The relevance of Buwan ng Wikang Pambansa

August is Buwan ng Wikang Pambansa (National Language Month) and many Filipinos, especially the younger generation, do not know why the nation’s leaders chose this scary “month of ghosts” for the observance.

In the era when the government was called Commonwealth of the Philippines, President Manuel L. Quezon passionately pushed for inclusion in the draft 1935 Constitution the provision about the need for Congress/National Assembly to legislate the “development of a national language which will be based on one of the existing native languages.” Quezon was born on August 19, 1878, and was one of the Philippines’ foremost leaders during our infancy as a nation. He also died in the same month in 1944.

Quezon surmised that the nation of some 7,100 islands and more than 100 ethnolinguistic groups will achieve greater unity and cooperation — and thus accelerate economic progress — by having one single dominant national language. Commonwealth Act 184 then directed a national committee composed of language experts in Hiligaynon, Ilocano, Bicol, Samarnon, Cebuano, Tagalog, Maranao-Maguindanao, Pampango and Pangasinan, and they nally chose Tagalog.