Re: ts in Tagalog

From: Michael Farris (maf_at_amu.edu.pl)
Date: 10/19/04 

Date: 19 Oct 2004 03:14:01 -0700

dalubwika@aol.com (Dalubwika) wrote in message

> I wonder if this (SVO: maf) was the norm in an ancestral language or what. Tagalog has a
> lot of influence from Northern Philippine languages where the pronoun is almost
> always after the noun. But who knows.

The general Pacific tendency is VSO or even VOS I believe, the
Phillipines are at the edge of that it makes sense for there to be
variation from language to language or within a given language (VSO is
possible though not that common in Indonesian as well I think).

> I don't know, the analogy you gave seems to be a little over the top - not the
> kind of Taglish I'm usually exposed to. Perhaps I'm wrong, but that's my
> impression. I would not expect to find that in a newspaper..

well it took me about 30 seconds to find:

Aglipay, magpapauna sa lifestyle check
BUKAS din sa ibang ahensya ng pamahalaan ang lifestyle check ng mga
miyembro ng Philippine National Police (PNP), ani Director General
Edgar Aglipay.
"Our investigation would be made open to other government agencies
like the Office of the Ombudsman for them to counter-check and
validate our own investigation," ani Aglipay sa mga mamamahayag
kahapon.

in this little deathless paragraph unassimilated English words clearly
outnumber words that could be identified as Filipino (inlcuding
Spanish loans and/or assimilated English words.

Would it kill Filipinos to respell English loans and translate English
quotes in Filipino news sources? (Provisional attempt at this example
follows)

Aglipay, magpapauna sa laifstail tsek
BUKAS din sa ibang ahensya ng pamahalaan ang laifstail tsek ng mga
miyembro ng Filipin Nasyonal Polis (FNP), ani Direktor Jeneral Edgar
Aglipay.
"translated into filipino," ani Aglipay sa mga mamamahayag kahapon.

except in a
> discussion about something in the news perhaps, but I don't think anyone's
> seriously advocating Taglish to be used at the official level, no?

Well it seems to be the current defacto written standard of
journalism, again a poor choice IMHO. I can't think of any viable
written national language that requires fluent knowledge of another
language to be understood. How much popular or serious literature is
now being written in Filipino? How much is translated into Filipino? I
tend to think of Taglish as an anchor weight dragging Filipino down,
YMMV.

And what's a lifestyle check, anyway? It sounds like something you'd
do to see if you need to cut back on the cholestoral or alcohol, but
the context seems wrong here.

-michael farris

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