The shy grammar of Tagalized English

A grammatical comedy of errors once occurred in the law class of a good friend. It started when the teacher asked a student a simple question: “Can you read paragraph x for me?”

To which the student answered, “I could, sir.”

 “So you’re not sure if you can?” asked the teacher, feigning confusion.

Thinking that his teacher had misheard, the student reiterated, “I’m sure sir; I could.”

“But what is your condition for doing it?”

“No condition, sir, I could do it.”

“So, next time, Mr. Juan dela Cruz, tell me that you can do it,” emphasized the teacher.

I tell this story to my students every time I assign them to write a final essay for my politics class. It’s a good way to explain the misuse of what grammarians call the subjunctive mood. And since misusing this mood is the most common mistake of my Pinoy students, I tend to rant about it in class.

According to my favorite grammarian Mignon Fogerty, “verbs have moods just like you do,” and you use the subjunctive mood “for times when you're talking about something that isn't true or you're being wishful.” When you are certain, you use the imperative mood, meaning you say “can” instead of “could” and “will” instead of “would.”

So that’s why the law teacher found his student confusing! If the student were sure about his capacity/willingness to read the paragraph, he would have used the more categorical “can.” “Could” or “would” imply uncertainty or conditionality. They are thus used with a clause that begins with “if,” as I just did in this paragraph’s second sentence.

“Maoism is one concept that could describe Communism in the Philippines,” wrote one of my fourth year students in his final exam. I crossed this sentence out and asked “So under what conditions does Maoism describe Communism in the Philippines? Why aren’t you sure if it can?” The sentence is tentative and mealy-mouthed. Why not just write, “Maoism can describe Communism in the Philippines”? Or better yet, “Philippine Communism is Maoist.” And, indeed, for better or for worse, it is.

When I was teaching in Australia two years ago, the grammar mistakes in essays were no less egregious, but my students there did not confuse the subjunctive as much as my Pinoy students do. Which led me to ask myself: What is it about Pinoy English that makes it prone to the fleeting, tentative quality of the subjunctive? I’m no linguist, but let me offer some hypotheses, which experts can verify.

Like many of our linguistic tics (I once wrote about our obsessions with titles), I suspect the one in question has antecedents in our colonial history. I’ve been trying to pick up Spanish recently, and I’ve discovered that the subjunctive mood is more common in that language than in English (consider “Me gustaria…” or “I would like to…”).  An online tutorial on Spanish notes, “Because it is so frequently necessary in Spanish yet unfamiliar to English speakers, the subjunctive mood is an endless source of confusion for many Spanish [Spanish-language] students.” This mood is also more common in other romantic languages like Italian and French, but not for the plain and categorical German, which is closer to English.

Now, who were the first people to learn English in the Philippines? There were lower and working class indios educated in English by American Thomasite teachers early on in the American occupation, but, by and large, it was the Spanish-speaking elite who first studied the new colonizer’s tongue. Ambitious mestizo caciques in the Philippine Assembly—the lower house of congress where the mandarins of our polity first started raiding our coffers—went out of their way to curry favor from their new masters. And since linguistic proficiency is an aid to sycophancy, they learned English. Thus, our fixation with the subjunctive mood could be a function of our elite learning English through a Castillan lens. No wonder my Atenista students love their coulds and woulds!

But it is not just Spanish that loves indeterminate speech. Consider the subjunctive Tagalog word maari/maaari (my college balarila book says you should drop the third a). To the question, “Pwede ko ba ikaw maka-date?,” the answer “maari” would be an affirmative, albeit with a lambing and hinhin absent in the simple oo—unless, of course, that oo is a matamis na oo. There might be an implicit if/kung in that response, but it is, at most, a flirtatious wink.

If you don’t believe me, ask Ogie Alcasid, who sings: “Mayroon akong nais malaman, maari bang magtanong? Alam mo bang matagal na kitang iniibig?” Nandito Ako’s subjunctive mood assists in reproducing the circuitous speech patterns of the Pinoy torpe. He didn’t have to ask if he could ask a question if he intended to ask a question in he first place. But you get the effect. Or you would get it…if you’ve had an experience where romantic prospects have dulled your capacity to speak directly.

All this, of course, is cute. But I also wonder if the overuse of the subjunctive voice belies a collective insecurity. The beauty of the non-romantic English language is its plainness. As George Orwell notes, English, used properly, can communicate the clearest thoughts through the sparsest prose. Which is why English, like German, is a good scientific language. That we have to Hispanize or Tagalize English in a manner that makes it more indirect, even more deferential, points to a lack of confidence. If you believe in what you’re saying, if you are committed to it, you can (as opposed to “could”) and you will (as opposed to “would”) say it directly.

In a society where we are too hiya to call out injustices or to question hierarchies, we might need a good dose of imperative confidence. – GMA News