Feedback at yearend
In response to our last column where we featured “Mismo, atbp.” among our relatively recent popular expressions — in Pinoy, Taglish and English — the poet-fictionist and our lifelong buddy Rowena Tiempo Torrevillas in wintry Iowa wrote:
“Hahaha! We’ve been using ‘meh’ in our household for years — a two-generation idiom, with a third generation already bandying it around, as it’s one of Lil Mikey’s favorite words. (Mikey is her and Lemuel’s daughter Rima’s first son, soon a toddler, named after dad Mike.)
“And I’m watching Men Who Stare at Goats ... just because my top screen hunks — Clooney! Bridges! McG! — are in it; I’ll try not to drool.
“Bwahaha still resonates for me of the villain’s hollow, sinister, mustache-twirling laugh in the radio serials of our childhood. Like ‘Konsiyerto sa Kamatayon,’ bwahahaha!
“Meh, weh, bitaw — Wen.”
Rosendo “Ross” Bautista of the Carlos Palanca Foundation, a Bedan Golden Jubilarian by February 2010, also e-mailed to say:
“Krip, dagdagan ko lang ng mga iba pang jargon na popular ngayon. — Ross B.
“Wish ko lang — expectation; Grabe — referring to extreme conditions, situations like ‘grabeng ganda, grabeng saya, grabeng bait’; Over — similar in use as grabe; and Kaya ng powers — within one’s capability/comprehension, like ‘kaya ng powers ko ang Blackberry,’ or the reverse like ‘di kaya ng powers ko ang bumili ng Jaguar.’”
My reply to Ross’ input went:
“Of the four, yang ‘Wish ko lang’ ang relatively new. Yung ‘Grabe,’ I’ve been using that since the mid-’60s, so luma na talaga.
Yung ‘Over,’ medyo mas recent, but has had its day. Mga ’90s pa yan, pero nawala na yata. At yung ‘Kaya ng powers’ relatively new, this millennium na, pero palaos na rin. Marami pa ngang iba. Yup, it would be good to come up with a glossary of Taglish jargon...”
Come to think of it, a healthy part of the richness of our continuously evolving street and media language — which should also make it to our literature — involves Taglish or bilingual combo phrases, perhaps best represented by that 1970s protest slogan attributed to colegialas: “Don’t be takot. Let’s make baka!”
Again, as with “Mwahaha!,” it was Nonoy Marcelo who institutionalized that version of California “Valley Girl speak” in his comic strip Tisoy. And soon the rafters were ringing with such Taglish inventions as “kilig to the bones!”
I could be wrong in terms of chronological attribution.
How I miss Jose “Ka Pete” Lacaba’s former word-maven column "Carabeef Lengua," where he authoritatively dispensed the latest pick-ups in street lingo, served with the gentlest of wit.
Occasionally, Pete still surveys the horizon for novel phraseology, but his column in Yes! magazine is now more beholden to showbiz entertainment.
Also last Monday, Gilda Cordero Fernando, the Goddess of Panay Avenue and Beyond (inclusive of National Artist Frankie Jose’s cosmology), sent an SMS rather late in the evening.
“You beat me to writing about KAYA as the expression of the year! Much like yesterday’s HELLO (though more meaningful than KAYA) which also appears in the most unexpected spots. But you didn’t mention WAIT LANG which every other person doing a service uses these days. I hear it at least 2 or 3x daily.”
Beloved Gilda’s text came just as I was about to take the dais at Mag:net on Katipunan for the special Happy Mondays poetry reading in conjunction with the Christmas party for poets and writers hosted by Sir Rock Drilon.
So I had to text her right back as I stepped up to the mic: “Wait lang, ha.” Not sure now if she thought I was pulling a word caper on her, as her thumb clammed up even after I sent a longer response that not only acknowledged “Wait lang” but also offered “tara let’s!”
Now, that’s another charming string-along, as eminent a manifestation of the wacky way Pinoys colonize languages when playing the bilingual punning game as those commercial offerings like Goto Heaven and Cooking ng Ina Mo.
Personally, I’d prefer to hear “Wait lang” than that old standby “For a while” — the office secretary’s favorite utterance as part of Pinoy phone etiquette.
Out-and-out foreign pick-ups like “Hell-ow!” to signify a knocking on someone’s densely closed level of awareness, consciousness even, just don’t cut it in as picaresque a manner as bilingual composites.
“Shout out” and “Just do it” are as simplistically amboy as “Get outta here!” As is that awful, much-abused “For the longest time.” Or, heavens, the Jollibee attendants’ concession to unisex politesse: “Mam/Ser!”
Nothing like making our own mark on linguistic transactions, by employing oh-so-logical, manipulated streams of dialogue in Taglish. The same strength may be seen, or heard, in the constantly inventive, wildly innovative “Swardspeak.”
After all, the purity of our speech can still be defended by harking back on our uniqueness as a highly conversant people, one that famously relies on baby talk in an intriguing exchange across an open elevator door — with “Bababa ba?” “Bababa.”
By the by, last Monday’s affair at Mag:net Katips also featured the launch of Carlomar Daoana’s second poetry collection, The Fashionista’s Book of Enlightenment, as well as the re-launch of relatively recent poetry books: Jose Marte Abueg’s Bird Lands, River Nights and Other Melancholies, Victor Peñaranda’s Pilgrim in Transit, Jimmy Abad’s Care of Light, and my own Poems Singkwenta’y Cinco.
Daoana’s book is published and distributed by DBW + Designed by Words Co. at 584-F San Andres St., Malate, Manila, with phone number 568-2635 and e-mail address designedbywords@gmail.com
Abueg’s book is published by UP Press, while the last three cited above are from Anvil Publishing and should be available at National Book Store branches.
If you know what’s goodah! for you, get na now na!
