Why English Now Sounds Like a Costume in the Philippines: A Note On Language, Power, And Performance

 Introduction: When English Was a Civic Tool

There was a time in this country when speaking English on radio or television did not invite mockery, suspicion, or the reflexive sneer of “paingles-Ingles ka pa.” It invited attention. Not admiration, not resentment—attention. English then functioned not as a costume or class marker, but as a civic tool. It was the language of the courts, the classroom, the newsroom, and the state. Filipinos spoke their local languages fluently and without apology, but when they entered institutional space, they shifted registers as naturally as one puts on shoes before entering a building. That ecology is gone.

What replaced it after EDSA was not merely a new politics but a new tone. And tone, as any broadcaster knows, shapes language faster than policy ever could. The rise of TV Patrol in 1987—with its crusading Filipino, its triumphalist cadences, and the unmistakable populist authority of Noli de Castro’s “Kabayan” persona—marked a cultural border. English did not disappear overnight, but it was dethroned emotionally. Filipino was no longer simply a language; it became a moral claim. English, by contrast, began to sound procedural, technocratic, vaguely suspect.

The shift was understandable, even overdue. A people emerging from a dictatorship wanted news that spoke to them, not at them. Emotion replaced detachment as the primary currency of trust. But something else happened quietly in the background: English ceased to be a shared institutional discipline and became, instead, a symbolic accessory—something one touched briefly to signal seriousness before retreating to safer ground.

Post‑EDSA, a New Tone of Authority

Hence the now-familiar performance on Philippine television: the official, the academic, the media personality who opens with two carefully constructed English sentences—just enough to establish competence—then pivots decisively into Filipino or Taglish.

“Well, first of all, we have to understand the context of the issue. This is really about governance and accountability. Kasi ang problema dito…”

This is not spontaneous code-switching. It is ritual. The English preamble functions like a verbal necktie: worn to signal authority, loosened once credibility has been secured. Two sentences, never more. One sounds tentative; three invite scrutiny. Two is safe.

The Two‑Sentence Necktie

This habit reveals something uncomfortable. English still carries institutional prestige, but it no longer carries social ease. To remain in it too long risks the charge of pretension. To abandon it entirely risks sounding unserious. So speakers hedge. They gesture toward English, then retreat. Authority is invoked, then softened. The result is neither clarity nor elegance, but compromise masquerading as hybridity.

Nowhere is this erosion more visible—or more absurd—than in the growing Filipino habit of replacing the Tagalog “ay” with the English “is”: “Ang gusto kong kainin is lechon.”

This construction is not bilingualism. It is not even Taglish in any meaningful sense. It is grammatical cosplay. The sentence is already complete in Tagalog; the predicate marker "ay" does its job perfectly. Replacing it with "is" adds no clarity, no efficiency, no expressive power. It merely signals aspiration. The word “is” here functions not as a verb, but as a badge.

‘Is’ as Grammatical Cosplay

Older Taglish mixed content, not structure. English nouns, verbs, and concepts entered Filipino sentences because they named things Filipino did not yet easily name: policy, management, technology, and abstraction. What we see now is different. It is the insertion of English particles where Filipino already works—an admission, perhaps unconscious, that speakers no longer fully trust either language to carry authority on its own. This is not linguistic evolution. Evolution produces efficiency. This produces noise.

The tragedy is that none of this was inevitable. Other postcolonial societies—India, Singapore—managed to maintain English as a rigorous institutional language while nurturing local languages without moralizing the choice between them. In the Philippines, we did something more dangerous: we turned language into an ethical statement. Filipino became authentic. English became suspect. Once language is moralized, proficiency withers, because fluency requires comfort, not defensiveness.

And so today we inhabit an odd linguistic middle ground. English survives, but only in fragments—openings, buzzwords, fillers: actually, basically, the thing is. Filipino thrives emotionally, but often at the expense of precision. Taglish becomes the default not because it is superior, but because it is safer. It offends no one, challenges no one, and demands mastery of neither grammar.

From Rigor to Relatability

The result is a public sphere where clarity is rare, confidence is brittle, and sustained thought—whether in English or Filipino—feels increasingly difficult to perform aloud. We did not replace English with Filipino. We replaced discipline with relatability. We replaced rigor with tone.

To point this out is not nostalgia, nor colonial longing, nor elitism. It is a plea for seriousness. A language—any language—cannot survive as a mere prop. It must be trusted to do real work. Until we relearn how to trust both English and Filipino fully, without apology or performance, we will continue speaking in gestures, not sentences, and mistaking noise for voice.

The Day We All Got Our Names: Claveria’s Quiet Revolution

Governor General Narciso Claveria’s 1849 decree giving Filipinos their surnames remains one of the most quietly transformative events in our history—quiet because it involved no battles or revolutions, yet transformative because it reshaped the identity of millions. Before Claveria, most natives used only a single name or a baptismal name, creating confusion in legal records, tax rolls, and church documents.

Entire towns might have dozens of Juan de la Cruzes, with no way to tell families apart. To solve this administrative chaos, Claveria introduced the Catálogo Alfabético de Apellidos, a meticulous, almost obsessive list of tens of thousands of surnames—Spanish, local, Mexican, botanical, geographical, and sometimes whimsically invented. 

Using this catalog, local officials assigned surnames alphabetically by barrio or by whatever system they found convenient, which is why one town might be filled with the Almedas and the Arces, while neighboring barangays house clusters of Bautistas, Cruzes, Dimaculangan, or Policarpio.

What began as a bureaucratic act soon became a cultural imprint. Families long identified by lineage or locality suddenly found themselves bearing surnames that had nothing to do with ancestry, ethnicity, or profession. A farmer in Ilocos could become a “Villanueva,” while a fisherman in Bicol could turn into a “Ramos” or a “Mercado” simply because the local gobernadorcillo read those names aloud that day.

 Some indigenous families kept their native surnames only if they could prove continuous use for at least four generations; many others had theirs replaced entirely. 

This naming overhaul also revealed the colonial obsession with order—Claveria wanted to rationalize taxation, streamline governance, and suppress the mobility of “wandering natives” (his term), but unintentionally he gave Filipinos one of the most enduring markers of identity.

Today, our surnames—whether Spanish-looking like Santos, poetic like Mabini, homegrown like Macapagal, or unique like Dagohoy and Lacson—carry this imprint of colonial administration. They are reminders of a moment when identity was reorganized from above, yet ultimately adopted from below, woven into the stories of families who made these names their own.

 In a country where history often arrives through conquest, rebellion, or catastrophe, Claveria’s surname decree stands out as a quieter but equally powerful force—one that still lives with us every time we sign a document, meet a stranger, trace a family tree, or simply introduce ourselves.

Is It Time To Shed the EDSA Mindset?

Certain events in a nation’s history become more than dates—they become emotional landmarks. For Filipinos, 1986 is not a year. It is a pulse. It lives in our anthem, our textbooks, our slogans, our political speeches. It lives in every protest placard that invokes the words People Power. It lives in the way we still say, with strange confidence, “Pag nagka-problema, kita-kits sa EDSA.”

I was not on EDSA in 1986. Millions weren’t. But we were all shaped by it. Some watched on the news. Others heard the stories. But everyone knew that something spectacular had happened: an entire dictatorship ended without a civil war. Tanks halted because priests stood between the barrel and the crowd. Ordinary citizens—clerks, market vendors, students, nuns—suddenly carried the weight of history. And for one moment, the whole world stood still and saluted us.

It was difficult not to believe after that that we Filipinos were capable of anything. And that is where the complication begins.

The Weight of a Beautiful Memory

How does a nation move forward when its greatest triumph is behind it? How do you build institutions when miracles come more easily to the imagination?

When Marcos fell, the air was filled not only with joy, but with an intoxicating sense of power. If the people brought down one president, they could bring down another. The Constitution was rewritten, institutions were rebuilt, and democracy was declared restored. But something lingered in our political bloodstream: the idea that the ultimate judge is not the Supreme Court, not Congress, not even the ballot box—but the street.

The EDSA Narrative Slowly Transformed into a Political Reflex.

Marcos fell. Estrada followed. Arroyo endured marches, siege attempts, and the constant threat of collapse. Today, whispers gather around President Bongbong Marcos. As accusations rise, familiar slogans reappear. Old rally grounds stir like muscle memory. It is as if the nation keeps a pair of marching shoes — always polished, never fully stored away. History, it seems, does not only echo—it rehearses.

But with every return to EDSA, a quiet question grows louder, more insistent: Are we honoring our history—or are we trapped by it? Have we preserved the spirit of People Power, or have we preserved only the choreography? Do we rally because the moment demands it—or because we have forgotten any other way to respond to crisis? What began as a cry for democratic rebirth may now be turning into a political shortcut, a ritual performed whenever institutions move too slowly, or justice seems too distant. 

And if we cannot imagine change without a crowd on the highway, then perhaps the triumph of 1986 has become our cage—a victory so luminous that it now blocks our view of a different future.

The Subtle Cost of Revolutions

The problem with miracles is that they age badly. The first time, they are riveting. The second time, they are déjà vu. The third time, they are routine. And revolutions, when repeated, slowly become hollow theater—stripped of moral complexity, reduced only to spectacle.

Our institutions—meant to grow stronger after 1986—have instead grown timid in its shadow. Impeachment is no longer respected. Courts are distrusted. The legislature becomes hesitant. The Ombudsman issues findings but few consequences. Political parties are built around personalities, not principles.

Why? Because many Filipinos quietly believe that all of these institutions are merely the prelude to something “real”: another uprising, another confrontation, another surge of bodies on the asphalt of EDSA.

It is as though the nation matured only halfway. We learned how to revolt—but not how to govern. We learned how to protest—but not how to prosecute. We learned how to topple presidents—but not how to hold them to account. And now the price has become due.

The Current Crossroads

Criticism against the current administration is growing. Accusations of corruption and betrayal are surfacing again. This alone is not new. Democratic societies must learn how to criticize their leaders. But here lies the danger: every time political pressure mounts, some Filipinos instinctively reach for the shortcut. “EDSA na lang ulit.” “Tanggalin na lang.” “March tayo.” "BBM and Sara Resign."

We forget that EDSA succeeded only because the system had collapsed. Today, the system exists. Impeachment exists. Investigative journalism exists. Congressional hearings exist. Judicial review exists. Our challenge is not to bypass these institutions—but to force them to work. That is the moral difference between a rebellion and a Republic. A Republic stands not on anger, but on institutions built to survive it. 

The Future We Owe EDSA

The greatest irony is that to honor EDSA is not to repeat it—but to render it unnecessary. People Power was never meant to be a permanent option. It was a bridge: a transitional moment meant to lead us away from emergency politics and toward constitutional maturity. If we must use it every generation, then we have not evolved—we have looped back on ourselves.

Perhaps the real tribute to EDSA is this: That one day, no Filipino child will need to march to restore justice. That one day, corruption will be punished not by rallies—but by verdicts. That one day, presidents will fear not crowds—but the law. When that day comes—when change happens inside the system, not outside of it— then EDSA will not be abandoned. It will, at last, be fulfilled. And the crowd will not need to return to the streets. Because the Republic will finally stand on its own feet.