Note 22 — THE FRIAR VIEWPOINT

“Those who make the greatest propaganda are not, indeed, the masters. As many masters as there are in Cavite, there are in Bulacan, for example, or more, and in Cavite the people talk fairly good Castilian, while in Bulacan they scarcely talk any. Why? Because in Cavite there are many Spaniards who live there, while in Bulacan there are perhaps not fifty. For the rest another citation and the conclusion. The famous student of Filipinas, now the bishop of Jaca, Fray Francisco Valdés, says: ‘There are many Indians who come to know quite well the material of the Spanish word; but the internal signification and the logical character of our beautiful language is for them an undecipherable secret. Our meanings [giros] and phrases are opposed to their peculiar fashion of conceiving and correlating ideas. From this discrepancy in the association of ideas, they produce literary products as nonsensical as the one below. This example is chosen from among innumerable others of the same kind, as it is the work of a master who passed among those of his class and was really one of the best instructed. The matter is an invitation elegantly printed and gotten up on the occasion of the mass called vara which the gobernadorcillos usually cause to be celebrated with great pomp on that day when they receive from the governor the vara or staff of command. It is as follows: On the nineteenth day, in the morning, and of the present full moon, the mass of my vara will be held in this church under my charge, for God has gratuitously granted me this honorable charge. I invite you, therefore, to my house, so that from that moment the vacancy of my heart having been freed, it may become full by your presence, until my last hour sounds on the clock of the Eternal.’” Come now Don Manuel, what do you say to this?22