ISINAY: A Language at Risk (Part 1)

IF THIS PIECE sounds formal, I'm sorry.

It's not really my style as a writer and as an occasional speaker to be insipid and humorless if I can help it.

Yet I hope you agree that the topic about the Isinay language under threat of extinction is not a laughing matter. Or, as we say it in Isinay, marin pantatawan.

The topic is a serious one because if language is the soul of a people's culture, then the loss of Isinay as a language would also mean losing the Isinay soul.

But that's putting the gariton (cart) before the nuwang (carabao).

Let me tell how I came to know that there is a problem, a life-and-death matter, with the Isinay language.

In one of my rare visits back home in Isinay land in the 1990s, I observed that this one of my native tongues was no longer being prevalently used especially by kids even in the heart of my hometown Dupax del Sur.

What you would hear is Tagalog. With typical Ilocano or Isinay accent, of course.

It was only the dara-uway (older folks) who spoke Isinay. If you would ask kids with familiar eyes "Siran si de^deem?" (Who are your parents?), you would only get shy smiles or puzzled eyes. So you would have to shift your lines to Tagalog.
 
If the children of Dupax and other parts of the Isinay world today are no longer well versed in Isinay like we used to when we were small, that would have been fine with me. In Isinay, that would translate to: "Nayyi masait an tajeng u." In Iluko: "Awan nasakit a bakrangko."

To be sure, it's not totally an Isinay concern. In fact, I also noted that even my other native language, Iluko (or Ilocano to the uninitiated), is also no longer as popular nowadays among kids today -- be it in Isinay country or in the Cordillera and, I guess, even in the so-called Ilocos Republic.

But I didn't know that was a big problem then.

Perhaps I was busy with other concerns. Perhaps, too, I just didn't ponder on the matter on Isinay deep enough.

I only got to know there was a case one time I saw a new item on Isinay in the internet.

You see, since I got into this idea of compiling rare and even moribund words in Isinay, I was keeping my radars busy so I won't miss a possible source of such words to include in my list.

Here's the picture: There's not much material on Isinay available in the internet or even in libraries.

And so, when I hit on "The Revitalization Challenge for Small Languages: The Case of Isinai," mabilis pa sa alas-kuatro (quicker than four o' clock), I immediately downloaded it so I could read it line by line even when our internet connection in the house would go off-line.

(DIOY SI ATUPTUPNA)