Grammar Critics: The Hypocrites

Filipinos are really good at stepping on each other and at finding faults in others, at pushing the face of somebody who is down deeper into the muck.

Just look at what happened to Hon. Emmanuel Dapidran Pacquiao of the lone district of Sarangani, Philippines.

He almost shut down his Twitter account (as of this writing) because of grammar critics who mercilessly ganged up on him like vultures to a carcass over his less than stellar knowledge on the crazy language called English.

Sad, pathetic bunch; they flog people over inadequacies in the command of a foreign language, yet I am sure they are not up to it in terms of mastery of Tagalog. (Okay, okay, “Filipino.”)

We are really good at criticizing, particularly when it is about speaking English exactly the way Americans pronounce the words.  That smacks of hypocrisy, with the lack of civility a mark of a degenerate “citizen.”

During the time of Jesus, He described Pharisees and Sadducees as “white-washed tombs.”  It is because they spoke about purity and immaculateness, but like tombs, though painted white to look so neat and clean on the outside, they are still full of worms inside, their souls already rotten by self-righteousness.

These grammar critics are our modern Pharisees and Sadducees.

Having interacted with various people from the ASEAN region, I have seen that it is only us, Filipinos, in Southeast Asia who are such sticklers for the "right" English grammar and diction.

While majority in Southeast Asia does not have outstanding English to boot, people understand each other perfectly well, which is really the purpose of language.

It is only us, Filipinos, who are so particular at how people must make the right pronunciation, preferably with the right British accent or the American twang; and the right verb tenses, subject-object sentence construction, active voice over passive voice, etcetera.

That is why these grammar critics, who unashamedly ridiculed Pacquiao, are representatives of our collective tendency to disparage those who are less proficient in English; they are reflections of our inclination, inherent or not, to laugh derisively at those who fumble over its usage.

By their acts, these grammar critics dared Pacquiao to cross swords with him in terms of their command of English. 

Hon. Pacquiao took the higher moral ground by not dignifying their nastiness with harsh words of his own; instead, he replied, in never-flawless yet understandable English, that we must love and use our own language.

My unsolicited advice: He can dare back by asking those hypocrites to tangle with him at what he does best. 

“How about a boxing match?” he may shoot back at them.

 Pacquiao can give them a fighting chance by using just one hand, particularly the left with its vicious hooks and straights.

After what would surely be a one-sided affair, he can then gloat that grammar critics are, in reality, such wimps.