Man On A Street

I'm copy pasting from Joe Padre's blog on the new Filipino spelling -- my only gripe is with General Rule V -- the use of letters F, J, V, and Z for borrowed words -- we freely exchange them with P, Dy, B and S -- "Siryusli -- yu dyast kant du dat -- piling biktoryus end weyb it in prant op mai peys." Here are sample new spellings: fiesta - fyesta affix - afiks brief - brif photo - foto cough - kaf gem - jem jacket - jaket soldier - soljer Vacation - vekayshun Value - valyu zone - zon cruz - kruz zoo - zo xylophone - zaylofon czar - zar scissors - sizors Sounds like the planners stopped at a beauty parlor on their way to presenting the draft in Congress. Their main contention is that "you can plan language." Wrong. Lasting language use comes from the bottom-up -- what people see as ok, is valuable, will allow them to lift up their current stations in life -- that's what they are gonna use (and the spellings that go with it). I'm going to update an o

Shakespeare dressed his characters in contemporary costumes -- timeless messages are best delivered in contemporary packaging... Bizarre coincidences may just be the intersection of interpenetrating multiverses... True resurrection requires uninterrupted consciousness of the one who died. This could have led to belief in "Immortal Soul"... I tend not to believe in life coming out of "primordial soup" because that's like saying shit came before the bull. Life is the only creator of bullshit... Refuseth thou beauty?... In-yer-faces: Whoever said the only intuitive interface is the nipple forgot the pussy, the dick and the ass... (could be topics for future posts)

We have rats at the sewer back of our apartment, and mice inside the house. I am often in Bisaya mode, and now I realize we have no separate Cebuano terms for 'rat' and 'mouse' They are both 'ilaga' -- 'yatot' in Waray, 'daga' in Tagalog. Well, 'dagkung ilaga' for rats and ' gagmayng ilaga' for mice -- but that doesn't count because that's just describing their sizes . . . Some people may say the advancement of a culture is seen on the richness of its language. If this were true, then Inuit culture is very advanced indeed -- what with its hundreds of terms for snow. Truth is, like a tool, the best language to use depends on the occasion. Charles V said "I speak Spanish to God, Italian to Women, French to Men, and German to my Horse." Most good computer programmers know that. Take the term 'ilog' [eelohg] -- that's Cebuano for 'to grab something forcefully from someone with the intent of deprivin

A very incomplete page on the ABS-CBN News Online site points to a TV ad explaining how system loss works (please google the brouhaha about MERALCO -- the Manila power utility owned by the Lopezes [who also own ABS-CBN, Manila Water, Sky Cable, etc . . . .heheh]) In case you haven't seen it, the add features a very prominent Pinoy actress (also owned by ABS-CBN) telling us that system loss is like the water that melts off the ice we buy (most Pinoys buy ice from mom-and-pop stores) mostly for our iced drinks. Which is a way of telling us that the ice water is part of the ice we buy and ergo, we should not balk if it's part of the cost we pay (cos we could have used it if it didn't melt away -- maybe we should put it in our iced colas as well -- "you bought it, you pay for it, you use it"). Analogies have their limits though. Water off the ice, on one hand, still reaches our homes and we could still use it (albeit not as ice -- but still water just the same). On