Published December 21, 2000

There's one subpoena that's long been waiting to be issued. It's the one to Prof. Henry Higgins of "My Fair Lady" fame. He is a fictional character, of course, but the likes of a real professor of grammar and diction in the Senate would certainly be welcome.

What else to wish for when murder most foul of the English language is committed each day the honorables conduct the impeachment proceedings against President Estrada. Irony is not lost here.

I am sure the senators and all of the legal luminaries have at a time or other chuckled over those Erap jokes that pan the President's own manner of murdering the language of our former colonial masters. Estrada might stumble and mumble when speaking in English but he does, at least, manage to get through his written speeches in passable form. As to his "Eraptions", we all know that those are tired ethnic or similar jokes that have largely been floating around for since when and merely attributed to the Man in Malacanang.

The reality in the Senate hearings is entirely another matter. There is where the solons of the higher chamber don't even flinch at their language gaffes. Then again, how can they when their lapses are clearly born out of simply non-concern with proper use of the idiom.

That might be easily glossed over, except that the historical (pardon the use of that tired word, but no other seems to apply) proceedings have found their way, records and all, into the international stage. The whole world, literally, is turned in. No doubt the English speaking world, or at least that part that appreciate proper use of the language, is baffled by how we have been mangling the English tongue that we were supposed to have been schooled in for just under half a century.

The curious part of it all is that the Philippine press has been a guilty party. One has to wonder whether the basic rule to consult the dictionary for pronunciations has been eschewed. Or whether the talking heads ever even care to listen to themselves. Errors in grammar, syntax and all are so uncomfortably many that, for anyone who even most slightly pretends to be familiar with correct language, squirming in one's seat cannot be avoided.

Listen. "Valhalya". Has anyone bothered to check and find out that the world is pronounced without the Spanish "y" that accompanies the double "l"? Give it to President Estrada not to know that - he who was allegedly more concerned over the number of letters in "Fontainebleau" (thirteen, which number he supposedly abhors) and thus had respelled to "Fontainbleau" of twelve letters - but a quick check by all of those in the media gangs could have put the enunciation of the word in place.

Or, listen again. Is that the Chief Justice saying "sub-po-e-na?" Mercifully, someone must have told him to enunciate otherwise.

And have the lawyers been listening to themselves? That's subpoena "du'kes te-kum" is they care to know. Not "duches" as some pretenders prefer, nor "duses" as others like. The worn volume of my late father's Latin tome tells me that. Is not the same three-inch volume consulted by our legal luminaries these days? I wonder. What I know is that such references are thumbed through incessantly by even the least familiar with legal arguments.

I have here a sense of wonderment about the on-going mutilation of the, let's accept it, foreign language. And yet, this observer proposes that if it is used anyway, then it should be treated with respect to its correct use. Senator Wigberto Taqada, who has preferred to present his briefs in Tagalog could well be on track in his intent to record his pleadings correctly.

The other observation must be made of Senator Miriam Santiago's continued insistence of inflicting her acquired accent, from where one has to shake a head. Her extended and insistent use of the extended vowels simply grates. She is the prime candidate for lessons from a real-life Prof. Higgins.

These observations, for sure, are "immaterial" to the outcome of the case. And yet, one must say that the import of the matter in the nation's history is affected by even the seemingly inconsequential matter of proper grammar and diction. We will, after all, be reading through the records of these proceedings for years, even generations, to come. The whole world will do so too.

President Estrada might be on trial for his misdeeds. That will be of worldwide note, as will be the outcome. But should we not, therefore, couch the whole process and its debate in correct English, in syntax and enunciation?

No more murder of the English tongue