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Monday, August 15, 2005
Cuizon: Nice, di ba?
By Erma Cuizon
Bird by Bird
ONCE after an hour’s drive in a summer trip to northern Cebu, I sat up at the back seat of the car, stretched a bit and announced, “Hay, sakit ang akong back!”
Someone in the car mimicked me, “Akong back!”
Since then, I’ve been paying more than usual attention to our day-to-day language.
My former boss at the USIS, Karl Nelson, once commented about how we (as a people) cannot speak straight, honest-to-goodness Cebuano but refuses (or are insecure) about talking in straight English.
Even taxi drivers aren’t very much aware of the way English has crept into their culture. “Anha ta sa karaang bridge mo-agi, ma’am?”
“Straight lang ta, dong, unya mag-right ig-abut nato sa highway.” I told him further that I was getting late.
“Sori kaayo, maam! Trapic man gud.”
You talk to the young generation and you know you won’t be understood if you use the good old pure Cebuano. Or you yourself never got into the habit of it, anyway. You’d say, “Nag-double park siya.”
I asked our housemaid if she wrote to her parents often. And she said, “Kung na-ay time, ma’am.”
I overheard a couple of young guys by the roadside engage in an upbeat conversation, they were almost shouting. “Agi-agi siya, unyâ gi-blocking-ngan, wa siya’y bout, bay.”
A mixed language is the language that gets into your consciousness without your watching out—from your school and your required (or voluntary) reading.
And it occurs anywhere in the world as humans connect and reach out to each other, interchanging values and beliefs without knowing it.
Englog (Tagalog and English) isn’t really about “broken” English. This is English “infused” with Tagalog words called Konyo English.
I suppose that the other Englog form is Taglish, Tagalog mixed with English.
Konyo English came down to us as a language pattern we got from the Spaniards. The Konyo English has some kind of class and gentleness, as against the rougher Taglish which cab drivers use in the street. Konyo English is the colegiala English, so to say, from where came the “make + Tagalog verb” sentence construction.
You’ve heard a Tagalog girl in the movies coo, “Let’s make tusok the fishballs.” Or “Make cuento to me what happened.” Or “I’m so init na; make paypay to me naman o.”
And we’re not alone in this situation. There’s such a thing as Finglish (Finnish), or Konglish (Korean), Manglish (Malay), Thailish (Thai), Chinglish (China), and so on.
But what I’m thinking of is Cebuano infused with English words, which are now part of the Visayan lifestyle. Shall we call the language “Vislish”?
And it’s amazing how a foreign language can grow in you, almost surreptitiously, with you getting acculturized without looking.
(bird_song2002@yahoo.com)
(August 15, 2005 issue)
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