Now you ask for the teaching of Spanish, an aspiration that
would be ridiculous if it did not entail such deplorable consequences. For you
would add one more language to the more than forty already spoken in these
islands, no doubt so that you may understand one another less and less!
“On the contrary,” objected Basilio, “if knowledge of
Spanish may bring us closer to the Government, it can also unite all the
islands.”
“A gross mistake,” interrupted Simoun. “ You let yourselves
be fooled by big words and never get to the bottom of things to study the
ultimate consequences. Spanish will never be the national language because the
people will never speak it. That tongue cannot express their ideas and their
emotions. Each people has its own way of speaking just as it has its own way of
feeling. What will you do with Spanish, the few of you who will get to speak
it? You will only kill your individual personality and subject your thoughts to
other minds. Instead of making yourselves free, you will only make yourselves
truly slaves. Nine out of ten among you who presume to be educated are
renegades to your country. Whoever
among you speaks Spanish is so indifferent to his own language that he can
neither write nor understand it. How many have I seen who pretend not to know a
single word of their native tongue! Fortunately you have a stupid Government.
While Russia compels the Poles to study Russian in order to enslave them, while
Germany prohibits the use of French in the provinces she has conquered from
France, your Government fights to keep alive your native languages, while you,
on the other hand, an extraordinary people under an incredible government,
struggle to get rid of your national identity. Both of you forget that as long as a people keeps its own
language, it keeps a pledge of liberty, just as a man is free as long as he can
think for himself. Language is a people’s way of thinking. Fortunately your
independence is secure. Human passions watch over it.
José Rizal
Chapter VII – Simoun
El Filibusterismo. 1891
Translated by Leon Ma. Guerrero (1961)
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