just a filler

[kampanaryo_spy]

(Note: Just to update this thread, am posting a "filler" which is actually an article i wrote many summers ago that the Philippine Daily Inquirer printed.)

SURIGAO DEL SUR'S LINGUAL QUIRKS
by k_spy

Here's a classic believe-it-or-not tale: a Cebuana asked someone at the Tandag wharf what boat was sailing for Cebu that day, and the man replied, "Inday uno."

The woman went to the nearby passenger terminal and waited. Seeing no boat at bay, she asked the same question to one of only three persons around. She got the same answer: "Inday uno."

Hours passed and still no boat in the horizon. Already worried, she again asked the same question to the boys who were playing. One of them said, "Inday uno."

When dusk set in, the woman approached the guard in the other building and asked the same question. The guard said no boat was sailing for Cebu that day.

"But they said 'Inday uno' is sailing today," she said

Stifling a laugh, the guard said, "Ma'am, 'Inday Uno' is not a boat; it's the Surigaonon for 'I don't know.'"

"Oh dear," she said, "I thought it was part of the fleet that includes Inday Dos, Inday Tres and Inday Cuatro."

To many, the Surigaonon dialect is quirky because of a marked profusion of Y's that comes from substituting most L's with Y's. For instance: wala (none) becomes waya and balay (house) becomes bayay. For this, Surigaonons are called Waya-waya in the same way that people from Samar are called Waray-waray.

We Surigaonons are derided for our dialect. When my classmates knew on my first day at the University of San Carlos in Cebu City that I was from Surigao del Sur, someone at the back shouted, "Bay, muadto ta sa swimming puy para mag-yangoy-yangoy" (Man, let's go to the swimming pool to swim.)

I kept my freshman cool because what this dummy didn't know was that being from the central part of Surigao del Sur (SDS), I don't waggle my tongue in waya-waya though I'm proficient in it.

Contrary to popular notion, only people from the mainland and islands of Surigao del Norte (SDN) are solid waya-waya speakers because SDS has a slew of dialects including, well, a bastardized waya-waya.

The five northernmost towns of SDS, collectively known as Carcanmadcarlan, speak waya-waya with a twist, that is, abridging some of the words by dropping either a syllable or vowel ending. Like, the words waya (none), imo (yours) and ako (mine) in SDN become ya, im and ak in SDS. And so the phrase "wayay ako bayay" (I have no house) in SDN translates into "yay ak bay" in SDS.

There's even this joke that a mass is shorter when said in Cantilan than in Tandag because instead of saying "lawas ni Kristo" (body of Christ), the priest would say "la ni Kris" and the parishioners would answer "Am" instead of Amen.

Being from the central part of SDS, I speak Tagon-on whose one peculiarity is the substitution of the letter "L" with "R," and so wala becomes wara. Another oddity of Tagon-on is that, like English, it has comparative and superlative terms for its adjectives. Guapo (handsome) for example mutates into guapohi (handsomer) and guapohir (handsomest).

The southern part of SDS speaks in Kamayo which is filled with A's; so kaon (eat), ako (mine) and iya (his) become kaan, kanak and kanaan, respectively.

The most popular yarn about Kamayo involves a bride who takes a groom not from SDS. On their honeymoon night, she calls for him from the bathroom, "Sweetheart, kamanga ako."

She waits a while before she opens the door to his knock. Shocked to find him on the floor in all fours, she says, "Honey, what are you doing?"

He looks up to her and says, "You said crawl, didn't you?"

"Honey," she purrs in her bedroom voice, "kamanga" may mean 'crawl' in Bisaya but in Kamayo it means 'take me.'"

So there. The next time you meet a Surigaonon, know his provenance first and from there, know what you say. Or better still, say what you know

[gingot]

hi K-Spy!

nice article! my friend said surigao really is amazingly amusing. i went to cebu with her last week. she find it "kakaiba" that SDN and SDS speaks differently! She met mariele (atat's daughter)that mixes up her surigaonon.

nway, being a surigaonon myself... am proud i can speak both SDN and SDS (tagon-on).

keep those good (articles/write-ups) works coming!

gOD BLESS,

gingot

[kampanaryo_spy]

gingot,

thanks for the compliment. i agree: we have an advantage because we're multi-lingual.