Family and People

The words a language keeps for its own family are usually the last ones to change. These are still holding.

Ama and Ina, not Tatay and Nanay

If your Filipino comes from television, you will want to say tatay and nanay. In Siargaonon the words are ama (father) and ina (mother).

This matters more than it looks. Family words are the deepest layer of a language — the last vocabulary to be replaced by a dominant neighbour, because they are learned before school, before television, before anyone tells you which language is the useful one. When the family words go, the language is nearly gone. On Siargao, they are still here.

Asking after someone's mother

Kumusta man si Mama? — how is your mother doing? This is not small talk. In a place where households are large and everyone is somebody's cousin, asking after a person's mother is close to the centre of politeness, and it is the question that will be asked of you, repeatedly, by people who have only just met you.

Haman si mama? asks where she is. Note haman — itself a contraction, of hae (where) plus man. Siargaonon does this constantly, welding small words into smaller ones. Once you learn to hear the seams, the language gets considerably smaller.

The sentence every Filipino child has heard

Ay na bata ini! is not really translatable, only recognisable. "Tsk — this child!" It is the sound of a parent reaching the end of their patience and the beginning of their affection in the same exhale, aimed at a child who has just done the entirely inevitable thing.

You will not need to say it. You will hear it, and you will know exactly what has happened without anyone telling you.

The words themselves — 22 entries