Janina

Her video clip viewed 2.1 million times as I write this, Janina San Miguel can easily be crowned Binibining Pilipinas – You Tube as well, hands down, rising from being a tuff (top) ten to tuff one in no time. Owe it to the instant metastasizing of her pageant night question-and-answer performance from being a subject of criticism and ridicule to that of an entertainment fare. It beat Miss International and once supermodel finalist Melnie Marquez’s melanisms — the don’t judge me I’m not a book kind –perhaps primarily because there was yet no internet in her time.

But San MIguel is more than this caricature of brainless beauty queen as she is being portrayed by most. She is the epitome of what is wrong with our culture in many ways, chief among them being our tired insistence to use English when Tagalog is preferably the easier and more sensible one. Note Janina’s confused cha-cha of the P and F (which is rather common among the lower social strata ), or persons and people and even the more confused usage of they, there and they’re or their. Add to this her Mass Com majoring in college. And finally, her not answering the question. There you get a disaster but entertaining (for the others) act in what should have otherwise been a night of beauty, brains and culture.

San Miguel is not a tragedy by herself, but the mirror of our own. She is at the very least the proof of what is wrong with us and how we refuse and fail to see our own shortcomings as a people. We use English as our medium of instruction and as the official language in government when all studies point that the best way for children to learn is to teach them in the language they best understand. Our collective psyche gauge intelligence, beauty and social standing by the knowledge and use of the English language. Never mind that it is ungrammatical and senseless as long as it sounds “slang” ( which we take to mean having an American accent.)

We claim to be the second or third largest English-speaking nation in the world and yet majority of us do not understand basic grammar and syntax. Take a quick peek at you tube comments and you’ll see that most of them are written in English — the horrible and ridiculous type. Watch your variety shows and you’lll be amazed at those pa-sosyal Inggliseras entertaining the audience with mindless chatter. Talk to your kababayans abroad in Tagalog and they will reply in English, in their funny Americanized accent and bad grammar.

Filipinos think they look smart if they talk to each other in English when they actually look fake and stupid.

Which brings us back to Janina. She could have answered the question in Tagalog (the host apparently reminded her so) but instead chose not to — in a futile attempt to impress everybody and regain composure. What could have been a shining moment of glory in a not-so glorious event turned out to be a comedic yet humiliating act of tragedy (but figuratively only because she won the title anyway.)

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of our country, whose tragedy is both literal and figurative, having been left way behind by the rest of our non-English speaking neighbors even as we continue to ape our western masters.

Next time there is beauty pageant, whether of the Barangay, the Gay or the Binibining Pilipinas type, it is best to ask the questions in Tagalog and let them answer in the language they truly understand and are comfortable with.

It is high time that we make these queens promote the beauty of our native language as well, no matter how miniscule it would be in representing our cultural integrity.