Tagalog-13

[potet]

"Re coinages, let me remind everyone of the fate of Lope K. Santos'
"salumpuwit" (bottom-catcher) for 'silya' (chair) - it ended up being the
butt of jokes.  So with a lot of his other coinages like "sasakyang bakal na
pakawig-kawig" (iron vehicle that sways from side to side) for 'tren'
(train) or "salipawpaw" for 'eroplano' (plane), etc., etc." Paz B. NAYLOR

Yes, Paz, I also heard of that, and it made me laugh, but let me quote:

"Ang totoó, waláng "salumpuwít" sa bokabuláryo ng SWP. Itinuksó lámang itó
ni [Claro] Recto kay L. [Lope] K. Santos at pinúlot namán ni [Francisco Soc]
Rodrigo. May matandáng salitáng "salipawpáw" at kaháwig ng lipád at imbulóg.
Kayâ sigúro itinumbá itó sa eropláno noóng panahón ng Hapón. gayunmán,
waláng gumamít ng "salipawpáw" bílang eropláno pagkaraán ng Liberéysiyon."
Virgilio S. ALMARIO, _Diyaryo Filipino, 1992 [no accents in the original]

= Actually there is no "salumpuwit" in the dictionary of the Institute of
National Language. Claro Recto [a statesman] just teased Lope K. Santos [a
Tagalist, the author of a grammar] with it, and Francisco Soc Rodrigo [a man
against the pro-Tagalog movement] picked it up. There is such a thing as the
old word "salipawpaw" which is synonym to "flight" and "soar". Therefore it
naturally fitted the "airplane" during the Japanese period. "Salipawpaw" was
not used for "airplane", however, after the Liberation.

Please correct my translation where it is faulty.

This reminds me of the term _pálipáran_ "airport" < lipád _ "flight" that
occurred in a conversation between two teenagers in 1980. A Filipino scholar
I played the tape to was surprised that such ignorant boys should use a
coinage he deemed rather intellectual.

When I was in Manila, I often had the impression that common people had a
richer vocabulary than educated ones. I remember a Filipino friend asserting
there was no term for "import" in Tagalog. I told him there was _angkát_,
and I heard it used by the owner of a typing shop at U.P. Diliman, who said,
pointing at the equipment in his office: "Angkát lahát. = All these are
imports." [We were chatting away, he in his flawless Tagalog, I in my broken
one, about the feasibility of a relative economic independence for the
Philippines.]

In 1985, I asked the janitor what terms he used for the electric plug and
the wall outlet. The terms came unhesitatingly: _ang isinaksák_ = the plug,
_ang sinaksakán_ = the outlet. These terms are frozen verbal forms in the
so-called "perfective" or, rather, completed aspect; the one is focused on
the instrument, the other on the place; their stem is _saksák_ "insertion,
stabbing". I asked the same question to several educated people, and none of
them had a Tagalog term for these; they just used the English terms.

Had they known _Défense et illustration de la langue française_ by Joachim
DU BELLAY (1549) I should have referred them to it, for the poet advised his
contemporaries to go to the market, to the shops and to the fields, and
listen to common people because _they_ have the terms they thought could
only exist in Latin. :-)

Jean-Paul G. POTET. B. P. 46. 92114 CLICHY CEDEX. FRANCE.