Language Patterns and the Dynamism of Legazpeño at Home

Born in Legazpi City, Albay, I grew up with Central Bikol as my mother tongue. My family usually speaks inside our home using the Legazpeño speech variety, most notable for the non-occurrence of initial /h/ sound on many Bikol vocabularies (e.g. harong > arong), and the exaggerated use of the prefix -on as an intensifier for adjectives (e.g. magayón > magayúnon > magayununúnon > magayununununúnon). I’ve also noticed that we are comfortable adding Tagalog vocabularies in our daily conversation to replace complex Bikol words, such as those that appear in Catholic prayer booklets.

As a kid, I notice that my siblings and I do tend to make up words in addition to our language—which are mostly ridiculous—but at that time we clearly have no idea that we were doing it. This made me very inquisitive about the language patterns that happen within our home.

Revisiting My Vocabularies

The possibility of unintentionally creating a full-functioning language that is only used by a family within their home led me to examine the language patterns that my family and I used. Although we did not create a language, somewhere in my library of thoughts stored the old vocabularies that we have once constructed, and I know that they are unintentionally made to meet our specific purposes.

With this in mind, I asked my siblings: “Are there any words that you can remember that we used as a kid that only our family can understand?” And I was surprised that we did.

Take a look at the sentence below:

Ídto su sukray. Idî ‘yan. Sublion daa ni nyóni. (“This is the comb. Not that one. Mama says she wants to borrow it”).

The words ídto, idî, and nyóni are some of the terms that can confuse people outside our house because these are used only within the context of our home.

Ídto (which means “this”) comes from the Tagalog word ito. We use it as a demonstrative pronoun to point to an object close to us. In contrary, the word ídto that is already existing in Central Bikol is the opposite (which means “that”) to point to an object far from us (Mintz, 1971). I sometimes use ídto instead of ini when I am speaking with my mom, and she understands it as everyone in the family does.

The word idî (which means “no”) comes from the Tagalog word hindi. The letter h is dropped perhaps due to the prominence of omitting the letter h as can be observed in TSL dialect (e.g. harong > arong). I also use this to respond to my mom instead of saying dai. This word is influenced by Tagalog, as I have mentioned that we do tend to mix up vocabularies in Bikol and Tagalog.

The word nyoni (variants: ñoni, niyoni, ñon) refers to mother. The origin of the term nyoni is a funny memory for us because it comes from a name of an actual person we don’t know—whose name is Neoni. Every time we remember that, we end up cracking in laughter because it was my older sister who first used this term to refer to my mom, until eventually all of us are calling her nyoni.

In total, I have gathered up more than 17 lexicons that we used only within our home. Most of them are used throughout my childhood, but as my siblings and I grew up, we started to lose most of them. I categorized these lexicons as to their purpose:

1. Words formed to soften disgusting things.

Profanities are a big no-no at home. We cannot swear, we cannot curse, and we cannot even say our private body parts without receiving glare from our parents. My siblings and I grew up without swearing and cursing, thus we did not see any necessity to make a counterpart of it. Even the terms for our private body parts already have existing nice versions. Thus, the words we made up are to soften only the things that are too disgusting to talk about at the table. For instance, instead of saying udô (poo), we say utô or udyô. Both terms are derived from its original word.

2. Words formed for endearment or honorifics.

My family is not very affectionate when it comes to endearments, but family honorifics is important. So although we have terms of endearment, they are mostly made to make fun of the person. For example, our term for older brother is kudì, which was derived from kúya. For older sister, we either call her nóti or ípis. Nóti comes from the song Nosi Ba Lasi by Sampaguita, which was being sung by my older sister at that time. Its resemblance to the English word naughty makes it even more funny to tease her with it. Meanwhile, ípis has nothing to do with cockroaches. It is derived from a hard pronunciation of áte (older sister), pluralized in English: átes. Our endearment for our mother is nyóni, sometimes spelt ñoni, niyoni, or ñon. It comes from an actual name of a person, Neoni, as explained earlier.

3. Words formed to express emotions.

This mostly refers to interjections for expressing emotions. Whenever we talk to our pets or kids, we use itót, indyót, and udót-údot. The words itót and indyót are derived from the Tagalog isus to express how cute it is to see our pet or a kid in doing a certain behavior. The word isus comes from hesus (as in Jesús), which is used to express many emotions in Tagalog. However, as an interjection, we use itót and indyót only in response for something adorable. Meanwhile, udót-údot is our direct translation for cute. One possible explanation behind this term is that it’s derived from the Bikol word kudót, which means to pinch. When someone is kakudót-kúdot, it means that they are too cute not to be pinched.

4. Words formed to mix up Tagalog and Bikol.

The reason why we sometimes mix up Tagalog and Bikol is because it does not put the tone of our voice into something mean. It’s very comparable to how we use Taglish to avoid being too formal or too casual. However, instead of switching from Tagalog to Bikol, we created a new set of words: ídto, idî, alâ, and uu. This is in response to make the Tagalog words sound more Bikol. Ídto and idî are derived from íto (this) and hindî (no). The word alâ comes from the Tagalog word walâ (nothing), while uu comes from the word oo (yes). However, uu is not disyllabic like its original word. It’s a prolonged hard /ū/ sound pronounced in a high pitch. Then, some time later, my siblings and I used the word papet, a sloppy version of the word bakit (why). Although it’s not meant to sound like Bikol, the word was borrowed from Tagalog as well.

5. Words formed for toys.

We undoubtedly have terms for our toys back when we were kids that are unique to outside speakers. My younger siblings and I were one of the kids who played with clothespins to form our Megatrons. These robotic clothespin figures have a “basic form” composed of only two clothespins (one for the head, and one for the body). We call them chá-chà for unknown reasons and until today, we’re still laughing at ourselves for calling them that way. We also had 1-inch Pokémon figures that time, which we called pik, also for unknown reasons, but is possibly derived from Pokémon. I was a huge collector of these toys back in elementary and we use them to create our own zoos and pretend they are actual animals. Lastly, we have a term for stuffed toy, specifically a bear one. My younger sister usually calls it bíbilog for unknown reasons. It’s possible that it’s a combination of bibi (rough pronunciation of baby) and turog (sleep) because she used to bring her stuffed toy to sleep as a kid.

6. Words formed for specific purposes.

There are things that we cannot explain, and even our parents have difficulty in giving a word for it. For example, raised shoulders high up your ears (looks like a prolonged shrug), we called it naka-uk-uk. It’s derived from the Bikol word ok-ok (which refers to “a person without a neck”). In our context, when someone is naka-uk-uk, it means that he/she purposely did it to imitate our dog who did it first. Instead of explaining it as is, everyone calls it naka-uk-uk (as if you don’t have a neck). We also have gulgul, which refers to a manner of tickling someone’s back or nape using their elbow. This causes extreme, annoyingly funny sensation. Hence, when someone throws you that tickle, it becomes tigagulgul (tiga + gulgul). Before we know it, everyone is screaming, hastily running away from the paragulgul—usually me.

Theory of Language Dynamism

Human speech, in general, is prone to change due to environmental, geographical, cultural, social, and other external factors. It’s what makes our language dynamic, thereby influencing language patterns and evolution—the birth of dialects, varieties, and even a separate language.

In the context of our home, I have observed that the unique vocabularies my siblings and I made were formed as a response to our changing verbal needs, that’s why I categorized them as to their purpose. In addition to new words formed, here are other patterns that supported language dynamism occurring at our home:

Semantic shift.

This happens when we give new meaning to an already existing word in Tagalog or Bikol. For instance, ídto (from Bikol ídto, “to point to an object far from us”) is given a new meaning: this, to point to an object at the speaker’s hand. It’s important to note that the Bikol ídto is not used in standard Legazpeño but utó. This semantic shift was confined to the context of our home and is not understood by our neighborhood.

Malapropism.

This refers to misunderstanding or misuse of words. For instance, ok-ok (a person without a neck) was misused to mean a person pretending to have no neck (became naka-uk-uk). This is in relation to a common shrug we used to do at home, by strangely prolonging that shrug high up our neck when asked and does not know the answer to it.

Word play.

This is in relation to making fun of a word. For instance, ipis (which means sister) is a play of the word áte (pluralized in English as átes > atis > itis > ipis). There came a time when we often used átis, coincidentally used to make fun of the Tagalog riddle, “Ate ko, ate mo, ate ng lahat ng tao,” where the answer to it is the fruit átis (as in the pluralization of átes in English).

Infantile speech.

Also known as baby talk. We lost this speech for quite some time, after the five of my siblings grew way past our puberty. It came back when my nephew was born. Infantile speech is a common language pattern not specific at my home. This is very much like in English where, instead of saying adorable, they say adowable. Eventually, it led to the formation of new words. For instance, udót-údot (possibly derived from kakudot-kudot), which we use to refer to something irritably too cute not to be pinched.

Blocked-nasal speech.

Blocked-nasal speech happens when your wet mucus blocks your nasals while having common colds or fever. We used to do this speech for fun even though we don’t really have colds. Hence, instead of saying, “Wara man ngani ako kaan,” we’d say, “Wada bad gadi ago gaad” (I said I don’t have that one). This is spoken in a manner by purposedly blocking your nasals where the consonants /m/, /n/, and /ŋ/ significantly changes into voice stops /b/, /d/, and /g/, respectively.

Pluralization.

Legazpeño, as in many features of Bikol languages, essentially don’t need the plural marker “mga” to pluralize a word. You can leave them conjugated and still understand that there are more people doing the action. For instance, the word nagkakaon (eating) means someone is eating, but nagkakaraon (the infix -ra- pluralizes the subject to agree with the verb) means several people are eating. My siblings and I often do it even if it’s not meant for several people. Hence, whenever my brother invites me to eat, he’d say, ‘magkaraon ka na’ even though I am obviously one person.

How would the language patterns of your home differ?

Feel free to participate on a personal linguistics study I am working on about language patterns at home, specifically about words created within the context of your family. I am interested to know how words are formed within a home and what circumstances are attached for this pattern to occur.