ISINAY: A Language at Risk (Part 2)

THE PAPER of Ms. Celina Marie E. Cruz ably dissects what is happening to the Isinay language. It was one of the four papers discussed in the Endangered Languages and their Revitalization panel of the 1st Philippine Conference-Workshop on Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education [Theme: "Reclaiming the right to learn in one's own language"] held Feb. 18-20, 2010 at Capitol University, Cagayan de Oro City.

I don't know about my fellow Isinays, but I strongly suggest that the paper should be a must read for Isinays (or friends of Isinays) who wish to do something to save a small but beautiful language from becoming merely a footnote to the history of Aritao, Bambang, and Dupax -- or of Nueva Vizcaya for that matter.

There are at least two ways on how to get hold of a copy. One is to pay a visit to the office of Ms. Cruz at  the Department of Linguistics, UP Diliman,  Quezon City. Another is to navigate the internet -- just type "Celina Cruz, Isinai" on your search engine and you can download a copy from any of the sites you find.


Lack of Literature on Isinay

I find the following note by Ms. Cruz' in the Related Literature section of her paper quite disturbing:

Little has been written on the subject of the Isinai – its people, culture and language. Reliable sources are hard to find and get. Some information on them are only mentioned in a paragraph or two of an article, or a page or more in some book, like in the documented history of Nueva Vizcaya. Recorded accounts of their cultural practices aren't well documented and passed down only through oral tradition.

The veteran editor of master's degree and doctoral dissertations in UP Los Baños in me would normally dismiss such a paragraph as the excuse of one who didn't cast his search net far and wide enough. 

But having done some literature search on Isinay (or Isinai to some, like Ms. Cruz) in connection with my dream to produce an Isinay dictionary, I can vouch for this finding by the UP linguistics lady. 

In fact, before I hit on her paper in the internet, I only knew four major publications on Isinay. One was the Catecismo de la Doctrina Cristiana en Isinay & Inmeas (1876), the second was the Introduccion al Estudio de la Lengua Castellana en Isinay printed in 1889 by the University of Santo Tomas when it was still a colegio, another was the Particles of Relation of the Isinai Language (1918), then there is the Isinay Texts and Translations (1986).

The lack of literature on Isinay is therefore one probable reason why the language has slipped into an endangered status.

And while we're at it, I think that addressing such lack of literature on Isinay is one possible way to help save the Isinay language from going extinct.

(DIOY SI ATUPTUPNA)