Rex Raymond Torrecampo, MMT
Web Site Owner
I have been in education for almost three decades, and I suppose one has no business being in it unless one is naturally curious. Among the things that eternally fascinates me is the Tagalog language or, more specifically, the variant used in the Province of Batangas.
I was born and raised in Batangas myself. However, my mother was a Batangueña from Nasugbu to the west of the Province; my father was an Ilonggo from a town called Tigbauan; and I grew up inside an Air Force Base.
The Tagalog I learned while I was growing up, therefore, was not necessarily the same as the one that was being used outside of the base. From the time I first went to school as a little boy up until the present, it has amused me no end whenever I hear a Tagalog word that I have not heard before.
This province, in fact, is a goldmine of supposedly Tagalog words one does not hear else where in the Tagalog provinces. Some, I suspect, are coined; others, on the other hand, are apparently inherited from the original Tagalog settlers of Luzon and have been preserved in pocket communities on the outskirts of the province which continue to resist the evolution of the language that has become inevitable elsewhere because of media and the passage of time.
There are even those who think Batangas Tagalog is a different language altogether. Albeit, far-fetched that may even be, it simply exemplifies the color and diversity of this province I have called home all my life.
This project, then, is the representation of my continuing fascination not only with the language spoken in my home province but with everthing else about it that I continue to regard as unique and colorful.
