​There is one thing that never fails to make my grandmother in the Philippines smile: When her grandchildren try to speak to her in Yogad. Her favorite is when my cousin sings to her a Yogad song, even when he doesn’t know the meaning of the words. All her grandchildren, from the eldest to the youngest, now live in Canada. At most, the older ones will only learn broken Yogad, putting together the pieces we hear from our parents. The younger ones will most likely never learn the language, and what it means to be Yogad. We have no books to read to them, no songs to play, and no stories to tell. This is where my burden begins.
 
            Yogad is a language distinctly spoken by the Yogad tribe in the town of Echague, Isabela. With only a handful of published literature, I am determined to help transition the language actively in the spheres of reading and writing. I distinctly remember learning about revitalization projects in class on indigenous languages by creating story books and flashcards for children. I remember wanting to do the exact same thing for Yogad. While sharing this to my family, my uncle happened to film me and my cousin trying to speak the language. After posting it on social media, the response from the online community was overwhelming. I knew then and there that I had found my life’s work: To preserve our heritage language through artifacts. What is even more astounding is that I was given a scholarship to do so first under the MA Applied Linguistics and Discourse Studies program and now at the PhD level at Carleton University here in Ottawa, Canada, under the supervision of two of the best experts in the field, Dr. Marie-Odile Junker and Dr. Jaffer Sheyholislami.
 
            In this project, I intend to involve Yogad families and communities in creating Yogad materials so that we can transmit the language to the next generation of Yogad migrant children, first through the printed form and eventually to other modes. I refuse to let the matter go, because something can be done. I willingly take on my share of the burden, and when it gets too hard, there is one thing that never fails to keep me going: I intend to keep my grandmother smiling.

HOW CAN YOU HELP?

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Notes on the Yogad Kan video

1. Although Yogad is more locally known as a dialect, it is referred to in the video as a language, as dialects are generally considered to be languages.
2. While it is true that Yogad is not endangered in the sense that there is still a significant number of people speaking it in Echague, language death is defined in this project within the context of migration; in other words, when someone migrates, one's heritage language inevitably becomes endangered and the dominant language takes over.
3. To clarify, the Yogads are culturally rich in their oral literature, but much work remains to be done in documenting accessible materials such as story books, audio CDs, textbooks and other teaching materials, and films, among others, in Yogad.