A FEW days ago, a Philippine cultural foundation I truly respect used its Twitter account to post one of the pictures from its very valuable collection. The picture depicted a school classroom, probably in a province. The professor, who looks American, is looking into the camera, while the children are dressed in different ways: some are wearing native textiles, others are showing their torso without anything on top while others seem to be wearing Western clothes. No one is wearing shoes. On the blackboard, different English words suggest the children were learning the language of the new colonizer.
The picture is, indeed, very interesting. What caught my attention was the text accompanying it: "In the 20th century, American tutelage helped reinforce the romanization of written Filipino languages across the nation." Regarding this comment, I need to say two things: first, there is no connection between the picture and the comment. As I said, they were learning English. The second thing - and I believe this is more important - Philippine languages had begun to be romanized since 1593 when the Spanish friars published the first Doctrina Cristiana. This small book is very impressive: it was printed in the xylographic way - not following the more modern Gutenberg printing press - in two languages and two alphabets: Spanish, romanized Tagalog and baybayin.
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