Tuesday, May 06, 2008 Tantingco: The colors of history By Robby Tantingco
MOVIES often depict history in black and white or sepia tones, which has led many people to imagine that our ancestors lived in a dreary, colorless world. The truth is, the past was probably more colorful than the present, because our ancestors used vivid colors a lot to beautify their surroundings, unlike us today who prefer the subtlety and restraint of monochromes.
Our ancestors wore flashy clothes and lived in houses that had ceilings and walls adorned with florid and folksy paintings. They prayed in churches painted with a riot of earthy colors, reflecting their animated expressions of faith and worship. The early friars (who I think were wiser) respected our ancestors' gaudy tendencies and incorporated them in church architecture and design, but the friars who came much later (who had absorbed the social and cultural changes happening in Spain) probably considered gaudy as pagan and had the churches painted over with cheerless white, black and grey.
Today, that's how we prefer our old churches and antique houses to look, not realizing that our ancestors never liked them that way.
What we consider dignified and tasteful today was probably dull and boring to our ancestors, in the same manner that what our ancestors considered beautiful is baduy today. Each generation has its own standards for beauty.
Our ancestors had a rich vocabulary of colors to match their polychromatic preferences. We need not borrow from Tagalog, or English or Spanish and so we don't need to say "berdi" for green or "asul" for blue because we have original Kapampangan words for them: "aluntiag" is green (similar to the Tagalog "luntian") and "iro" is blue (from diphthong "irao").
The Kapampangan for yellow is "papas;" for red, "lutu;" for white, "puti" and for black, "tuling." Brown is "komanggi" (from diphthong "kayumanggi").
Our ancestors were not very technical or accurate about colors.
To them, navy blue, aquamarine blue, cobalt blue, light blue, midnight blue, indigo, violet -- they're all "iro," and crimson, pink, fuchsia, maroon, magenta, rust, terra cotta, orange -- they're all "lutu."
The Kapampangan word "bulanggo" (diphthong "bulanggao") is another case in point. Bergaño wrote that Kapampangans used this term to refer to anything from blond ("bulanggo a buac," blond as a Dutchman) to blue or grey ("bulanggo a mata," the eyes of a cat).
Our ancestors also probably used color words to describe only colorized objects, rarely or never the natural, inherent color of things.
For example, they didn't say "Iro ya ing banua" (the sky is blue) or "aluntiag a bulung" (green leaf), because they did not need to specify the color of sky, which is always blue, or the color of a leaf, which everybody knows to be green anyway.
Instead, they used color words for dyed things, which involved an alteration of the natural color of the object. For example, our ancestors said "Mepapas ya ing manuk" (The chicken turned yellow) because they applied "ángè" (tumeric).
When they dyed things red ("malutu"), they used any of these three sources: "bangcuro," which was a type of tree bark, a "lino," which was a kind of root, or a "lumpi" which is the bright red color produced by betel plant.
By the way, when referring to "red face," our ancestors used "laré" instead of "lutu," as in "malaré ya lupa" which Bergaño defined as "the ruddiness or color of health" or "the color of blush due to fear, shame or embarrassment." A synonym is "diwa" which is "the healthy glow of someone who is sound, healthy and robust" (adjective is "mariwa"). I think the Tagalog "diwa" and "mariwasa" came from this Kapampangan word.
For blue dye, our ancestors used "tayum," a bush which I suppose was quite common in Pampanga because Kapampangans exported indigo during colonial times, when silk was forbidden in Japan (during the Edo Period) and the Japanese resorted to cotton, which was difficult to dye except with indigo.
Today, we use the word "tina" instead of "tayum" to refer to the blue dye we apply (with vinegar) on children's mumps, but actually, "tina" is also an ancient Kapampangan word that refers to all dark dyes.
Dyeing seems to have preoccupied our ancestors because they had many words related to the process. "Laca" means "to dye with colors that are not so bright;" "balantan" is "stain on a badly dyed object;" "lila" is "tint;" "tugagas" is "faded color;" "puyasio" is "discolored;" "galatgat" is "to mix colors for effect, like green with blue."
Our ancestors used "balatung" (mongo) for washing colored clothes because it prevented colors from fading. Bergaño said the "tarnate" or "balimbing" (star fruit) was a mainstay in dyers' shops because it was used as a stain remover for clothes.
Lastly, the early Kapampangans had a word for the whitest of white: "busilac." They also had a word for the blackest of black: "pantis."
So, fellow Kapampangans, let us not ignore or repudiate the legacy of our ancestors. We have enough indigenous Kapampangan words to use in everyday conversation as well as in the world of work. Let's practice using them starting... now!
