Archipelagic

Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea franchise is very stimulating. As a Filipino, I am from an archipelagic country, and I can relate to the islander culture and supposedly brown people of magical Earthsea. Publishers market this franchise as sci-fi, but it seems also fantasy—maybe "science fantasy" as some call it.

The Philippines is like a blend of Hawaii and Mexico. It was unfortunate that English replaced Spanish as an auxiliary archipelagic language after the decisive Spanish-American War of 1898. I sometimes nickname the Philippines as "Blue Hawaii." In any case, Tagalog seems to be strengthening in the islands, as the common person prefers to watch television in Tagalog rather than English. When I lived there in the 1970s, foreign shows were in English, but local shows in Tagalog. In recent time, American shows, Japanese anime, Korean dramas, etc. become dubbed in Tagalog. With the indigenous language, the Philippines is a highly aural-oral culture, emphasizing television, movies, videos, radio, chit-chat, etc. in lieu of much literature.

Of Ursula K. Le Guin's writings, I favour Always Coming Home, in which people live like Native Indians in Northern California in the far future, and her Earthsea series, a magical archipelagic world, where there are brown people. Publishers market her stories as sci-fi.

In the beginning of the twentieth century, the Philippine elite started switching from Spanish to English as the archipelagic elitist language, especially in written form, as a consequence of the Spanish-American War in 1898. Meanwhile, indigenous languages have continued to be the aural-oral mainstay, with Spanish loanwords being quite common. In 1937, administration chose Tagalog as the basis of the national language. As time passed, code-switching between English and indigenous languages became more prevalent. As a result, the Philippines is a linguistic hodgepodge. English is like an effervescent pink drink, and Tagalog is a grey shark in the seas. Spanish still rings nostalgically of bygone majestic good ol' days for many Filipinos. Tagalog is still not as fully "intellectualized" as its cousin Indonesian, which Indonesians use in university-level education and has extensive literature.

Born in the time of The Beatles, my generation in the Philippines was the product of more nationalism and less Americanization than what my parents experienced, born during the Swing and Big Band music era. It was in 1937 that the Philippine government adopted Tagalog, an Austronesian language, as the basis of the national language. Filipinos born during the time of "King of Pop" Michael Jackson had much more Tagalog indoctrination, and television shows, anime, and cinema became more Tagalog. Later Filipinos born during the reign of Lady Gaga became more exposed to the Internet, where English was ubiquitous. With floodgates open, the archipelagic nation once again became inundated with the colonial language. It still seemed though that the reading habit was not for the majority because most books there were in English, which the elite gobbled up. The Philippines was a country of about 200 native Austronesian languages, whose ancient origin was Taiwan. What school children learned was Tagalog (alias Filipino) and English, but Taglish, the patois of code-switching between the two languages, was the de facto oral-aural lingua franca in the islands. English was the main written language.

There is such a thing as "Filipino English." Most Filipinos cannot pronounce English the way Americans do. So, when they speak English, they speak with a Filipino accent. There are also special local words that creep into it. Such includes food words like "hopia" and "pancit." But most of the time, the archipelagic lingua franca is really Taglish, the patois of code-switching between Tagalog and English. Filipinos reserve speaking pure English when Anglophone foreigners are present.

I opine that there is more than just a tenuous link between Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea stories and the Philippines as an archipelagic realm. Le Guin writes about some brownish people in her tales in the vastness of magical islands.

France is archipelagic.

Indonesia is the world's largest archipelagic state.