Great speech with several great lines, from gmatv.net here.
“Seven years ago, being myself afflicted with the GFN Complex, I wrestled with The Language Problem. In what tongue was I to express my Filipino soul? In what language was I to write the GFN that I thought was struggling to get out of my skin? Part of the reason I became a college dropout… was the conviction I had arrived at, that the language of my GFN could never be English. The characters I wanted to write about were people who spoke no English at all, or spoke it only when drunk. How could I make a jeepney driver curse the cop on the corner in English? I wrote about a housemaid once and though the story was accepted for publication in this magazine, Free Press, I thought it was funny to have a maid speak like a Maryknoll coed. None of the attempts made by established writers to render native speech in English could satisfy me.”
“I am talking of course, of the so called lower classes, those who have not had much of an education and can only afford the inexpensive pleasures of Tagalog movies and comic books. Higher up on the social scale. Higher up on the social scale,” said Mr. Lacaba, “one needs English to communicate and these are usually the people who are opposed to Pilipino as the national language, knowing as they do that it endangers their position as the current elite.”
And here is poet, critic, teacher and National Artist Bienvenido Lumbera on the language situation:
“In the bourgeois mind of the power elite, the interests of their small group represent the interests of the entire nation. What is good for their class is good for the entire masses…
“Perhaps the Philippine situation can never be fully understood by someone belonging to the power elite. The Westernization of those who have graduated from the university is practically complete. The students who have learned English easily are the same ones who have quickly embraced the culture embodied by the English language. They are the citizens alienated from their fellow Filipinos because they live in an artificial society, a society built on the principle and objectives imported through the use of English. It is surprising that many intellectuals believe that nationalism and the language problem are separate, that is possible to show concern for the country without supporting Pilipino…