Dalityapi Unpoemed

By DR. FLORANGEL ROSARIO BRAID July 29, 2011, 10:58pm MANILA, Philippines — Let me now share some developments in reviving my mother tongue, Pangasinan, which is perceived as a “dying language.” “We are a dying tribe on the verge of extinction,” notes Santiago Villafania, the province’s leading poet. This lament is shared by some local writers and researchers who explain it as a consequence of factors such as migration of skilled and unskilled workers to other parts of the country or abroad, inter-ethnic marriages, changing language use, and what is described as “relative cultural prestige” of the language. Pangasinenses have the tendency to use Iloko or Pilipino during conversations, notes writer A.R. Ravanzo who thinks this could be due to “penchant or uncanny ability for assimilation – to absorb oneself into the cultural tradition of another place, and the proclivity to belong, to survive against all odds.” Many Pangasinenses are multilingual and proficient in English, Tagalog, an

बेपरवाह मैं बदमाश हूँ ढूंढो मुझे झुग्गियों में पयाटास की या फिर लोकल ट्रेन के भीतर दफना दो मुझे चीथड़ों में या फिर कागज के कम्बलों में रात को जब में स्वप्न देखता हूँ एक घर का अपना कहने के लिए तैरता हूँ मैं दूषित नदियों में मनुष्यों के द्वारा गन्दी की गयी जिनकी आत्माएं पासिंग नदी से भी काली हो गयी हैं चलता हूँ मैं मनीला की गलियो की सघन हवा में धुआं डकारती गाड़ियों से चट्टानों सी ऊंची इकठ्ठा करता हूँ गन्दगी शहर की शहर जो औजीयां अस्तबलों से भी गन्दा है बारिश के दिनों में दिन की रौशनी में यूँ ही चलते हुए मालों में देखता हूँ गनिकाएं व्यापार करती देह का चंद पैसों के लिए आह! यह क्या भविष्य देखता हूँ मैं -संतिअगो विल्लाफनिया की कविता ' फॉर अस हु ड़ू नोट केयर' से अनुवादित For us, who do not care (after Maya Angelou) be me urchin seek me shanty in Payatas or under the LRT bury me in tattered rugs and paper blankets at night while i dream me home a family to call my own swim me river defiled by men whose soul is darker than the waters of Pasig river cross me streets of Manila and breathe

DAGUPAN CITY – For the love of the “dying” Pangasinan language, Mayor Benjamin S. Lim is personally sponsoring a 30- minute radio program dubbed as “Pinablin Taoir” to be aired over Aksyon Radyo Pangasinan (ARP) starting July 15 and every Friday thereafter from 8 to 9 a.m. “I love the Pangasinan language and I speak the language pretty well because of my mother who is a pure Pangasinense. That is why, I am passionately interested in the rejuvenation of the language to be the common tongue once again among residents of Dagupan and the province as well,” said Lim. He said the project aims to arrest the interest of every Pangasinan speaking people to make sure that usage of the language passes from generation to generation without threat of extinction. It has been observed that Pangasinan’s vernacular language is in danger of being lost due to the entry of other languages in the province. The threat is said to have come from the Ilokanos and Tagalogs. Contributing largely to the slow

I found these scanned pages from the book Cathay and the Way Thither; being a collection of Medieval Notices of China while searching for some available articles online about Pangasinan's beleaguered Princess Urduja. Pages 233 - 237 are about the brief sojourn of Ibn Batuta in the country of Tawalisi and his meeting with Princess Urduja. Some Pangasinan historians and literati claimed that Urduja's kingdom was in Pangasinan. Most of our historians nowadays, however, do not support such claim and that the Turkish-speaking princess was not from Pangasinan and that she is just a myth. The line Dawat wa batak katur , roughly translated by Batuta as "bring or handover there is the inkbrush" sounds like Pangasinan, huh?. But I would literally translate this in modern Pangasinan as " Yawat/gawat (handover/reach) wa (there is) batak (ink) katur(o) (brush)" The ancient word for paper in Pangasinan is lost but we still have the word batak (ink) or batakan (to si