The New Dentists

Cholo Mercado

I suppose it’s normal for anyone who loves books as much as I do to feel animosity for anything that exhibits bad grammar or, for that matter, just general unattractive misuse of the English language. I know I did. I remember getting into fights with my friends just because I pointed out their grammatical mistakes a bit too harshly. I used to do it with an intention to condescend, as if saying bad English is a symptom of a greater intellectual malaise. It felt good too. I was like a genius pointing out their excess of commas and sentence splicing, something of a redeeming factor when one considered my general mediocrity. My friends hated me for it, and, to an extent, I hated that they hated me for it—but it made me feel good, it made me feel superior; that is something we all want, and I was entertaining the delusion that I had it. 

I ceased to be a child, however, and eventually—messily—I grew up. Meeting different people and going through different experiences taught me that human beings have more than just linguistic and intellectual dimensions, and these two do not even necessarily  correspond to one another. I’ve met people who cannot speak proper English admittedly, but know a vast number of things to make up for it. I’ve had brilliant professors in college who stumble in their grammar so much that I can count the errors—and a couple who stumbled so much more that I would frequently lose track. I’ve met people who can write poetry in Filipino like you wouldn’t believe, but have trouble making their subjects and verbs agree. 

I’ve learned that it is a fact: one cannot and must not define a person by the way the person uses language. And I say this in direct response to the sudden trend of calling those who do not—perhaps cannot—use proper English “jejemon.” Stereotyping—en masse, no less—is much more unattractive than terrible grammar, as it doesn’t only speak about a person’s intellect but also of the person’s values. Perhaps you can call me naïve; perhaps you can say I have too much faith in the individual, but I sincerely believe it is much more important to learn kindness and understanding than it is to learn grammar, and even spelling. 

To forcibly fit people—complex individuals such as you and I—into this box that connotes complete, helpless idiocy just because they do not speak the way you do is terrible; and frankly it is a bit difficult for me to understand why I have to say this at all. It is either people are indifferent to doing terrible things now, or people do not think casual stereotyping is terrible at all. Perhaps they think it’s only a joke, a witty observation of our culture, and so no one is actually being hurt. 

I was going to write an explanation of the morality of reducing people to stereotypes, but I’ve decided it would be an insult. We all know that it is wrong; that it does cultivate hate and division and conflict. But we all know that these things do not stop, though there are efforts to stop them. People will always seek the power that comes with being superior, or, at least, the illusion thereof. It’s a sad state of affairs, to be honest—and from the look of things, it will most likely never change.

The ironic thing here, I think, is that, in the end, who is the better person? In their attempts to mark themselves as superior because of their intellect, of their grasp of the English language, do they really come off as superior? It appears that, like what I thought of myself then, their mastery of language is actually scant compensation for the generally distasteful package, which includes intolerance and once in a while even complete delusion: Sometimes, they themselves cannot even use the language properly. This, in my opinion, only makes the tragedy worse. 

Cholo is a literature student at DLSU-M. He enjoys reading, writing, and video games, and is the editor-in-chief of The New Dentists.