11-13-2021, 02:48 AM
(This post was last modified: 11-13-2021, 03:13 AM by RiverNotch.)
The original piece:
Noon maraming puyo---
eh, nagkaroon
ng kaunting pera
at napa-parlor.
Ngayon ang buhok
ay straight na straight,
na-rebond ng bakla:
ang bagsak ay kaliwa
at kanan. Ngayon, hating-hati
ang babae sa lalake,
ang Baluga sa Kano,
ang English sa Tagalog.
Through Google Translate:
There were many whirlwinds ---
eh, there was
a little money
and parlored.
Now the hair
is very straight,
rebounded by gay:
the defeated is left
and right. Now, split up
the woman to the man,
the Baluga of Kano,
English to Tagalog.
By a human translator:
His hair was kinky
but then he got
a little money.
Now his hair
falls in two places,
left and right---
man and woman,
black and white.
Puyo: cowlick.
Napa-parlor -- that's a habit most Filipinos of a certain socioeconomic class and higher have, that when they struggle (however briefly) to remember the right word in what we would call proper Filipino, they would just inflect the English. The awful thing is that this tendency has gradually eroded away much of the language's original vocabulary, so that those below this certain socioeconomic class only know the borrowed term.
While "bakla" is often translated as "gay", they also often live as women, though not typically to the point that they insist on the proper pronouns. And why should they? Filipino pronouns have no gender. Perhaps the more appropriate term is "queer", but bakla rarely refers to anyone assigned female at birth -- in other words, "queer" is too broad, and quite frankly too American.
Superlatives in Filipino are often just repetitions of the original term.
Note that there is a difference between la-LA-ki, which means "man", and LA-la-ki, which means "will grow".
Baluga is a derogatory term for one of the short, kinky-haired, dark-skinned indigenous people of Central Luzon -- they are otherwise known as the Aeta. Kano is a derogatory term for an American.
I said "original", but in fact nothing about Filipino is original. Filipino is merely a dialect of Tagalog, developed because when the Americans made us adopt a national language other than English or Spanish, the majority of the people in the government, and the plurality of the people in the country, spoke it. And the Tagalogs are as indigenous to this country as the Aeta.
((just a heads-up: the seven prose paragraphs I posted before this heads-up are a part of the entire piece))
Noon maraming puyo---
eh, nagkaroon
ng kaunting pera
at napa-parlor.
Ngayon ang buhok
ay straight na straight,
na-rebond ng bakla:
ang bagsak ay kaliwa
at kanan. Ngayon, hating-hati
ang babae sa lalake,
ang Baluga sa Kano,
ang English sa Tagalog.
Through Google Translate:
There were many whirlwinds ---
eh, there was
a little money
and parlored.
Now the hair
is very straight,
rebounded by gay:
the defeated is left
and right. Now, split up
the woman to the man,
the Baluga of Kano,
English to Tagalog.
By a human translator:
His hair was kinky
but then he got
a little money.
Now his hair
falls in two places,
left and right---
man and woman,
black and white.
Puyo: cowlick.
Napa-parlor -- that's a habit most Filipinos of a certain socioeconomic class and higher have, that when they struggle (however briefly) to remember the right word in what we would call proper Filipino, they would just inflect the English. The awful thing is that this tendency has gradually eroded away much of the language's original vocabulary, so that those below this certain socioeconomic class only know the borrowed term.
While "bakla" is often translated as "gay", they also often live as women, though not typically to the point that they insist on the proper pronouns. And why should they? Filipino pronouns have no gender. Perhaps the more appropriate term is "queer", but bakla rarely refers to anyone assigned female at birth -- in other words, "queer" is too broad, and quite frankly too American.
Superlatives in Filipino are often just repetitions of the original term.
Note that there is a difference between la-LA-ki, which means "man", and LA-la-ki, which means "will grow".
Baluga is a derogatory term for one of the short, kinky-haired, dark-skinned indigenous people of Central Luzon -- they are otherwise known as the Aeta. Kano is a derogatory term for an American.
I said "original", but in fact nothing about Filipino is original. Filipino is merely a dialect of Tagalog, developed because when the Americans made us adopt a national language other than English or Spanish, the majority of the people in the government, and the plurality of the people in the country, spoke it. And the Tagalogs are as indigenous to this country as the Aeta.
((just a heads-up: the seven prose paragraphs I posted before this heads-up are a part of the entire piece))