"Sa Aking Mga Kabatà" () is a poem about the love of one's native language written in Tagalog. It is widely attributed to the Filipino national hero José Rizal, who supposedly wrote it in 1868 at the age of eight. There is no enough evidence, however, to support authorship by Rizal and several historians now believe it to be a hoax.
Prominence
[[File:Sa Aking Mga Kabata (in Herminigildo Cruz, Kun Sino ang Kumatha ng Florante, 1906).jpg|thumb|The oldest known copy of the poem appears in Kun sino ang kumathâ ng̃ "Florante": kasaysayan sa buhay ni Francisco Baltazar at pag-uulat nang kanyang karunung̃a't kadakilaan (1906) by Hermenegildo Cruz. Note that the poem uses the Philippine Commonwealth-era Tagalog spelling with a 'K'. If Rizal had indeed written it, it should have used the phonetically equivalent Spanish 'C'.]] The poem was widely taught in Philippine schools to point out Rizal's precociousness and early development of his nationalistic ideals.
A passage of the poem often paraphrased as "Ang hindi marunong magmahal sa sariling wika, masahol pa sa hayop at malansang isda" (English: "He who knows not to love his own language, is worse than beasts and putrid fish") is widely quoted in order to justify pressuring Philippine citizens into using Tagalog; this ironically includes its majority of nonnative speakers. It is encountered most frequently during the Buwan ng Wika ('Language Month'), a commemoration of the establishment of the Filipino language as the national language of the Philippines.
Publication history
No manuscript for "Sa Aking Mga Kabatà" written in Rizal's handwriting exists. The poem was first published in 1906, a decade after his death, in a book authored by the poet Hermenegildo Cruz. Cruz claimed that he received the poem from another poet, Gabriel Beato Francisco, who in turn received it in 1884 from an alleged close friend of Rizal, Saturnino Raselis. José Rizal, however, never mentioned anyone by the name of Saturnino Raselis.Hermenegildo Cruz (1906) (in Tagalog) Kun Sino ang Kumathâ ng “Florante”, Kasaysayan Ng Búhay Ni Francisco Baltazar at Pag-uulat Nang Kanyang Karununga’t Kadakilaan. p. 188 Ang tulang itó ay utang ko sa kaibigan kong si G. Gabriel Beato Francisco. Ito’y ipinagkaloob sa kanyá ni G. Saturnino Raselis, táong tunay sa Lukbán, na naging gurò (maestro) sa Mahayhay ng taóng 1884. Ang ginoóng itó ay isang matalik na kaibigan ni Rizal na siyang nagkaloob sa kanyá (sa gurò) ng isang salin nitong tulâ, tandâ, dî umanó, ng kanilang pagka-katoto. The poem may have actually been written by Cruz or Francisco.
Pascual H. Poblete published a different account in his introduction to the 1909 translation Noli Me Tangere; Novelang Wicang Castila Na Tinagalog Ni Pascual H. Poblete (note old Tagalog spelling), he claims that the poem was well-known to Filipino poets during Rizal's childhood. This account was later repeated in Austin Coates' 1968 biography of Rizal, Rizal: Philippine Nationalist and Martyr, who further added that Juan Luna had a role in preserving the poem. This is not substantiated by any known evidence.
The earliest known poems of Rizal in the National Historical Institute’s collection, Poesías Por José Rizal, also date six years after the alleged writing date of "Sa Aking Mga Kabatà". His own account of the earliest awakening of his nationalistic views, identifies it as the year 1872 – the year of the executions of the priests Mariano Gómez, José Apolonio Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora. The poem is never mentioned by Rizal himself in all of his writings, despite its apparent significance in terms of his future ideals.
Authenticity
Historian Ambeth Ocampo, National Artist of the Philippines and writer Virgilio S. Almario and others have debunked Rizal's traditional authorship of the poem based on the following:
The poem uses the Tagalog word kalayaan (liberty/freedom). However, Rizal first encountered the word at least by 1882, when he was 21 years old – 13 years after he supposedly wrote the poem. Rizal first came across kalayaan (or as it was spelled during the Spanish period, kalayahan), through a Tagalog translation by Marcelo H. del Pilar of Rizal's own essay El Amor Patrio.