book #2 will have examples of culture
and its relationship with language

if you impose a language, you impose a culture. book #2 will be book about creative writing that writes itself, and the content will be about what i believe about language and culture - they are inseparable. the photograph i have chosen to illustrate this i have titled ‘the language of culture.’ - where the photograph i took near our little apartment shows rotting palm trunks but with some sawn-off parts apparently being cleaned for some use or other. where we live, the culture is tagalog; after all, we are in laguna province. if i were to tackle the subject of culture and language in one essay? it cannot be done. it’s too big, too vague a topic. language is not simply speaking a tongue or dialect; language is communication above all things. and you cannot invent meaning - the meaning is first invented before the word is. there is no reason for inventing a word when one cannot assign a meaning to it.

filipino is still based on tagalog and not on the many and diverse languages of the philippines. i heard the tv host saying, ‘infrastraktura’ in an effort to ‘filipinize’ an english word. so if you say ‘infrastraktura’ you mean the ordinary folks will understand you? if they can understand you, that means they understand the english word ‘infrastructure’ - so why is there a need to reinvent the wheel? this is ridiculous thinking, tagalizing everything to make a common national language of the philippines.