Another strange borrowing: Tagalog
Here's another one I've been musing about (and my first post since 2004!!!) - in the Philippino language Tagalog, the word for "work" is "trabaho" - an obvious borrowing from Spanish. Why did this happen? Didn't they have a word for work? Maybe "trabaho" has a slightly different meaning in Tagalog than in Spanish, as in "paid work" as opposed to "homework" or "house work" - I don't know. Maybe someone who knows Tagalog can help me out here.
Labels: borrowing, linguistics, Tagalog, trabaho
posted by Laura Blumenthal @ 1:22 p.m.
5 Comments:
hi,
It is true that "trabaho" was borrowed from Spanish, but I find it hard to believe that the Filipino people had no word for "work." I suppose that Filipinos adopted the word as a consequence of imperialism. When a dominant power takes over a lesser entity, aspects of the dominant country bleed into the smaller country's culture. Language is an especially vulnerable area.
In Tagalog, "trabaho" does mean "paid work" more than anything, although it can also mean a household chore. In the case of "homework," Filipinos use the word "aral," which means "study."
oh, and "Philippino" should be "Filipino".
Good question!
en ar•rière (än nȧ ryer′): 1. behind 2. in arrears is borrowed from french to turkish
after the 1st world war. It is widely known and used as "anarya" in the south & southeastern parts of Turkey which has been controlled by the french army for sometime after the war.
A person from Adana or Urfa or Mersin would know what "it" means and use it in daily conversation but some other guy from Istanbul or İzmir or Ankara wouldn't have a clue about what the word; anarya(turkish) _en ar•rière (än nȧ ryer′ means.
Unlike it's french meaning, "the word" is still used as a substitute for "driving backwards" in mostly kurdish areas of turkey.
why would such a remote and economically poor area in turkey, borrow a word from french as a substitute of going backwards(only by a car), between the years 1918-1923, where in both regions(south and southeast of turkey) the whole population probably owned less than 50 or less cars?
_ using a spanish word instead of tagalog in philippines is no suprise to me cuz even the country is named after the spanish king Philippe the 2nd, as far as i know but having no word for "working" is quite surprising to me and since there are hundreds of languages in filipino islands, i now see that it's not just the official language"tagalog" having no words for "working" but the other filipino languages like Aklanon, Maranao, Bangon,
Bikol Central,Iriga Bikol, Capiznon, etc. are missing it,. too. Am i right?
1) That's very interesting about "anarya" in Turkish - I'd never heard that before.
2) I can't answer your question about Tagalog and the other Philippine languages. Anyway, you seem to know a lot more about these languages than I do?
3) Who are you? Do I know you? Merak ettim sadece.
Laura 3:)
yekta from iletişim(eskişehir). 90-95 :)
Oh! Merhaba, Yekta!
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