Philippine E-Journals

Until When Will the Last “Mengal” Stand? History’s Challenge for the Preservation of a Recalcitrant Local Language (The Case of the Malaueg Tongue)

Ferdinand T. Maguigad

 

Abstract:

After centuries of being exposed to foreign influences (which include present-day mass media), the Malaueg tongue of Rizal town in Cagayan is still very much in use. School children still engage in conversation through it. Teenagers who study, young adults who work, and families who decide to reside outside the town are very possessive of it. It is also a curiosity that, after six years of pastoral ministry, diocesan priests who are assigned as parish priests of this town (and who are usually of the Ilocano stock), leave it with surprising adeptness in terms of speaking this language. It is therefore asked: How is it that Malaueg – spoken only in this town – has remained seemingly recalcitrant in spite of and despite the danger of foreign incursions in the past and the threat of global culture at its doorsteps in the present? This paper – an introductory study – weaves and winds through history for some possible grounds as to why and how such local idiom remains extant until today.