Visayan and English (although the last one is sometimes excluded because we seldom use it. It just depends on the situation or if we feel we want to). But because teenagers today have more creative minds compared to the last generation, it seems that they have sort of invented a new language. Actually, there are two: “Jejemon” and “Gay Lingo” the first one mentioned was invented through text messaging by a certain group of teenagers. Their texts consists of cool characters and upside-down letters which makes us get amused as well as confuse us with such complex texting. And sometimes, it can really irritate people who are new to this language since they don’t know how to read it. Although the “language” is seldom used verbally, still some of the concerned people are alarmed that it may affect their (teenagers) way of spelling things right. 

        The second one known as “gay lingo” is another unique language that is becoming popular to our country. This language exited about a year ago and now almost everyone, especially in Manila, is having a try using this language (well, not really everyone). No one really knows how they got to form such words. But it just happened! And it sure can amuse, impress and confuse some of the listeners who are new to that sort of language.

        Karen Sternhiemer on her article “The Sociology of Jagons” explains that social groups create special language—like jargon or slang —in part to make communication short cuts, but mostly to clearly delineate who is a member and who is not. Members understand the lingo and learn to speak it fluently. Though jargon’s close cousin is slang. While jargon is considered so formal that most people wouldn’t recognize it, a slang expression may be widely recognized but not considered a formal word within the language. So ironically, the word few people know reflects higher status, and the word that many (if not most) people know and use regularly has a lower status in the language.

        There is nothing bad at inventing a new language or using a foreign one. There’s nothing bad at all. In fact, we get to be creative; we get to be like linguists and we get to be more understood by the people around us (in the case of using English). Just don’t forget that we all have our own national language and that we should always use it from time to time from preventing it from vanishing into one’s culture and practices. Our national language is very important because it signifies where we are, what we are and who we are.