by Alex Garcia
If one day the readers of this post are tempted to travel to one of the 7000 islands that make up the Philippine archipelago, they will most likely first fly into Manila, from which a long list of stunningly beautiful islands are only a short flight away. Others might prefer to stay on Luzon island, and visit the colorful Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras, or the colonial architecture of the city of Vigan, both listed as World Heritage Sites. In the latter case, they will take a bus to the mountainous town of Baguio (also known as the summer capital due to its cool climate), before accessing the Central Cordillera, one of the country’s main mountain ranges and also one of the most ethnically diverse regions.
Panoramic view of the Banaue Rice Terraces (source)
The bus departs from Cubao bus terminal in Manila, an area in which Tagalog, the national language, is spoken. It soon reaches provinces in which some of the so-called regional or “major” languages are spoken, including Pangasinan, Kapampangan or Ilokano (with one, two and nine million speakers respectively). A number of lesser known languages are also spoken nearby: in the West, several Aeta languages are spread around the Zambales mountains. In the East, across the Sierra Madre mountain range, we find languages like Agta, Alta, Arta or Ilongot. This short journey is an accurate sample of the richness and diversity of the Philippines’ linguistic landscape: with over a hundred million inhabitants, more than 150 languages (see language map here), and several different writing systems.
As the bus goes through different towns, local street vendors hop on to sell snacks such as fried pork skin or peanuts: “chicharron, mani, chicharron, mani….pasalubong!”. Hungry travelers enjoy these delicacies and some bring them as presents for their relatives and friends, following the pasalubong tradition —a gift brought when going or returning from a trip. Within a few hours, the bus stops in one of the rest areas along the way. At the restaurant, the menu offers a selection of local dishes such as kaldereta, adobo, or tapa, and sweets such as ensaymada, turón or polvorón. Once they reach the city of Baguio, the travellers can take a stroll around the famous city market and try the renowned longganisa, or get some fresh fruits and vegetables like mais, papaia, kamote or kamatis.
Some of these words may seem familiar to those who speak some Spanish and may also evoke the colonial past of the archipelago, or the Manila galleons. These ships periodically sailed from the west coast of Mexico to the island of Guam, and eventually reached Manila bay, where they would unload products from the American continent. The galleons would then head north, towards the eastern coast of Japan, and use the Kuroshio Current to complete their tornaviaje or return route across the Pacific Ocean. This commercial route maintained its activity for over 250 years, a long period that led to the exchange of goods between the two continents putting many cultures and languages in contact.
This is how on both the streets of La Havana and Manila, it is possible to hear peanut street vendors using the same word to promote their products: mani. Several sources indicate that the word mani comes from Taíno, a language that was spoken in the Caribbean during pre-Columbian times. The word did not only reach the southern tip of Latin-America (it is commonly used in Argentina and Chile), it also crossed Mexico and reached Acapulco, then boarded one of the galleons and travelled across the Pacific. Upon arriving in Manila Bay, it continued its journey, and spread probably through one of the regional languages, eventually reaching smaller languages spoken in rural areas.
Many other words made a similar journey, and travelled from native American languages to remote areas of the Philippines. In a study on this topic, Linguist Paloma Albalá, notes that Nahuatl (the language of the Aztecs) made a considerable contribution to the lexicons of Philippine languages: it donated words such as camote ‘sweet potato’, tomate ‘tomato’, cacahuate ‘peanut’, coyote ‘coyote’, aguacate ‘avocado’, chile ‘chili pepper’, or tiza ‘chalk’ among many others. From the Taino language, words such as hamaca ‘hammock’, papaya ‘papaya’, mais ‘corn’, barbacoa ‘barbeque’, or tabaco ‘tobacco’ were borrowed. The study also identifies words from other American language families such as the Quechua (condor ‘condor’, papa ‘potato’), Tupi-guarani (jaguar ‘jaguar’, tapioca ‘tapioca’), Algonquian (tobogan ‘slide’, totem ‘totem’), Mapuche (cari ‘pepper’) and Chibcha (chicha ‘corn liquor’).
Many of these words can be viewed as cultural borrowings, a type of borrowing that occurs when the reality referred to by a word in the source language does not exist in the language of the recipient. When they arrived in America, the colonists encountered a variety of flora and fauna unknown to them and needed words to name them. As the author of the same study indicates, the simplest solution to the problem was to adopt the terms of indigenous origin. A similar situation occurred a few years later with the arrival of the galleons, given that many of the goods transported in the holds did not exist in the archipelago. In this regard, travelling to the Philippines is not only travelling to the Austronesian world, it is also, to a certain extent, a journey to the cultures of pre-Columbian America.
References
Albalá, Paloma. “Hispanic words of Indoamerican origin in the Philippines.” Philippine Studies (2003): 125-146.