Friday, September 10, 2010

a whole lot of nothing going on

September 1, 2010
when we got to the philippines we all thought we would be speaking tagalog. not so. only those in zambales/bataan learn how to speak filipino (tagalog). there are those in negros oriental who are speaking cebuana. those in iloilo are going to be speaking hiligayon, then there is yours truly and the others in leyte that are speaking waray-waray. so what does this all mean?
i’ve mentioned 4, but actually there are 170+languages in the philippines, and tagalog is kind of a composite of them all. the philippines is split into 12 regions based on language,  and each of those languages has more than a million native speakers.
well, i can only tell you about the waray-waray side of things. it is spoken in the eastern visayas of the philippines and about 3 million speak it natively. so here is how it breaks down. going back to tagalog. if a native speaker of waray-waray were never taught tagalog they would not be able to understand someone they met on the street speaking tagalog (however in school they learn filipino, it being the national language and all, so that really would never happen). it works the other way, a tagalog speaker will not be able to understand waray-waray.
so let me confuse you more….tagalog came from a proto-central philippine language and makes its own branch of languages within the central philippine group. waray-waray  belongs to the central visayan sub-branch of the visayan branch of the central philippine group of languages. it has dialects, but here in leyte i am learning the standard form. i will end up either in leyte, eastern samar or northern samar.
in waray-waray waray means nothing. so the language is nothing-nothing. after several explanations as to why, i’m still confused. but sometimes it is also called waryan. i know this: the people chose the language name, so they can’t really be too upset about it being nothing-nothing. the way they say waray is unique to waray-waray and different than other visayan languages. also after discussions they never came up with a better name. the number one idea (suggested by imelda marcos) is may-ada-ada which means something, but can also mean an occasional loss of sanity. so probably a no-go there.
parts of it are simpler and rules seem to be a little more finite than say other languages i know. there are no silent vowels, and each vowel has its own syllable (no blends). so yes, which is spelled oo is pronounced oh-oh. there is a lot to learn, and i’m thankful for the spanish influence. i also find the words that are spanish interesting. it is the words that were not needed before western “civilization” came to this part of the world. parts of the house are mostly spanish, because a hut is pretty basic. also a lot to do with schools. the alphabet is different, so it is fun to see how they adapted the spanish to waray-wary. i.e. school is eskwelahan.
this curious to me though. in cultures where there is lots of snow the indigenous languages have 100s of names for snow. here in an island change with a language whose speakers are mostly fisher folk they have one word that means ocean, sea, and beach and other things related to the beach: dagut.
 i’m slowly picking things up, but i feel like i am on a 2-day delay. thankfully we only have a 1-day weekend so i don’t lose too much on the rests. but it does have me major major busy from sun up (5:00), to way past sun down (6:00).

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