One of the articles posted here in MabuhayRadio was a Privilege Statement by The Hon. Sen. Aquilino Q. Pimentel, Jr., regarding the Preservation of the Philippine Languages, and how they are being threatened into extinction by non-use.

What a frightful thought... imagine all that identity, culture, and history gone from the face of the earth, never to be heard of again.

What's even scarier is that this IS happening right now, as we speak.

We've already lost our native alphabet (baybayin) as lamented by Jose Rizal in his poem "To My Fellow Children"

Our languages will suffer the same fate unless we do something about it now.

Other than Tagalog, we already have less dialect speakers than we did before. In my family alone, it is only my mother who can speak "Cuyunon" (the dialect of Palawan) . Some of my sisters can understand a few of the words, but only because they lived in Palawan for a little while. At best, I only know a silly phrase or two. And it wasn't from lack of interest either. I desperately wanted to learn how to speak that dialect, or at least understand it, so that I wouldn't feel left out of the conversations between my relatives. They, in turn, knew that I couldn't speak it so whenever they talked to me directly, they just automatically reverted to English - since they spoke that fluently.

So much for learning by exposure.

As for learning by reading, well, the sad truth is it was easier for me to learn to speak French or Spanish. Unlike those two foreign languages, there were no books, tutorials, dictionaries, or anything else that would have helped me learn the dialect.

So that got me thinking... Aside from the recommendations of Sen. Pimentel, perhaps another way to fight the extinction of our languages is to make it easy for others to learn it... 

With that in mind, we here at mabuhayradio.com have implemented a new feature - Sariling Wika (Dubbed WikaPedia).

It can be found in the left side menu of our website and basically it's an online dictionary for our different dialects. Anyone can enter new words and definitions into this dictionary, just make sure that you define it clearly :).

I've started by creating categories for the languages mentioned in Sen. Pimentel's article, and of course, I added Cuyunon. Unfortunately, I know none of the dialects except for Tagalog, and I would need your help to put in the words. Only then does it become usefull.

If any more language/dialect categories need to be included, please post them in the forums so that I can add them immediately. Please mention too what areas of the Philippines they cover so that I can add that in the description.

Of course, If you mention any other languages to be added, I expect you to populate that category with a few words at least :)

Visit it here http://www.mabuhayradio.com/sariling-wika

Maraming Salamat ...

Edit: I've added a feature for our authors, too! If a word is defined in the WikaPedia, and used in an article, the definition automatically shows up when the cursor is hovered over that word. For example: ibon, hipon and langgam are words that are defined in the WikaPedia - the definitions (bird, shrimp, ant) should show up when you hover your mouse over those words. notice to the green W sign next to the words that have the translations.