André Hiroki

Airports are funny places – they remind you you’re in between worlds. Maybe it’s the waiting, or the liminal space of not quite being here nor there. As I sit in a quiet corner of SFO, now back in the U.S., I’m full of thoughts that only make sense now, at the end. 

Firstly, I chose countries where English is spoken (and is becoming increasingly dominant) as part of my project, but it’s been amazing to actually hear and experience these different Englishes. In Singapore, the Philippines, and New Zealand especially, people talk openly about their regional Englishes and what they mean for identity, but of course they exist everywhere. In South Africa, English can dominate even in the presence of so many other official languages. In Wales, English sits uneasily alongside Welsh, with tension and history layered into every word choice. As someone who studies linguistics in the U.S., I have constantly been thinking about how even American Englishes vary across regions and communities. To speak English is never just to “speak English” – it’s to take part in a much larger story. 

Another thing that kept surfacing: what it means to be “indigenous” shifts dramatically depending on where you are. The Māori discovered and settled Aotearoa, the first to inhabit it and the first to name it. In the Philippines, you have over 175 languages, but the “national” language is built from just one – so whose voices are centered, and whose are left out? In Singapore, who really is “indigenous,” and who is instead a large, longstanding community that still deserves recognition and representation? In South Africa, “indigenous” groups aren’t confined to today’s state borders – the borders themselves were drawn by colonial powers, cutting across people’s histories. Wales, which we often lump in as part of colonial Britain, was actually itself one of the first places to be colonized by England. Being white didn’t protect Welsh people from having their language, culture, and land suppressed. Seeing these differences up close made me realize how slippery the word “indigenous” really is – it always depends on context, and it’s always entangled with power. 

The farther I went around the world, the more connections arose. Every country I visited, another one I’d been to would resurface, whether in its history or in its present. Colonial powers, of course, overlapped, but the resonances weren’t just historical. I overheard a Singaporean family at Mount Eden in New Zealand. I saw pins at the Auckland Museum calling for the end of apartheid and freedom for Nelson Mandela. I rewatched a haka performed by Māori government officials, then noticed comments from Zulu viewers in South Africa saying they stood with the Māori and their fight. Resistance movements inspiring each other across continents – it kept showing up. Even sports held unexpected connections: rugby dominates in both Wales and New Zealand. Wars stitched timelines together: the world wars pulled these countries into the same moments, forcing them onto parallel tracks that I kept stumbling upon across my journey. Everything was tangled, layered – which seems so obvious to say, but I think it’s easy to forget when we stay in one place for too long. I didn’t expect to visit so many prison cells where freedom fighters were once held, but once I did, it felt almost inevitable. Mandela, Gandhi, Rizal. Their physical bodies were confined, but their ideas weren’t. Walking through those spaces, I felt the heaviness of visions that refused to stay locked away. Different names, different struggles, but in the end, the same cause: freedom, dignity, and representation. 

This grant required me to choose a globally applicable topic. But one of my biggest takeaways is: how can something not be global? Everything we do, just by existing on this earth, connects outward. Language, resistance, identity – they can’t be studied in isolation because they never were isolated to begin with. We’re all just people, on this planet, figuring it out as we go. 

With that, I will soon board the tenth and final flight of this trip. 10 weeks, 5 countries, 2,776 photographs, countless conversations…and somehow it all feels like just the beginning.

Thank you to everyone who has been a part of this experience, and to all those who have been following along through this blog! 

Grateful to you,

Maya

Hello, all!

I left you on a cliffhanger last time…in the end, I never did make it to Taumata Hill. I realized that in being such a long trip, I would need at least a day and a half to make it there and back, and in the midst of wrapping up my time in Aotearoa New Zealand, I couldn’t make it happen. Maybe some journeys are better left as punchlines. 

I’ll include a photograph (not mine, sadly) of the sign that displays the hill’s name, so that we may still appreciate it: 

However, staying in Auckland these last two days made space for an exciting opportunity: a last-minute interview! Last night, I received an email response from a linguist and te reo professor in the University of Auckland’s Māori Studies department, and despite it being my last day, I was able to meet her this afternoon on the UOA campus. 

She described Māori Studies, and te reo Māori acquisition in general, as a field that is both flourishing and under pressure. Students come in with wildly different levels of te reo – from beginners to fluent speakers – and by the second year, most who remain in the program are Māori themselves (as opposed to first year, where enrolled student backgrounds are much more diverse), many preparing to become teachers. She explained that Māori medium education has now reached a third generation of children, producing bilingual graduates who go on to higher education and better-paying jobs, even as waitlists for these programs remain long and questions of access linger. She also emphasized how much te reo permeates everyday New Zealand English: loanwords, vocabulary, even subtle grammar shifts that many New Zealanders don’t even realize they’ve absorbed. 

At the same time, she acknowledged the tensions. Kapa haka and other cultural practices can set a very high bar for what it means to be Māori, and older generations still carry memories of open discrimination – like her own mother enduring being spat on and called “dirty Māori” on her way to school as a child. Yet today, shame has largely given way to pride – she says that very few, if any, are ashamed of being Māori anymore, even if confidence in the language itself varies. She also spoke about institutional challenges: government cuts to humanities and linguistics have reduced her department dramatically, despite Māori being one of the most studied small languages in the world, led largely by Māori scholars themselves. Still, she was firm in her outlook: te reo belongs to everyone in Aotearoa, and the widespread desire to learn it is part of what makes this country what it is.

As I mentioned before, I’ve actually seen fairly limited te reo Māori signage in Auckland, and the few  instances where it does appear tend to have inconsistencies – for example, bus stops are almost always announced in both English and te reo Māori, but the order flips depending on the bus line. Simultaneously, plenty of other languages – like Mandarin, Arabic, and Korean – hold roles in the landscape, especially in the restaurant scene, which reflects Auckland’s incredible diversity. Businesses vary too: Bank of New Zealand, for example, has taken a more proactive role, not just with bilingual signage but even in their banking app, which can be set to English, te reo, or a special learner mode that blends the two by providing definitions and prompts for beginners.

Yesterday evening, being my second-to-last, I decided to make the short trek up Mount Eden, the highest volcano in Auckland. The city of Auckland is actually situated on a volcanic field, home to 53 volcanic centers. This one, also known as Maungawhau, was historically an elaborate Māori fortified village settlement that was home to thousands. Its crater is the most sacred place, and is not to be entered – the city council has created an elevated walkway that traces the rim of the crater, complete with viewing platforms and sitting areas where visitors can enjoy the gorgeous, panoramic views of the city. 

I stayed there to watch the sun go down. From this height, I could pick out a few places that now held memories for me: the stadium where I watched a rugby match on one of my very first days; the Sky Tower, a sharp needle in Auckland’s silhouette that often guided me home, my hostel just a block away; and, barely visible in the distance, Waiheke Island, where I’d taken the ferry one bright morning. With every minute, the colors burned brighter. 

My bags are now packed…for the final time on this trip, which is quite bittersweet. I head to the airport at around noon tomorrow, flying to San Francisco first before making my way – all around and back again – to Chicago. Stay tuned for a final post tomorrow with some closing thoughts and reflections on the last two and a half months. Thank you all so much for following along!

Kia ora! 

The above greeting, now a cornerstone of New Zealand English, is perhaps the most common te reo Māori phrase I’ve encountered in my week and a half in Auckland. Wishing good health, it appears everywhere – on storefronts, webpages, and in the opening lines of emails. Yet, as I mentioned in my last post, te reo Māori beyond this popular greeting doesn’t seem as visible in the linguistic landscape as I had expected. One interviewee I spoke with on Thursday, who works for the government, suggested this might be because most offices of language-focused organizations are located in Wellington, the capital city on the southern tip of the North Island. 

My interlocutor was a Principal Language Planning Advisor for Te Taura Whiri i Te Reo Māori, or the Māori Language Commission. Interestingly, she is neither Māori nor from New Zealand, but originally from Kyrgyzstan. She isn’t fluent in te reo Māori (though she’s learning), and approaches her work from a linguistic rather than a language-specific perspective. Our conversation felt reminiscent of the Welsh Language Commissioner in Cardiff (which feels like ages ago now). Both institutions wrestle with the same question: how effective is it to legally mandate language use, especially in written form? My interlocutor admitted she once believed that “forcing” language use was the right path, but she has since reconsidered. In her experience, imposition can lead to resistance – it seems that when people feel they have the choice to adopt something, they’re more inclined to do so. 

This makes sense, especially since Te Taura Whiri’s strategy was actually inspired by Wales. Cymraeg 2050 – the campaign for a million Welsh speakers by 2050 – served as the blueprint for Te Taura Whiri’s goal of one million te reo Māori speakers by 2040. Yet, as my interlocutor noted (and I’ve come to agree after learning about four other countries’ situations), numbers don’t capture the heart of language revitalization. Revitalization isn’t just about communication, but about identity, culture, and history. Preserving a language means preserving all of those things. But, in practice, metrics like these are what unlock funding: quantifiable goals are easier to sell than broad appeals to heritage. 

Currently, just over 4% of Aotearoa New Zealand’s population speaks te reo Māori, which comes out to about 200,000 people. This data comes from an annual census, which since the late 1990s has included a question along the lines of: “Can you have a conversation about lots of everyday things?,” in regards to one’s fluency in te reo. It’s worth pausing on that phrasing, since “conversation” and “everyday things” could mean very different things to different respondents. Among Māori themselves, only about one in five speaks te reo. The proportion has been declining, though this is largely because the Māori population has been growing. Still, the effect is clear: it’s difficult to form speech communities. A speaker may know the language but have no one else to converse with, which in turn diminishes use. My interviewee also explained that while there is momentum behind revitalization, progress is slowed by the lack of a unified strategy. Te Taura Whiri oversees the nationwide approach, but another organization – Te Mātāwai – leads efforts within Māori communities themselves. Although the two coordinate, they don’t share governance, which often means differing strategies. 

Several of my planned contacts haven’t been available – whether because of full calendars or being out of town – and while this is definitely not ideal for my original plan, it’s pushed me to lean more into community-based research outside of formal interviews. A local library staff member shared with me that her library hosts weekly hour-long practice sessions for te reo Māori conversation. It seemed like a perfect way to hear directly from learners about their motivations for and experiences with learning te reo, so I attended today’s session! 

A little before 2 p.m., I walked into the Grey Lynn Library, a small branch housed in an old church just a short bus ride from the city center. The space felt cozy, and to my delight I found a dedicated Māori book section – something I had been looking for but hadn’t found in another library downtown. In one corner, a rectangular table had been set up for the kapa kōrero (conversation group). The group ended up being myself and four older Pākehā (white New Zealanders) who, I soon learned, were regulars at these sessions. 

After introductions, they happily entertained my curiosity about their backgrounds, motivations, and language journeys. Their answers varied, but one theme united them: learning te reo felt like a way to connect with the land they call home, regardless of their ancestry. Some hoped to see te reo more widely spoken and normalized in the future. One participant did have Māori lineage but had grown up without close ties to his iwi (tribe/nation), and only began learning a few years ago. Most had started during the pandemic and had kept up their studies off and on since then. I also learned that one of the gentleman had actually studied at the University of Chicago!

The bulk of the hour was spent playing a game called Te Kēmu Kupu Māori (the Māori word game), which works a bit like Taboo or Charades: one person gives clues, others ask questions, and the group guesses the word. The entire game was conducted in te reo, with occasional English or requests for help. To my surprise, I followed along better than expected. Thanks to curiosity and exposure, I’ve already picked up some words, and listening closely let me piece together meaning. For example, I learned that a sentence beginning with “he ___?” meant “is it ___?,” that “āe” means yes and “kāo” means no, and that “ora,” familiar from kia ora, signaled something alive. When I heard “moana” (ocean), I realized they were talking about a fish. I was also reminded how much meaning comes through gesture and body language alone. 

The session was entirely member-led – no library staff were present – which made it a genuine snapshot of their shared energy and learning process. Despite being free and open to all, this group seems relatively unknown in the wider community. Meanwhile, formal classes are often booked out months in advance. My interviewee at Te Taura Whiri noted the paradox: while high demand shows success, it also creates barriers for Māori themselves who want to reclaim their language. It raises an important question – can revitalization efforts ever be “too successful” if they unintentionally limit access to the very people they aim to support? 

Ferry ride!

Waiheke Island

Between that interview and the library session, I’ve been dodging Auckland’s sporadic rain showers while exploring the city. Last Wednesday, some new friends and I took the ferry to Waiheke Island, the most populated and second-largest island in the Hauraki Gulf. We spent the day roaming its hills and vineyards, caught a spectacular sunset, and made it back to the dock just in time for the last ferry. This weekend, I visited two morning markets: the Britomart Saturday Market on the waterfront, and the Takapuna Beach Sunday Market to the north. Both had amazing food and a mix of stalls selling clothes, jewelry, and produce – often by the same vendors on consecutive days. I’ve also befriended the staff at a local café I frequent; one of them is Filipino, and we’ve chatted about Manila and my travels (the very first thing he brought up when I mentioned Manila was the traffic, which amused me). I stopped by on Saturday morning on my way to the market. 

Britomart Saturday Market

The rest of my days have been filled with grocery runs, laundry, park strolls, wandering shopping streets, and hostel life – sharing stories with fellow travelers, including one night when a group of Germans decided to make pancakes for everyone. Slowly but surely, it’s hitting me that I only have a few days left on this trip. I never did make it to the famously long Welsh town name – Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch – but New Zealand has its own rival. On the southern part of the North Island sits Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu, the world’s longest place name. Locals just call it Taumata Hill. I’ve been toying with making the six-hour journey there as a way to close this project – it feels like a fitting finale. The hill is remote and tricky to reach, though, so we’ll see if the plan makes it into these final days.

If I make it to Taumata Hill, you’ll definitely hear about it. Getting there might take almost as long as saying it.

Hello from my final stop of this wonderful summer – Auckland, New Zealand! Although it’s summer from the perspective of Chicago – my start and endpoint – it’s a wet winter here in New Zealand. I haven’t just been circling the globe neatly eastward; I’ve been zigzagging up and down! From sunny Wales to rainy South Africa, to stiflingly hot Singapore and the Philippines, and now to cold, damp New Zealand, I’ve hopped back and forth across the equator plenty of times over the last two months. Considering I packed for three different climates, I think I did pretty well fitting everything into one bag. 

I’ve been in Auckland for two full days now. After sleeping for almost a full 12 hours post-arrival Thursday night, I woke up on Friday ready to explore. I took advantage of the sunny day and walked through downtown to the Viaduct Harbour, a lively waterfront area, and found the New Zealand Maritime Museum – a beautiful space overlooking the water with replicas and artifacts spanning the region’s maritime history, from early Polynesian navigation to European arrival. From there, I wandered past the fish market and looped back through the Central Business District. Today, I started my day off with a grocery run, after which I joined some new hostel friends to go watch a rugby match! The match was held at Eden Park, New Zealand’s national stadium, and although we (obviously!) decided to root for Auckland, they were crushed by Taranaki in a staggering 50-8 loss. It was cold and rainy, but meat pies from the stadium concession stands kept us (somewhat) warm. 

Walking around, English dominates the cityscape, as expected. But given New Zealand’s reputation for institutionally supporting te reo Māori – the Māori language – I’ve been surprised at how little Māori signage I’ve actually encountered. 

Te reo Māori only became an official language in 1987, which is astonishing when you consider how central it is to this place. Long before European ships appeared on these shores, Polynesian voyagers navigated here using the stars, ocean currents, and bird patterns – skills so precise that they could intentionally sail thousands of kilometers across the Pacific. These early navigators reached Aotearoa (the Māori name for New Zealand) around the 13th century, making it the last major landmass on earth to be settled by humans. The people who became known as Māori built communities here, adapted to the colder climate compared to other Polynesian islands, and developed their own rich cultural, social, and political structures. Their relationship with the land and sea shaped everything from food systems to spirituality, and their oral traditions carried genealogies, histories, and knowledge across generations.

The language itself lived for centuries in voice alone, passed down through stories, songs, and prayer. It wasn’t written until English missionaries arrived in the 1800s, and the act of writing it down was already a step toward reshaping how it would exist in the world. The pivotal moment, though, came in 1840 with the Treaty of Waitangi. 

The Māori had initially welcomed the visits of Europeans as it was beneficial trade for them, but as settler numbers grew, so did land disputes and lawlessness. The Treaty of Waitangi was presented as a safeguard: Britain sought to establish legal authority over settlers while assuring Māori that their lands and rights would be protected. 

The treaty, as it happened, had two versions. The British Crown and Māori chiefs each signed a document, one in English and one in te reo Māori, but the two documents were not the same. The English version stated that Māori ceded all rights and the power of sovereignty to the Crown. The Māori version used the word kāwanatanga, which can be translated closer to “governance.” One treaty, two interpretations…and the consequences of that linguistic rift were devastating. What was sold as protection to many chiefs soon became a source of dispossession and conflict. 

Depiction of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi

As I read about this, it struck me how eerily it anticipates the questions at the heart of my project: translation is never neutral, and when power is involved, the meaning of a single word can alter the future of an entire people. By the end of the 19th century, the Māori population had been halved. European settlers, meanwhile, numbered in the hundreds of thousands. The imbalance was not just demographic, but linguistic, cultural, and political. The weight of it was visible everywhere I turned in the Maritime Museum, in the labels that struggled to hold two stories at once: the story of the colonizers, and the story of those whose land this was. 

Yet, the story doesn’t end there. Inspired in part by global civil rights movements (like the one in the US), Māori protests in the 20th century forced the government to reckon, at least partially, with its broken promises. The Waitangi Tribunal was established, a body whose purpose is to investigate claims of treaty breaches. Queen Elizabeth II even admitted publicly that the treaty (and therefore the protection of Māori rights) had been ignored. In 1987, te reo Māori was finally recognized as an official language. Progress, though fragile, felt possible…which is why what’s happening right now feels so alarming. 

New Zealand’s current government – one of the most right-leaning in decades – has dismantled the Māori Health Authority, scaled back the use of te reo in official communication, and, just this week, removed Māori words from children’s reading books. A hostel staff member mentioned the debate to me in passing, and then the headlines confirmed it: the Ministry of Education pulled At the Marae, a book for 5-year-olds, from its early reading series because it contained “too many” Māori words. Internal documents revealed the decision is part of a broader policy to exclude Māori vocabulary from any future books in the series altogether, on the grounds that it might “confuse” children. 

The debate has multiple sides, but in my opinion, there are issues here. Not only is New Zealand English already full of Māori loanwords, but te reo Māori was deliberately transcribed into a phonetic orthography designed by English missionaries. In other words, the spelling matches the sound – exactly the kind of straightforward system you’d want children to practice with when learning to connect written words to spoken ones. Around one in five people in Aotearoa identify as Māori. For them, seeing te reo in books, signs, and public life isn’t just decorative, but rather a recognition of their existence. My Maritime Museum guide greeted us in te reo Māori, and it set the tone for everything that followed. To strip those words from children’s books is to say, in effect, that the language does not belong in the mouths of the next generation.

So, as I walk through Auckland – between English billboards, glimpses of Māori words, and chants like the haka, performed on rugby fields and political stages alike – I keep coming back to the idea that languages are not just tools of communication, but ways of being in the world. 

I will, as always, have more to say the more days I spend here. Stay tuned!

A full week has gone by since my interview with the Baybayin artist, and the more I uncover Manila, the more I wish I had time to explore other parts of the Philippines. I’ve learned that this beautiful country is made up of over 7,000 islands, all of which together are home to around 180 languages. Given this incredible linguistic diversity, one would think there would be interest in studying languages and linguistics…but as a linguistics professor from the University of the Philippines shared in our interview on Friday, there doesn’t seem to be much interest in the subject. Before I dive into my reflections from that interview, below are some photos from my last week in Manila. 

A sari-sari store, or neighborhood convenience store

Stall at the Salcedo Market

In between interviews, I’ve been wandering through the Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Anthropology, navigating the lively streets of Binondo (the world’s oldest Chinatown, full of Mandarin signage thanks to the long-standing local Chinese community), and sampling street food like kwek-kwek (quail eggs in friend dough), turon, and colorful drinks in melon, calamansi, and avocado flavors. I even braved balut – a fertilized duck egg that is boiled and eaten with salt and vinegar. I’ve hopped in tuk tuks and Manila’s iconic jeepneys – brightly decorated, repurposed military jeeps left behind by the Americans that have now become a cultural icon of the Philippines. For 13 pesos per person (around $0.23), you can hop on and off anywhere along the route, signaling the driver to stop by hitting the roof and calling “para!” I was glad to have the company of other travelers for my first jeepney ride; there’s no way I would have been able to learn the unspoken rules otherwise!

Kwek-kwek vendor stall…

…and what I received!

Binondo Chinatown

The past week also brought new friends: a Spanish traveler I met at my hostel joined me for the Salcedo Saturday Market and a Sunday wandering Intramuros (meaning “within walls”), the historic walled city that houses Spanish colonial architecture. We went into centuries-old churches, Fort Santiago, the National Museum of Fine Arts, and caught the sunset at Rizal Park, which was packed with families and street performers. Earlier in the week, I went to a “lecture on tap” event – an academic talk held in a bar – hosted by the Digital Nomad Association of the Philippines. The speaker, a communications professor from De La Salle University (DLSU), was someone I’d already been in touch with, and the event led me to meet a woman my age who’s lived in the Philippines for 13 years after growing up in the US, China, and Hong Kong. A few days later, we met for lunch at a local Korean restaurant and then grabbed a coffee in Makati. 

Intramuros

On Wednesday afternoon, I interviewed a local police officer who, in his mid-thirties, somehow balances his work on the force with guiding tours of the city and studying pediatrics at DLSU. He grew up in Tondo, one of Manila’s poorest districts, where only a handful of his childhood friends “made it out.” He described the stark divide between public and private schools, the dangers of the Isla (a place even police avoid due to entrenched crime networks), and his fluency in English, Tagalog, and Bisaya. He offered his take on the Philippines’ colonial past: that Spanish is not widely spoken despite centuries of rule because of the cruelty of the Spanish era, while the Japanese occupation was remembered as even more brutal. Yet he insisted Filipinos harbor “no hard feelings” toward visitors from former colonizing countries, welcoming them without grudges. 

Balut

Turon (a sweet, dough-wrapped banana treat!)

Early Friday afternoon, I once again made my way from Makati to Quezon City, this time to the University of the Philippines Diliman campus. When I last visited this part of Manila to interview the Baybayin artist, I actually arrived – apologetically – about a half hour late. This time, now a seasoned Manila traffic veteran, I made sure to get going with plenty of time. Once I arrived (on time!), I met with a professor in the UP linguistics department – the only university linguistics department, I soon learned, in the entirety of the Philippines. While some other universities may offer programs in linguistics, there is no standalone department for the subject. The UP department is staffed by about sixteen full-time faculty, with roughly seventy graduate students and twice as many undergraduates. That is the entire academic infrastructure for a nation of over a hundred million people.

But numbers only tell part of the story. The more compelling reality emerged as we spoke about what the work of a linguist in the Philippines actually entails. Here, a linguist’s work cannot be devoted solely to language. In other countries, it’s possible to devote a career to a single subfield – phonology, syntax – without needing to justify why it matters beyond academic circles. But in the Philippines, he explained, if you are a linguist, you are by default an advocate and an activist. The work is not just research; it’s a responsibility. If you do not fight for endangered languages (of which there are about 35 in the Philippines), no one else will. I thought about how many linguists in the U.S., including students like me, have the privilege of seeing linguistic activism as optional rather than intrinsic to the field.

Government involvement in language revitalization, I learned, is uneven at best. The Philippines has two official languages: English and Filipino, the latter being a standardized form largely based on Tagalog and influenced by other regional languages. The Commission on the Filipino Language is tasked with promoting the country’s linguistic diversity, but internal disputes often derail progress. The Commission commonly seeks the expertise of linguists like my interlocutor, but meetings are sometimes postponed because members are at odds, and despite the Commission’s mandate, no trained linguists sit among its members. Instead, it is composed of regional representatives and various stakeholders – a structure my interviewee suggested could be more effective if informed by people with expertise spanning multiple language families and regions. Even the commission’s name, centered on “Filipino,” subtly narrows its focus, despite its aim to develop, preserve, and promote various Philippine languages. 

Against this backdrop, there are still deeply committed projects. My interviewee co-leads an ongoing project to create orthographies for the non-Tagalog languages of MIMAROPA, an administrative region whose acronym is a combination of its constituent provinces: Mindoro, Marinduque, Romblon, and Palawan. It’s a project initiated by the Indigenous Peoples Education Program of the MIMAROPA Division of the Department of Education, and it brings linguists into direct collaboration with community members to design spelling guides and written standards. Much like the Welsh Language Commissioner’s work in Wales, these experts operate in an advisory capacity – at the end of the day, it is up to the local governments to decide what they wish to actually implement. 

My interviewee described traveling to MIMAROPA with his team to work directly with community members on creating these orthographies. Much of that work involves sitting with elders, talking through words, and deciding how best to represent them in writing. For some, these conversations bring a sudden and painful awareness: that their language is literally dying. The way their parents spoke, the words their grandparents used in daily life, are no longer heard or seen anywhere, and their descendants – their grandchildren – use a different language entirely. They are the last speakers, and with them will go not just vocabulary but the culture and stories those words carry. It can be an emotional and painful process, my interlocutor explained, for the communities involved. Preserving a dying language is like protecting a family heirloom, except here, the family is an entire people, bound by a shared past and a story of survival against every attempt to erase them. The very fact that these words are still spoken, however faintly, is proof that people endured.

Two years ago, in a seminar on Brazilian film, I watched Xingu, a movie based on the story of three brothers whose journey into the Amazon gradually transforms into a mission to protect Indigenous lands in Brazil. One thread of the film mirrors the purpose behind my project: the portrayal of a language on the brink of extinction, spoken fluently by only two remaining people. With the help of a linguist, they begin to develop an orthography, documenting and carrying this language forward. Listening to this professor’s stories about the MIMAROPA project and about elders who realize they may be the last voices of their mother tongue, I recalled the story told in Xingu. What I had once seen as a moving subplot in a film is, for many here, an urgent reality. It’s the same fight – whether in the Amazon or on an island in the Philippines – to make sure that when the last fluent speaker is gone, the language doesn’t vanish with them. 

With that, my stay in Manila is coming to an end. I’m incredibly grateful for what I’ve learned in my time here, not just in relation to this project, but also about my own relationships to research, travel, and people. I have another 20-hour travel day tomorrow, flying first from Manila to Kuala Lumpur, and from there to Auckland. I’ve learned that wherever you think New Zealand is, it’s probably a little farther! 

Thank you to everyone who has been keeping up with this journey. I’ll be writing from my fifth and final country soon!

It’s a rainy afternoon here in Manila. I know it hasn’t been long since my last post, but yesterday’s interview with an artist who works with Baybayin left me with so many lasting impressions that I felt it deserved a post of its own. I hope this post leaves you with even a fraction of the awe and excitement yesterday’s conversation gave me.

First, some background information: Baybayin is an ancient, pre-colonial Filipino script that was once used to write Tagalog, which remains one of the most commonly spoken languages in the Philippines. Today, Tagalog is written with the same Latin alphabet I’m using to write this post, but its sounds were once carved into elegant sweeps of intersecting swirls and dots, using characters from the alphabet below: 

The ancient script faded from everyday use over centuries, but in recent years, there’s been a growing movement to bring it back. On Monday afternoon, I had the opportunity to speak with a visual artist whose work centers around Baybayin calligraphy. We met at a café in Quezon City, one of Metro Manila’s many puzzle pieces. His story begins at the University of the Philippines, where he studied design and fine arts before moving to Japan for a career opportunity. There, he worked under a Shodō artist, studying Japanese calligraphy for the better part of a year. He told me that what struck him most in Japan wasn’t the art form itself, but the way calligraphy was treated as an extension of cultural identity. He saw Japanese people of all ages practicing this centuries-old tradition, and realized he was investing more energy in understanding someone else’s culture than his own. So, he moved back to the Philippines to do the same with Baybayin. 

Learning Baybayin wasn’t hard, he said. The script maps pretty directly onto modern spoken Tagalog – it’s just another writing system. He didn’t take any formal classes; like most people who start learning Baybayin, he just Googled a chart (much like the one above). His art style is very specific: large-scale, one-of-a-kind acrylic paintings on canvas. He doesn’t work with prints or merchandise much because his interest is in Baybayin as fine art, although Baybayin can be seen on some storefronts, souvenirs, currency, and passports. He primarily uses chisel-tip acrylic markers (not brushes), since they’re the best for large-scale precision. Smaller, brush-style calligraphy still shows up in his paper-based work, but his current practice is very shaped by scale and form. 

There are two strands to his work: the art and the advocacy. The art is what sustains him, and what allows him to give talks and workshops about his art and journey for free. He’s especially drawn to the Filipino diaspora, because, as he put it, the diaspora is often more “hungry” for this sort of cultural anchor than Philippine-born Filipinos. When he visits Filipino communities abroad, especially in the U.S., he meets younger people who were raised by immigrant parents who intentionally distanced them from Tagalog. A lot of these kids were raised not to speak with an accent, or taught that sounding American was important. Now, as young adults, they’re trying to reconnect. He told me about a U.S. tour he did in 2022, where he visited universities, Filipino community centers, and even big companies like Google. Back in the Philippines, he’s collaborated with foreign embassies and is currently working with the Filipino embassy in Japan on an exhibit celebrating 70 years of diplomatic relations. 

As we talked, the conversation shifted toward the script itself – not just what Baybayin says, but how it looks. His interest in the form of writing started in childhood, when he loved the visual feel of orthography more than the meaning of the words. That fascination has matured into a kind of visual etymology – a theory about why the script’s symbols look the way they do. Scholars currently think the Baybayin script, with its curved and elegant form (which lends itself beautifully to calligraphy), likely descends from or was influenced by other Southeast Asian scripts like Kawi, once used across Java, Bali, and Sumatra. Both Kawi and Baybayin are abugidas, meaning that consonant-vowel pairs are written as a single unit. In contrast to English, where consonants and vowels are represented by separate letters, an abugida uses one character for a consonant and its inherent vowel. Diacritics – symbols added above, below, or around the character – are then used to change or remove that vowel sound (much like accent marks in French). If you look for it, you can often see a script’s origin in its shapes; ancient Greek, for example, is quite angular because it is much harder to etch a curved line into stone or clay than a straight one. According to my interlocutor, Baybayin seems to carry a similar intentionality.

He shared his theory on the character for “ka”, a prefix in Tagalog that denotes companionship or a shared experience of some sort (kapatid = sibling, kapitbahay = neighbor) – it’s relational. He pointed out that “ka” in Baybayin contains visual echoes of the character “ha”, which is the root of words like hangin (wind, nature spirit, ancestors) and hinga (breathing, living). In fact, “ka” looks like it’s composed of two “ha” symbols. His theory? That “ha” originally symbolized something like the breath of life, or spirit, and that “ka” – with its doubled “ha”-like elements – visually represents two spirits, or individuals, in relation. “Ka,” he says, puts the self in the context of a collective. It was fascinating to hear someone approach the script not from a strictly linguistic angle but from an aesthetic and artistic one. 

After all this, he paused for a second, shared that he knew of a nearby art supplies store, and said he would be right back. A few minutes later, he returned with a notebook and three markers. He showed me the difference between brush and chisel tips, explained the varying levels of control with each, and then began his calligraphy. He first illustrated a few common words he uses in his work (like tiwala, meaning “trust”). Then, he did my name – both my first and last. “Maya” was simple to write, easy to syllabify. But my surname – Kraidy, of Lebanese origin – took some effort. When I saw him struggling to transliterate it into Baybayin, I offered up its original Arabic pronunciation; the sound mapping seemed to click into place for him. It reminded me of what happens when I try to write names in Arabic that are from another language – the sounds don’t match perfectly, so you have to reshape things. The classic example referenced among friends and family in Qatar is the bilingual shop signs found on Papa John’s pizza storefronts, in which the Arabic reads something more like “Baba Zhoonz.”

The Arabic pronunciation of my surname actually “fit” better into Baybayin than the English. A lot of people, he mentioned, actually mistake his art for Arabic calligraphy, and it’s not hard to see why. Both Baybayin and Arabic share a flowing aesthetic, and both use small marks – dots, dashes, – to indicate vowel changes. It was truly amazing to watch his artistic process unfold in front of me, and to relate it to one of my own native languages.

“Kraidy” in Baybayin calligraphy

He ended up gifting me this notebook at the end of the interview. On our way out of the café, we discussed some “Filipinisms” – expressions and habits that make perfect sense here but might confuse outsiders. I’ll include some of those in a future blog post, to save you from scrolling forever. I didn’t expect to walk away with so many thoughts and a notebook full of original art when I ordered my iced milk tea, but here we are. Turns out iced milk tea pairs perfectly with ancestral scripts and spontaneous wisdom.