{"content":[{"text":"INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES: \n Literary Freedom and the Opportunity to Exist","bbox":{"left":0.179411,"top":0.113842,"width":0.662018,"height":0.056850999999999985}},{"text":"Virgilio S. Almario \n Philippine PEN International Congress \n 4 October 2019 | 9:00 am","bbox":{"left":0.324956,"top":0.223165,"width":0.370927,"height":0.070322}},{"text":"We come together on a common subject in this Congress, which is language. \n With the conference theme, “Speaking in Tongues: Literary Freedom and the \n Indigenous Languages,” which is, of course, made to coincide with the United \n Nations’ declaration of 2019 as the “International Year of Indigenous Lan- \n guages,” we come face to face with the many issues that confront our common \n indigenous and intangible cultural heritage, more specifically, our indigenous \n language. \n At around this time last year, the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino \n (KWF), or the Commission of the National Language, which I head, was \n preparing for one of its international conferences. The three-day conference \n was on Language Endangerment, which was also in anticipation of this year’s \n UN Year of Indigenous Languages. It was held in October 2018 at the \n National Museum of the Philippines under the theme, “Sustaining Languages, \n Sustaining the World.” Language and linguistic scholars from several parts of \n the world took part in the conference. \n Paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln, all languages may have been created \n equal. But in our world today, a few languages are regarded as more superior \n than other languages. A few are dominant while more than 90% are dominated. \n That is why language endangerment or even language death is a reality \n facing many cultures and languages in the world today. As late as six years \n ago, the UNESCO reported that 43% of the world’s 6,000 languages were \n at the risk of extinction. The threat can come in many forms—from contact \n with other languages to language shift to dwindling speaker populations. As \n one axiom of language endangerment goes, “The language dies when the last \n speaker dies.","bbox":{"left":0.145833,"top":0.337301,"width":0.729948,"height":0.548996}},{"text":"1","bbox":{"left":0.933172,"top":0.941187,"width":0.010207999999999995,"height":0.016236000000000028}}],"images_bbox":[],"images_bbox_not_text_overlap":[]}