“ang tunob sa karaang tawo dili mapala…”
Ug kining tunuba anaa mahapatik sa panumduman sa atong Lungsod.
— Fernando A. Buyser, 1879–1946
The above quoted material is written in the Filipino dialect/language called Bisayan or Visayan which is spoken by a majority of Filipinos from the central and southern regions of the archipelago.
Bisayan is one of the languages I heard growing up. When first learning to communicate with my parents, grandparents and extended family I spoke and understood this language that I associated with home. Both American English and Bisayan were spoken to me and I was expected to respond in either or, better, in both. So it stands to reason that these two languages were like the left and right hemispheres of my body, my brain, I have needed them both to keep my balance.
These days I often find myself discovering quotes or lines of poetry that I repeat to myself aloud. The words, like the one in the quote above call out to me, faintly. My inner self, my physical self re-calibrates, tunes in, humming. It’s something about the roundness of the vowel sounds or the weight of the glottal stops that feels older than the concepts of the words themselves. The breaths in my chest seem different, purposeful.
I translate in my mind, passing one way of understanding, one comprehension of thought from…
