Tuesday, April 29, 2008 Tantingco: Why Kapampangans say ello and good-vye By Robby Tantingco
WHY, indeed, do they drop their “h” where it should be and put it where it shouldn’t be? And why do they have trouble pronouncing “v” and “f,” and is it really Bacolor, Bacolod or Baculud?
The answers may lie in the ancient Kapampangan writing system which had only 14 characters (compared to the 26 letters of the modern alphabet). We did not have the letters “f,” “v” and “h” and had only one character for “d” and “r,” one character for “e” and “i,” and one character for “o” and “u.”
Our ancestors wrote like the rest of the inhabitants of the islands did, vertically and upwards, because they carved their symbols at eye level on bamboos and tree trunks and then made their way up. They called their writing system “kulitan” (“baybayin” in other regions).
When the Spaniards first came to Luzon in 1571, they were amazed to see “every man, woman and child” already able to read and write in their native orthography. Yet the colonizers ignored this and imposed their own Roman alphabet, forcing our ancestors to learn a new set of letters and to start writing horizontally instead of vertically.
Thus, by making them unlearn the things they already knew, the colonizers made our already literate ancestors illiterate once more.
Documents dated 1600s and even 1700s show that some Kapampangans continued to use the prehistoric script long after the Spaniards had abolished it.
Their stubborn refusal to give it up was probably a sign of their enduring loyalty to their ancestors’ way of life, and a form of rebellion against their colonizers.
After the Spaniards left, we probably could have chosen to go back to kulitan, but then the Americans took over, and they retained and maintained the same Roman alphabet. And when they, too, left, we had another chance to go back to kulitan and yet we decided, on our own, to stick to the borrowed orthography that we had already grown accustomed to.
Today, we are the only people in this part of Asia that do not use the writing system that their ancestors had passed on to them.
Still, we see traces of kulitan if not in Kapampangan spelling at least in Kapampangan pronunciation.
For example, we pronounce “singsing” as “singseng” when we’re asking a question (“Atin ku pung singsing” becomes “Atin ka bang singseng?”), and we often say Pedru instead of Pedro. Those are vestiges from our ancient orthography which combined two sounds (“o” and “u” as well as “e” and “i”) into single characters (letters).
The exceptions would be the words that have already evolved from diphthongs, says scholar Michael Pangilinan, such as “lolo” (to dangle) which you’ll never catch a Kapampangan pronouncing as “lolu” because it is already evolved from the original “laulau” (similar to Tagalog “lawlaw”). But “lolo” (grandfather) is often pronounced by Kapampangans as “lolu” because it is only a borrowed word and not evolved from a diphthong.
When Kapampangans say “Masantul” to mean Masantol, they are not mispronouncing it. They are in fact using the original, correct pronunciation. It was the Spaniards who misspelled “santul” as “santol.”
Same thing with Bacolor: the original name was Bakulud (Kapampangan for “elevated land”); the Spaniards misspelled it as Bacolod. And because “d” and “r” are interchangeable in the ancient orthography, Bacolod became Bacolor. (Future research might unearth a Kapampangan connection with Negros Province, whose capital is also named Bacolod.)
I have a friend nicknamed Dia, which is short for Maria. How did Maria become Dia? Again, it’s a remnant from our ancient writing system, which had only one letter for the sounds “d” and “r.” Benavente gave the rules of usage: “When it is at the beginning of the word, it is always ‘d;’ when it is at the end, its pronunciation is so subtle that at times it sounds like ‘d’ and at other times ‘r,’ but more often, it sounds ‘d’.”
Benavente continued, “When it is at the middle of a word, it is always ‘d’ if preceded or followed by a consonant, and ‘r’ if it is between vowels.” Thus, “danum” (water) is always danum because it is the beginning of the word, but it becomes “maranum” (watery) because it is in the middle of the word and is between two vowels. Other examples are “daya” (blood) which becomes “maraya” (bloody) and “dalas” (frequency) which becomes “maralas” (frequent).
Ancient Kapampangans had no “h,” unlike their neighbors, the Tagalogs.
Some say we acquired it from the Spaniards, who also don’t pronounce their “h” (e.g., “horas” is pronounced “oras”). The similarity is probably just a coincidence, because when the Spanish missionaries first recorded the Kapampangan language in their dictionaries and grammar, they already noticed our lack of “h.” Benavente wrote, “If you sometimes find ‘h’ in this language, like capahamacan’ and ‘dalamhati,’ they are not Kapampangan roots but are originally Tagalog.”
I have a feeling it was the Tagalogs who started aspirating what were originally unaspirated Kapampangan words, like “mal” (sacred) becoming “mahal” and “angin” (wind) becoming “hangin.” That’s what some of us do when we overcompensate to cover up our lack of it. We say “oly hangel” (holy angel) and misplace the aspiration in “happy hour.”
Lastly, we who always quarrel over whether it’s “c” and “q” or it’s “k” would be surprised to know that the ancient Kapampangans used none of the above; these three letters all came from the Roman alphabet.
Before 1571, Kapampangans were using a different character which looked like the equal sign (=), which Benavente said “corresponded to the Greek ‘k.’” The Spaniards who first came here replaced the “=” with their own “c” and “q” as in “queca” (yours).
It was only 300 years later, in the early 1900s, that nationalist writers like Aurelio Tolentino and Zoilo Hilario, wanting to discard all traces of foreign influence, dropped the “c” and “q” and replaced them with “k,” which is why “queca” became “keka.”
It is therefore not true that “k” is older than “c” and “q.” In fact, “c” and “q” are older than “k.” But the kulitan “=” is the oldest of them all, and the only one that’s original. Since “c” and “q” and “k” are all borrowed and we’ve long ago decided not to go back to kulitan, let’s not debate anymore and just let people use the orthography of their choice.
Reference: Fray Alvaro de Benavente’s “Arte de Lengua Pampanga” (1699), translated by Father Edilberto V. Santos and co-published by the Center for Kapampangan Studies (Holy Angel University) and the Spanish Program for Cultural Cooperation (Instituto Cervantes).
