No, we will no longer use Ilokano as the signifier that expresses our sense of self-worth and self-respect. If we continue to do so, we will have to contend with the signified, in this vicious… Read more »
Category: Ilocano Language
Introduction: We Make the Road The poet Antonio Machado the liberation educationist Paulo Freire loves to quote talks of the road we must make, one that does not exist prior to our journey. “Caminante,” he… Read more »
Following the Napoleonic idealization of French as a national language for France by that conqueror of the same name who had to forgo his being Corsican, and thus, Italian, in order to assume a new… Read more »
The continuing practice of cultural tyranny and linguistic injustice of many countries around the world has remained unabated.
What we see in language in the synthesized thought of a community thinking, and thinking so hard for centuries. We are all inheritors of this kind of thinking, the thinking that has something to do… Read more »
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, an agency within the United Nations, has declared this year the International Year of Languages.
The same manual, as in the “Letters” of Valdez, contains templates of letters, and ‘Surat 21’ dated ‘Octubre 1, 1928’ will be useful for understanding the history of the Ilokano language. For this reason, I… Read more »
We see this same mistake in the 1980 “Dagiti Letra Iti Ilokano/The Ilokano Alphabet” written by Fe Albano MacLean for the Hawai’i Bilingual/Bicultural Education Project of the State of Hawai’i Department of Education. In the… Read more »
Like many languages that have stood the test of time even if, from a diachronic sense, so many changes have happened, that, as was shown in the fragments of the Catholic prayers we quoted from… Read more »