Buy or bye for Baybayin?

With Pangasinan Second District Rep. Leopoldo Bataoil bringing his penchant for pre-Hispanic language and writing to Congress, it may not be far-fetched for Filipinos to be reading and writing in Indonesian or Thai-like texts one day.

In 2011, Bataoil started his campaign to reintroduce and institutionalize Baybayin, the ancient Tagalog alphabet, as the national writing system. House Bill 4395 (“An Act Providing for the Protection and Conservation of Baybayin and Declaring Baybayin as the National Script of the Philippines”) failed to garner enough support in the 16th Congress but Bataoil revived the measure through House Bill 1022 last year.

HB 1022 requires the translation of street signs, building names, product labels and event newspaper mastheads to Baybayin. The bill morphed into HB 8785 or the “Philippine Indigenous or Traditional Writing Systems Act” that the House unanimously (208 congressmen present) approved on third and final reading this week.

HB 8785 makes it a state policy to inculcate, propagate and preserve indigenous or traditional scripts of the Philippines which also include Buhid and Hanuno’o of Mindoro, Eskayan of Bohol, Kulitan of Central Luzon and Tagbanwa of Palawan.

Bataoil said one of the aims of his bill is to promote patriotism. But will using surviving ethnic alphabets and scripts that are read and written in different direction really make more patriots in us? The number can be known after Bataoil’s bill is enacted into law, if ever that will happen in the17th Congress.