AMA-LIMWC Educational Leadership and Innovation

Hooked on Language is a memoir about how identity is shaped through the three languages of nature, culture and ancestry. In Hooked on Language, writer shares his experiences growing up on Camiguin Island where he learned about the ocean and its creatures as his first classroom where his father taught him patiently about fishing silently and humbly and listening to the nature. His first catch of a Takitok for instance became a symbolic event for him as he delved deeper into a world of listening and belonging.
Later on, the sea of Camiguin taught him the various species of fish and their respective shapes and sizes. His father taught him their names, their stories, their virtues, and their culture. He realized then that the word is connected to the land and the blood of my people. He was given my first dictionary—a practical book of the word of man and of his resources for livelihood, for observation, and for intimacy with nature.
His first true language was the Manobo tongue of his mother. It is a language that respects nature, culture and custom, values and ancestral wisdom. It is not just words to be spoken but a language to be lived.
Throughout the memoir the author concurring with his parents’ fears for the fragibility of indigenous languages and the urgent need to preserve them, the author gives a heart-felt personal tribute and call to action to all the languages which are part of people’s heritage today and which are in danger of dying and taking with them a whole universe of memories, identities and pieces of knowledge which will never come back again.
Hooked on Language is a memoir about belonging to a culture and a journey of listening, speaking and carrying on the heritage of a people and a culture of a place between the sea and the fish that his father taught him to catch and the language of his mother.