Tales from the Decabiography
7 I have poor literacy in my own national language
If you were good at something, you had to suck someplace else, and since I’m better off writing in english then I suck big time in writing in our own language. This isn’t much of a problem though, I don’t need to learn it anyway but it was one hell of a headache way back high school when I was forced to write it, and you wouldn’t probably want to see how my essays looked like. The worse was during junior and senior high when we had a subject in class that took up two of these novels that were written by our national hero, I had a hard time understanding the whole story because our language being used in the novels is supposed to be romanticized to a higher level the same way billy shakespeare would write his english, yet I don’t think it is a celebration of our language since the originals were written in spanish.
We had our high school reunion about a month ago, I didn’t have any plans of attending but I did anyway because my seatmates from junior and senior high were asking me to come, and I owe them big time because they helped me survive that subject about those two novels during high school, I kept bugging them in class asking what each goddam chapter meant, I swear that time I felt like reading gobbledygook, and my seatmates had to retell the whole thing to me in simplier words like some bedtime story to some kid. Anyway during this reunion I sat with them on the farthest end of the table less being seen by anybody yet something embarrassing had to happen, somebody from the microphone had to call my name and hell they got my last name wrong, they did get a lot of last names wrong that night too like my senior high seatmate but they were girls and because they were married anyway and they are having their hubbies’ last name and all. Thankfully somebody had to yell “just call him lib”.
Anyway it wasn’t til college when they taught about these two novels again and thankfully in english, basically joe rizal’s two magnum opus in general is a showcase of 19th century colonial oppression in this country and mainly focuses on this guy mr ibarra being stripped from his everything by pervert christian priests, and later this main character returning for vengeance in disguise. The theme is almost set like the one alexander dumas used in the count of monte cristo where you’d go on so eager reading how the antagonists got their share of his sweet vengeance, but joe’s version went on a tragedy, leaving his main character dead in the end without getting even or getting his life back, which for the reader that time realizing the same sense of colonial oppression upon him, takes this gut feeling of vengeance real time. This eventually led to joe’s execution for propagating reforms and revolutions by his pen.
We called this subject pi 100 in the state university, I had a good professor in this subject and he’s one hell of a historian, for my final grade he called me for discussion of a particular chapter in the novel, and with his intellect upon my dumbness, I was flunking every question he asked, correcting my every answer with what he felt was right. It took us too much time though and he dismissed me before we were even done telling me to finish the discussion next week. Came monday I was so goddam scared on flunking the subject but when we continued the discussion, the historian professor must have inhaled too much cobwebs in the national archives that he started the discussion all over again, asking me the same question from last week, and I replied with the better answers I already heard from him last week, I got a good grade for paying attention.
Anyway back to my literacy, if there is one language I’d love to have a good literacy in its latin. I mean every often when I write I could integrate a latin word into my english like the one I used earlier -magnum opus , and then its still sounds like common english, or even better english. And school mottos, army mottos, church mottos, courtroom remarks, everywhere they’re all in latin. It just sounds so powerful.
Funny I just remembered something latin about those two novels from joe rizal. The first novel had a latin title that meant touch me not which joe borrowed from somewhere in the bible (or should I say the vulgate), and the second novel too started out with the latin phrase sic itur ad astra.
Quid quid latine dictum sit, altum videtur. Quod revera linguam latinam vix cognovi, cum latine nescias, die dulce freure.
If you were good at something, you had to suck someplace else, and since I’m better off writing in english then I suck big time in writing in our own language. This isn’t much of a problem though, I don’t need to learn it anyway but it was one hell of a headache way back high school when I was forced to write it, and you wouldn’t probably want to see how my essays looked like. The worse was during junior and senior high when we had a subject in class that took up two of these novels that were written by our national hero, I had a hard time understanding the whole story because our language being used in the novels is supposed to be romanticized to a higher level the same way billy shakespeare would write his english, yet I don’t think it is a celebration of our language since the originals were written in spanish.
We had our high school reunion about a month ago, I didn’t have any plans of attending but I did anyway because my seatmates from junior and senior high were asking me to come, and I owe them big time because they helped me survive that subject about those two novels during high school, I kept bugging them in class asking what each goddam chapter meant, I swear that time I felt like reading gobbledygook, and my seatmates had to retell the whole thing to me in simplier words like some bedtime story to some kid. Anyway during this reunion I sat with them on the farthest end of the table less being seen by anybody yet something embarrassing had to happen, somebody from the microphone had to call my name and hell they got my last name wrong, they did get a lot of last names wrong that night too like my senior high seatmate but they were girls and because they were married anyway and they are having their hubbies’ last name and all. Thankfully somebody had to yell “just call him lib”.
Anyway it wasn’t til college when they taught about these two novels again and thankfully in english, basically joe rizal’s two magnum opus in general is a showcase of 19th century colonial oppression in this country and mainly focuses on this guy mr ibarra being stripped from his everything by pervert christian priests, and later this main character returning for vengeance in disguise. The theme is almost set like the one alexander dumas used in the count of monte cristo where you’d go on so eager reading how the antagonists got their share of his sweet vengeance, but joe’s version went on a tragedy, leaving his main character dead in the end without getting even or getting his life back, which for the reader that time realizing the same sense of colonial oppression upon him, takes this gut feeling of vengeance real time. This eventually led to joe’s execution for propagating reforms and revolutions by his pen.
We called this subject pi 100 in the state university, I had a good professor in this subject and he’s one hell of a historian, for my final grade he called me for discussion of a particular chapter in the novel, and with his intellect upon my dumbness, I was flunking every question he asked, correcting my every answer with what he felt was right. It took us too much time though and he dismissed me before we were even done telling me to finish the discussion next week. Came monday I was so goddam scared on flunking the subject but when we continued the discussion, the historian professor must have inhaled too much cobwebs in the national archives that he started the discussion all over again, asking me the same question from last week, and I replied with the better answers I already heard from him last week, I got a good grade for paying attention.
Anyway back to my literacy, if there is one language I’d love to have a good literacy in its latin. I mean every often when I write I could integrate a latin word into my english like the one I used earlier -magnum opus , and then its still sounds like common english, or even better english. And school mottos, army mottos, church mottos, courtroom remarks, everywhere they’re all in latin. It just sounds so powerful.
Funny I just remembered something latin about those two novels from joe rizal. The first novel had a latin title that meant touch me not which joe borrowed from somewhere in the bible (or should I say the vulgate), and the second novel too started out with the latin phrase sic itur ad astra.
Quid quid latine dictum sit, altum videtur. Quod revera linguam latinam vix cognovi, cum latine nescias, die dulce freure.
Labels: The Decabiography
posted by Lib at 10:44 PM
4 Comments:
Yeah when Peter spoke to me in Latin, I'd always felt like he was from Mars or something. I like the way Latin sounds though, even wanted to learn it at some point but being the lazy person that I am... =)
6:57 PM
you have a friend by the name of peter too?
I suppose he came from an opus dei school because I hear they teach latin to their students like in southridge.
Can you try giving him my phrase to see if he can translate it and if I did get the words right?
That gibson movie "passion of christ" has the whole script in latin, maybe you could learn a line or two there
10:42 PM
Passion of the Christ was in Latin? Oh but I thought it was in Aramaic and that Latin was spoken by the Romans in the movie... Anyway, Peter is a German friend, he chose to study it as part of the mandatory requirements for their education system in Germany.
Oh and he says, your pretty good with the Latin there.
9:42 PM
nobody told me it was in latin, I was busy reading the subtitles below and I didn't pay attention to the dialogue except when the demons would pop up. But I heard somebody yell clearly in the movie "QUO VADIS?!" so that was when I realized it is in latin.
aramaic and coptic are dead
2:17 PM
Post a Comment
<< Home