Articles

Interview: Paul Morrow

Paul Morrow runs one of the most informative sites on Baybayin. Below is my interview with him.

Christian Cabuay
What got you interested in Baybayin? I assume you studied the script on your own, what was the most challenging part?

Paul Morrow
It’s a bit ironic. I became interested in Filipino/Tagalog many years ago when I discovered that Filipinos used the Roman alphabet. At the time I thought Filipinos probably wrote in Chinese or some “bizarre” script like Tibetan. That’s how little I knew. But when I happened to see a dictionary at a friend’s house, I thought, “Hey, I can read this. I think I’ll try to learn the language.” Then, a few years later, I came across an article by Lope K. Santos about the baybayin in a book for students of Tagalog. I was surprised because none of my friends had ever mentioned to me that Filipinos once had their own writing system. When I asked them I about it, they didn’t know what I was talking about. This made me very curious so I tried to find every scrap of information I could about the baybayin.

Learning the baybayin was the easy part; the challenge was finding reliable information about its history and usage. All I had in the beginning were second and third hand sources, like school textbooks. This was the dark ages before the Internet.

Christian Cabuay
What’s the reaction of Filipinos when they find out you speak Tagalog and even know our old writing system most of us don’t even know about?

Paul Morrow
It depends on the situation. Usually, they are just happy to hear me say “Kumusta ka,” but then some of them are just dumbfounded when I proceed to have are real conversation with them.

Sometimes though, I feel a bit uneasy about this because, here in North America, we meet people everyday from all over the world who have learned English as a second language but we take it for granted. Why should people be so impressed that this “white guy” can speak another language?

Occasionally I have met people who just pretend not to notice that I’m speaking to them in Filipino. I really don’t know what they think of me but I get the feeling it’s not good.

I have also met a few elderly Filipinos who honestly didn’t realize that we were conversing in Filipino until someone asks them, “O Nay, ba’t n’yo tinatagalog siya? Naiintidihan ka niya?”

When I tell people about the baybayin the reactions vary. I suspect that deep down some of them feel embarrassed that they don’t about it because their reactions are the same as when they hear me speak – either they say, “Wow, I don’t even know that!” or they seem very sceptical, as though I’m playing a joke on them.

Christian Cabuay
Have you experienced any backlash from “scholars”? I noticed that you translated your name (Morrow) as MO-DO/RO? I’ve read that the RA character in “foreign” words should/would use LA.

Paul Morrow
Actually, I think I was the first to make that observation about the use of LA in Bisayan baybayin texts. (If I wasn’t, I’ll defer to the rightful owner of that honour.) At any rate, that was in Bisayan texts. Tagalog texts used the Da/Ra character more consistently, except where Tagalog pronunciation differed from the original Spanish as in jugar/sugal or rezar/dasal, etc.

Ilokano text (at least Fr. Lopez’s Doctrina) seemed to be completely random in the use of Da/Ra and La. (William H. Scott made that observation.)

Nobody’s ever told me I was wrong to write MO RO. I usually get comments about writing my first name as “PO”.

Christian Cabuay
As you mention on your site, many of the documents classifying the script as regional were based on individuals handwriting. Your fonts have pretty much become the Times New Roman equivalent of Baybayin. It’s a standard for which all Baybayin writers are measured by. I also run PinoyTattoos.com and I’ve seen dozens of tattoos with your Baybayin Stylized font.

Paul Morrow
Yes, that is flattering but it is also a bit disconcerting because I know that many people are using my fonts without understanding the history behind them (or lack of history behind the Tagalog Stylized.) They think that my fonts are examples of how their ancestors wrote, when in fact they are actually replicas of typefaces that were made for Spanish printing presses. Filipinos back then could read and understand those fonts but their own handwriting was quite different.

As for the tattoos, that is also very flattering, to see my design on somebody’s skin but I completely understand the view of those tattoo artists who disapprove of using a font for a tattoo. After all, if I were to put something on my body for the rest of my life, I would want something unique and artistic. Besides, I have seen so many photos on the web of tattoos with my Stylized font that were spelled completely wrong. Just gibberish. It’s funny but it’s sad at the same time.

Christian Cabuay
Besides the website, how else do you use or promote Baybayin?

Paul Morrow
I also write articles for a community newspaper called the Pilipino Express, which my friends and I own in Winnipeg, Canada. I’ve done a few articles on the baybayin that have never been published online.

Every year in August there is a city-wide festival in Winnipeg called Folklorama. For two weeks about 40 different cultural groups put on shows with lots of food and music from their respective homelands. For the past three years we at the Pilipino Express have organized the cultural display at one of the Filipino pavilions. I sit among the wood carvings, clothing and other artifacts and I write out people’s names in baybayin on an information sheet that explains how to write the script and gives a brief history of it. It’s not very artistic, I just use a sharpie marker. With the bus loads of tourist, I often do about 200 transcriptions in one evening.

Christian Cabuay
Do you get a lot of inquiries from people asking for translations?

Paul Morrow
I get requests almost every day. I don’t mind doing it if the person seems honestly willing to learn. I like to share the knowledge. But there are some who think I’m just a machine. No please or thank you and no effort to try it for themselves. They just tell me they want something translated, often a long English sentence or a unique name with some crazy spelling that only their mother knows how to pronounce and they don’t care about the details. They just want to see it “translated” into the baybayin “language.” Usually it’s for a tattoo.

Christian Cabuay
What is your opinion of people stuck on the term Alibata? There’s this thought that Baybayin was the original script and when the Spanish kudlit was introduced, it became Alibata.

Paul Morrow
Well, I wouldn’t want to generalize about the people. Some might not know the story behind the terms or they just like the sound of “Alibata”. The Baybayin and the Alibata are the same thing regardless of the Spanish kudlit. As you probably know already, the term Alibata was invented about 400 years after Fr. Lopez added the Spanish kudlit to the baybayin.

I don’t like the term Alibata for three reasons. The first reason is because it is not historical. The man who invented the term, Paul Versoza, claimed he coined it in 1914. By itself that is not such a bad thing. There’s nothing wrong with using a new word for an old alphabet. But Versoza’s reasoning makes no sense. Why name the ancient Filipino script after the first three letters of the Arabic script? There’s no connection between the two. I think Versoza was just being pedantic. My third reason for rejecting the term Alibata is that it smacks of the old colonial mentality. I have no proof of this but I suspect Versoza liked the term because it sounded more like “alfabeto” and “alphabet.” Perhaps he thought it was more dignified than “Baybayin.”

On the other hand, baybayin is a Tagalog word; perhaps he wanted to avoid “Tagalog Imperialism” and so he invented a word that was acceptable to everybody. I think every language group should have their own word for the script.

I should mention that baybayin has a long history as a word, meaning to trace or spell out. It is most likely pre-colonial. But I have not yet determined when it was first used as the name for the ancient script. As far as I can tell, it is not much older than Alibata. All really old accounts just called the script Tagalog writing or Native writing.

Christian Cabuay
Do you actually have those old books books you quoted? If so, where did you get them? What was your research process?

Paul Morrow
I have most of them in one form or another. I photocopied some of them from university libraries. Others are now available online in digital scans (Check the University of Michigan web site). Project Gutenberg and Google Books have books on line from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Occasionally people just send me photocopies or scans of pages from hard-to-find books. The Doctrina Christiana can be bought on line very cheaply. As I said earlier, when I started out I only had school text books, which were next to useless but they did lead me to better sources. In some instances I have quoted a quote. The links on my web site show where I took the quote and where it came from originally.

Christian Cabuay
I look at the script in 3 ways…as a cultural artifact…a writing system….an art form. Being a non-Filipino, how do you approach it?

Paul Morrow
I see it as a cultural artifact and I leave it to the heirs of the legacy, the Filipinos, to develop it as they see fit, as a writing system, an art form or both.

Christian Cabuay
I’ve come across people who are hardcore about keeping the “traditional” way of writing and scoff of any modifications as colonial. What are your thoughts on this?

Paul Morrow
I’m mainly interested in the historical aspect, so I prefer the traditional method. To me, it’s just more elegant and it is the way Filipinos preferred to write even after the Lopez modification was introduced. But today it is harder for us to read. I can understand why people today who were raised on the Roman alphabet would like the modified baybayin. What bothers me are the few who invent complicated new modifications and then try to pass it off as “the ancient baybayin.” It’s almost like they are ashamed of the original.

Christian Cabuay
Have you ever been to the Philippines? If so, what do you most remember?

Paul Morrow I went to the Philippines in 1988 and stayed there for five months. I’m sure a lot has changed since then. What I remember most was probably the chaos of the traffic and the mañana attitude and being called Joe or Amerikano everywhere I went. (Yes, I am an uptight white guy.) But for every negative I can think of several positives – the stunning shades of blue water at Hundred Islands in Pangasinan and the brilliant green vegetation of Pagsanjan. I know I must sound like a travelogue but the hospitality of the people was downright humbling. I’ll go back there someday and will appreciate it all more.

Visit Paul Morrow’s website