Sound and Its Importance with Multilingual Poetry

Sound is the foundation of language. For example, it is with sound that one can differentiate between languages that contain the same words. In the beginning of Mary Oliver’s “Sound” section in A Poetry Handbook, she states: “To make a poem, we must make sounds. Not random sounds, but chosen sounds.” In this way, sound is a marker of identity. 

Because of socio-politcal decisions, Tagalog was dubbed the national language of the Philippines in 1937 despite the archipelago housing more than 170 languages. For the multilingual poet, this is all but true navigating between languages. I was born to a Tagalog mother and a Cebuano father and live in a trilingual household with my parents, my paternal Lola, and my siblings. Even this beloved word, this name for someone so important, Lola, can be said in different ways to signal to the listener where you’re from. If Lola is said with a soft “low” followed by a gentle “la,” then most likely, you’re speaking with a Tagalog speaker. If Lola is said with more contrast, more sharply, and also with a different vowel sound to make for “lou” and ending with the staccato “la”, then you’re speaking with a Bisayan speaker. 

In this section, Oliver asks the reader further: “How much does it matter what kinds of sounds we make? How do we choose the sounds to make?” She goes on to describe how the right word choices can help steer the reader towards the feeling the poet intends for their reader to feel. Oliver asserts, in a way that feels like solidarity: “Sounds differ. Sounds matter.” The devices one can use with sound open all the more opportunity, such as for alliteration, assonance, and so on. Simultaneously, some of the lessons shared in this handbook are moot depending on the language. The semivowels “c” and “g” are characterized as soft, as opposed to Bisayan languages where, “k” and “g” are hard, with the word “gahi” often used as an example on how to pronounce one’s g’s. A line that Oliver uses as an example for having a “rattling” quality is the line: “My little horse must think it’s queer.” If translated to Cebuano, it loses that “rattling”. In its formal translation, it becomes wordy: ang akong gamay nga kabayo kinahanglan maghunahuna nga kini bading,” and even that isn’t a direct translation as “bading” is only very recently been reclaimed as a queer title of pride versus the slur it started as.

Oliver concludes this section stating: “Language is malleable.” The rules may be different language to language, but this should not cause distress in the multilingual poet. There is more to learn in regards to the devices and sounds of these additional languages. But, this provides freedom and structure to write in the way that multilingual people speak: a little bit of everything all at once.