The language I didn‘t inherit

The language I didn‘t inherit | Daily Tribune

For a long time, I blamed my father for not teaching us his language. It felt like a small omission with large consequences. Language, after all, is not just vocabulary. It is memory. It is belonging. It is the difference between being present and merely nearby. I grew up thinking that if he had only insisted, corrected, and repeated, I would have grown into it naturally, like a second skin.

But adulthood has a way of softening old accusations.

“It is what it is” is often mistaken for resignation. In truth, it is recognition. Parents make choices that only reveal their logic decades later. Manila was not Mindanao. Safety mattered. Fitting in mattered. Survival mattered, too. Love sometimes shows up not as preservation, but as protection.

Still, the absence lingered.

Maranao is not simply a means of communication. It is a language shaped by social order, faith and long memory. It carries respect through structure and meaning through restraint. It distinguishes who you are speaking to, how closely you stand to them, and how carefully your words must travel. Humor exists in it, but rarely at another’s expense. Authority is present, but seldom loud. Even emotion knows when to pause.

It is a language that teaches you how to be before it teaches you what to say.

And that, perhaps, is why the harder truth eventually surfaced.

At some point, blame expires.

Discovery becomes a choice.

I realized I had spent years pointing backward when I could have walked forward. I could have listened more closely. Asked questions. Sat longer at tables where stories were being told in a language I half-recognized but never fully claimed. The door was not locked. I simply arrived late and without preparation.

The irony is that I know exactly one Maranao phrase well enough to repeat with confidence:

“Anda ka mangay mapita?”

Where are you going tomorrow?

A simple question. Practical. Forward-looking. Less about where you have been, more about where you intend to go. Perhaps it is fitting that this is the phrase that stayed with me.

If only I had learned the language earlier, perhaps I would have better understood the words of my Ina Maimona. Not just what she said, but what she carried. The teachings of Uncle Abul, likely layered with patience I only recognized later. The stories of Uncle Anuar, richer in warning and humor than translation ever allowed. The letters of Uncle Umbra, and his advice to my father, which I suspect held more tenderness than structure. The healing words of Auntie Alongan, whispered to my father. Even the jokes of Uncle Rakim, which I am certain landed differently in their original tongue. Kuya Jang tried to teach me once, but I could only manage one word — “oway,” or yes.

If only.

But adulthood teaches another lesson, too: longing is not the same as loss. Some things are delayed, not denied.

To my Maranao relatives and elders: forgive me for failing to learn your words and their meanings. But thank you — for learning mine. In doing so, you let me hear the beauty of a language shaped by care, restraint, and depth. Because of that generosity, I still catch glimpses of what I have been missing.

I may not speak Maranao fluently, but I have stopped pretending it is not mine.