Page 440 - Tagalog for Beginners: An Introduction to Filipino, the National Language of the Philippines

However, when she attends a celebration hosted by the Amado V. Hernandez
foundation (a non-government organization that gives writing workshops to workers
and peasants) and listens to Filipino poetry, she realizes one thing—she does not
know Filipino. She says to herself, “I do not want to end up like this...a person who
does not know Inang Wika (Mother Language).”
On her third visit, she stays for five months, spending most of her time with
peasant

communities in the countryside. She learns more about the struggle of the
Filipino people—and calls it “paglalamay sa dilim” (“to work in the darkness of
night”). She now has a better word for “justice”: the indigenous word “katarungan.”
She learns to sing songs such as “Rosas ng Digma” (The Rose of War). She is
touched as she leaves the community when they give her a despedida for her
Maligayang Paglalakbay (Happy Travels).

Back in the United States, she corresponds with people in the Philippines.
Through numerous exchanges of letters and e-mails, she learns more about written
Filipino.

The activist FHL thus is what I call an extremely motivated HL who needs the
language as she becomes more politically involved. Filipino is her language because
it is the language of the national democratic movement. Interestingly, this reason
echoes the 1935 constitution, which shows that Tagalog was chosen as the basis of
the national language, because it was the language of the Katipunan and the
revolution.

I remember a photograph of the organization Anakbayan (Children of the
People), a youth group in the Philippines with chapters in the U.S. The members are
shown with their raised fists on Independence Day, with their costumes
commemorating the 1896 revolution. We see the letter K on their hats, symbolizing
the revolutionary group the Katipunan. K is a letter that in 1896 was not even in the
Roman alphabet introduced by the Spaniards, but which was used to name the group,
asserting the people’s indigenous orthography. They hold a streamer with indigenous
baybayin symbol K, a signifier that could be recognized by other activists as
representing the underground Kabataang Makabayan.

The Filipino American activist’s journey is not unlike that of the letter K—a
story rooted in history, colonialism, and the struggle for sovereignty.