Jose Villa Panganiban: JOSE VILLA PANGANIBAN
(12 June 1903 – 13 October 1972)

Lexicographer, professor

Professor

A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

, linguist, poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

, playwright

Playwright

A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...

, author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

, lyricist

Lyricist

A lyricist is a songwriter who specializes in lyrics. A singer who writes the lyrics to songs is a singer-lyricist. This differentiates from a singer-composer, who composes the song's melody.-Collaboration:...

. Jose Villa Panganiban was a prolific writer, with over 1,000 works to his name (textbook

Textbook

A textbook or coursebook is a manual of instruction in any branch of study. Textbooks are produced according to the demands of educational institutions...

s, dictionaries

Dictionary

A dictionary is a collection of words in one or more specific languages, often listed alphabetically, with usage information, definitions, etymologies, phonetics, pronunciations, and other information; or a book of words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known as a lexicon...

, books, poems, short stories, articles, plays, etc.). Among his textbooks were Pagsusuring Pambalarila; Panitikan ng Pilipinas; Comparative Semantics of Synonyms and Homonyms in the Philippine Language, and publications such as Diksyunaryong Pilipino-Ingles; Concise English-Pilipino Dictionary; Thought, Language, Feelings; Isip, Wika, Damdamin; a collection of poetry, Mga Butil na Perlas; 101 Tanong at Sagot na Pangwika; 90 Painless Lessons in Pilipino; Tanaga, Haiku, Pantun and many more. Thirty-two years of research produced two Thesaurus

Thesaurus

A thesaurus is a reference work that lists words grouped together according to similarity of meaning , in contrast to a dictionary, which contains definitions and pronunciations...

-Dictionaries: Diksyunaryo-Tesaurong Pilipino-Ingles and the Thesaurus-Dictionary English-Pilipino, considered to be his magnum opus

Magnum opus

Magnum opus , from the Latin meaning "great work", refers to the largest, and perhaps the best, greatest, most popular, or most renowned achievement of a writer, artist, or composer.-Related terms:Sometimes the term magnum opus is used to refer to simply "a great work" rather than "the...

.

In 1903, Geminiano Panganiban, a lawyer, pharmacist and a non-combatant lieutenant in the Philippine Revolutionary Army

Philippine Revolutionary Army

The Philippine Revolutionary Army was founded on March 22, 1897 in Cavite. General Artemio Ricarte was its first Captain General...

, had to surrender to the U.S. Expeditionary Forces in Northern Luzon because his wife, Policarpia Villa, from Caloocan Rizal

Rizal

Rizal is a province located in the CALABARZON , just 16 kilometers east of Manila. The province was named after the country's national hero, José Rizal. Rizal Governor Casimiro A. Ynares III on June 17, 2008 announced the transfer of the Capitol from Pasig. Its P 270-million capitol building,...

, a descendant of Emilio Jacinto

Emilio Jacinto

Emilio Jacinto y Dizon , was a Filipino revolutionary known as the Brains of the Katipunan.-Biography:Born in Trozo, Tondo, Manila. Jacinto was the son of Mariano Jacinto and Josefa Dizon...

 of the revolution, was pregnant. The couple was placed in a concentration camp in what is now Bautista, Pangasinan

Bautista, Pangasinan

Bautista is a 4th class municipality in the province of Pangasinan, Philippines. According to the 2000 census, it has a population of 27,066 people in 5,418 households.-Barangays:Bautista is politically subdivided into 18 barangays.-External links:*...

. There, Jose Villa Panganiban was born on June 12, 1903, five years to the day after Gen. Aguinaldo proclaimed Philippine independence from Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 in 1898. In 1911, JVP’s mother died and in 1917, father and son returned to Geminiano’s hometown in Tanauan, Batangas where the father remarried Fidela Collantes of the prominent Collantes clan.

JVP married his childhood sweetheart, Consuelo Torres from Tanauan, Batangas in 1930. “Cons”, as he fondly called her, co-authored two dictionaries with her husband. Their 42 years of marriage produced 5 children: Jose Jr., Rosamyrna (Carandang), Virgilio (+), Consuelina (Dominguez) and Ligaya (Gamboa).

Director of the Institute of National Language from the time of Pres. Magsaysay up to Pres. Marcos, Panganiban was also a professor at the University of Sto. Tomas, Manuel L. Quezon University

Manuel L. Quezon University

The Manuel L. Quezon University is a private university in Quiapo, Manila, Philippines. It is a member of the Colleges and Universities Sports Association . It offers academic programs at the pre-school, elementary, high school, tertiary, and graduate levels. It is named for Philippine president...

 & the Philippine Normal College. Among others, he founded the UST periodical, Varsitarian; was president of the Akademya ng Wikang Pilipino of the UNESCO

UNESCO

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...

; member of the Philippine-Japanese Trade Negotiations of 1960 and held many key positions in government and civic organizations. JVP received numerous National and International awards and citations for literature

Literature

Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

, journalism

Journalism

Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...

, etc., the earliest international award being the Richard Reid Award for Journalism while on post graduate scholarship at the Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana

South Bend, Indiana

The city of South Bend is the county seat of St. Joseph County, Indiana, United States, on the St. Joseph River near its southernmost bend, from which it derives its name. As of the 2010 Census, the city had a total of 101,168 residents; its Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 316,663...

 in 1940. Last year, A Jose Villa Panganiban –Varsitarian Professorial Chair was established by the UST.

In expressing his love for a national language, both orally and in writing, JVP became a controversial advocate of Pilipino as the “wikang pambansa”. His detractors – mostly elitist Filipinos – called him “Diktador ng Wika”, “High Priest of National Language”, “Emperador ng Wika”, “Czar ng Purismo” and “Frankenstein ng Purismo”. On the other hand, his adherents – mostly nationalistic Filipino educators and writers – called him “Bayani ng Wikang Pambansa”. JVP was neither a dictator nor a purist. He wrote in 1970:

“Multilingualism

Multilingualism

Multilingualism is the act of using, or promoting the use of, multiple languages, either by an individual speaker or by a community of speakers. Multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. Multilingualism is becoming a social phenomenon governed by the needs of...

 would be a solution to our linguistic problems. It would erase colonialism

Colonialism

Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...

.. it would eliminate regionalism

Regionalism

In politics, regionalism is a political ideology that focuses on the interests of a particular region or group of regions, whether traditional or formal...

.. it would create nationalism

Nationalism

Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...

. In the mutual contact of languages, foreign and local, the most useful form of national language will surface and will become the real PILIPINO.”

Unfortunately, it was not until months after his death that the 1973 Constitution established Pilipino as one of the two official languages of the Philippines

Philippines

The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...

 – the other being English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

. In 1987, the Constitution stipulated that the National Assembly was to take steps toward the formation of a genuine national language to be called Filipino, which will incorporate elements from the various Philippine languages