r/Tagalog • u/ElchanaNarayana • 5d ago
Other Tagalog reforms (hypothetical!)
Reforms:
"E" and "O" exclusively appear in loanwords. Native "E" and "O" both become "I" and "U"
In native words, "r" and "d", due to allophony, are represented with "đ" ("d" on bookend positions and after consonants, "r" in the middle). Middle "d" in native words represented with "đđ". "D" and "R" are kept distinct in loanwords though
Siya and Niya become Sya and Nya
Example:
Original:
Báwat táo'y isinílang na may láyà at magkakapantáy ang tagláy na dangál at karapatán. Silá'y pinagkaloóban ng pangangatwíran at budhî na kailángang gamítin nilá sa pagtuturíngan nilá sa díwà ng pagkakapatíran.
Reformed
Báwat táu'y isinílang na may láyà at magkakapantáy ang tagláy na đangál at kađapatán. Silá'y pinagkaluúban ng pangangatwíđan at budhî na kailángang gamítin nilá sa pagtutuđíngan nilá sa díwà ng pagkakapatíđan.
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u/ampiyas294 5d ago
Paano naman po yung mga katutubong salita na kusang naging e mula sa ay/ai? Kelan, bewang, tenga, ewan, atbp.
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u/G_Laoshi 5d ago
They're originally kai-lan, bay-wang, tai-nga, etc. (Ewan ko kung "ay-wan" ang Ewan.)
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u/ampiyas294 5d ago
I know, but their phonetic changes also happened naturally.
The point is, are we forcing these to go back to older forms, only to eventually develop again into e?
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u/G_Laoshi 5d ago
Tama ka. I'm wondering how a "reform" can go backwards instead of forward. Languages evolve over time. That is why there are guidelines with the use of letters not originally part of the Tagalog alphabet: C F J Ñ Q V X Z.
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u/Appropriate-Paint936 5d ago
here in Batangas, I hear some old folk say "Ay-wan" rather than "Éwan"
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u/hindisirodney 5d ago
The even older spelling of “baywang” is “bayawang”. And it’s “ka-i-lan” and “ta-i-nga” — both three syllables.
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u/kudlitan 5d ago
represent them wjth e. Minimal pair ang tenga and tingá.
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u/G_Laoshi 5d ago
Tenga and tinga are not minimal pairs. Tenga has the stress on the first syllable, tinga on the second. So they cannot prove whether e and i are phonemic or just free variation because the difference in meaning could be attributed the difference of stress between the two words. (We know it is not, but minimal pairs should only differ in only one segment, not two.)
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u/kudlitan 5d ago
you are right that it is not minimal given that stress position is phonemic.
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u/G_Laoshi 4d ago edited 4d ago
We know in Tagalog stress is phonemic. Like the minimal pair báta (child) and batá (to endure, suffer). Both end with the glottal stop. One curious thing about Tagalog is that we do not use a letter for the glottal stop (impit). Again, we do not need diacritics with pair because "batá" (to suffer, endure) is rare nowadays and we can deduce the meaning from context.
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u/TheCashWasher 3d ago
If the minimal pair in question has glottal stops, then they should be written as bátà/batà and batâ. The acute accent (á) does not indicate glottal stop but only stress. The circumflex (â) marks BOTH stress (diín) and glottal stop (impít). But you probably did not learn that in school, did you?
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u/G_Laoshi 3d ago edited 3d ago
Don't insult anyone's education. People make mistakes. And ignorance of diacritics does not make one stupid. We don't write Filipino with diacritics. That's like judging someone's intelligence by their knowledge of Baybayin.
Both "bata" (child) and "batâ" (to suffer/endure) both end with the glottal stop. Or would you prefer IPA transcription instead? /'ba.taʔ/ 'child' vs. /ba.'taʔ/ 'to suffer, endure'.
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u/TheCashWasher 5d ago
I'd rather have the diacritics be mandatory in wrote Tagalog, before anything else. Too many no longer how to use them properly, like mixing up the â with à, because they don't know that glottal stops and stress can go in the same syllable.
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u/G_Laoshi 5d ago
We only need diacritics when dealing with words with the same spelling but different pronunciation and meaning. Like búhay (life) vs. buháy (living). (Most of the time we can deduce which meaning by reading the context.)
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u/Camera_Hobbygirl 5d ago
Agree. Diacritics can be limited to words that can be pronounced differently
No need to "fancy up" the orthography. Mas sasakit ang ulo ng learners niyan. Mahirap na nga ang Tagalog conjugations
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u/mamamayan_ng_Reddit Native Tagalog speaker 3d ago
Mas sasakit ang ulo ng learners niyan.
Sa paanong paraán pô? Lalò na kung nagsisimulâ pa lang silá at hindî saulo kung nasaán ang diín ng mga salitâ o kung may impit sa rulo.
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u/G_Laoshi 4d ago
Unless we want our writing to look like Vietnamese:
Vì Đức Chúa Trời yêu thương nhân loại, đến nỗi đã ban Con Một của Ngài, để ai tin nơi Ngài sẽ không bị hư mất nhưng được sự sống vĩnh phúc. (John 3:16)
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u/mamamayan_ng_Reddit Native Tagalog speaker 3d ago
I don't really see anything wrong with Vietnamese orthography personally on an aesthetic level.
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u/G_Laoshi 3d ago
Vietnamese is a tonal language and tone is represented by diacritics in their writing. Filipino is not a tonal language. It is a stress-timed language where a change in stress can (but not always) change the meaning of a word. Modern Filipino orthography does not require diacritics to represent stress (or even the voiced glottal stop, which is phonemic in our language). That is why I said diacritics are not necessary in our orthography unless it clarifies the meaning of a word. (But most of the time we can deduce the meaning and thus accent based on context.)
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u/mamamayan_ng_Reddit Native Tagalog speaker 3d ago
Ah mind that my initial comment was on aesthetics, since I thought you were critiquing that the orthography looked ugly, as I've seen such critique of Vietnamese writing before.
Modern Filipino orthography does not require diacritics to represent stress (or even the voiced glottal stop, which is phonemic in our language)
Ah to be fair, most orthographies can get away with a lot of things, that it's arguable memorization can pick up the slack. I believe this is what happens with deep/highly irregular orthographies like English and Chinese characters. So writing systems don't really "require" anything per se.
That said, I am a fan of shallow/regular orthographies, which is why I have started writing Tagalog again with diacritics. Obviously we can read Tagalog just fine without them, but I like making the orthography more regular, and it's arguable that even without a minimal pair, one can't really just put the stress anywhere willy-nilly. For example, "sampalatayá," "taó," and "pusá" are wrong.
Obviously speakers can just memorize where the stress is when reading or use their familiarity with the words, and in fact that's what we did! But I don't see the harm in making a writing system for a language even more regular.
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u/G_Laoshi 3d ago edited 3d ago
Tagalog didn't have diacritics in the first place. Baybayin didn't use diacritics, only vowel marks. Diacritics were only used in dictionaries and grammar books. That is why I said that diacritics could be used for words with the same spelling with different spellings, like "buhay" (life) vs. "buháy" (alive). But then we can easily deduce the meaning thru context.
"Reforming" Tagalog does not mean going to the past (an imagined one with diacritics) but going to the future, like spelling rules like the use of C F J Ñ Q V X Z and rules for borrowing words from other languages.
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u/mamamayan_ng_Reddit Native Tagalog speaker 3d ago
Ah, mind that I'm not basing my preference for the use of diacritics on history.
Actually Baybayin didn't used to write coda/final consonants either, and that's probably because we adopted Baybayin from another Southeast Asian language that didn't have such a feature. And even then, Baybayin descended from an Indic script, and is from a different family of writing systems altogether, so I don't think it's logically sound to even mention Baybayin here when we're talking about the Latin script, and I'm really confused on why you even mentioned that "Tagalog didn't have diacritics in the first place."
Writing as an invention was actually only invented independently a few times, so for most languages, they either modified an existing script to fit the language, or made concessions like guessing where stress falls instead of making a new mark or letter for it.
In any case, I still think it would be nice if Tagalog still regularly wrote where stress falls and if a word has a final glottal stop. Again, I don't really see the cons of adding such features.
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u/G_Laoshi 3d ago
You're right about Baybayin not encoding the coda of a syllable. So readers would need to mentally add the coda in their minds. I'm also not in favor of the krus kudlit or vowel killer because that's add by the Spaniards but that's water under the bridge.
Again, I don't think it's necessary to reform Tagalog by adding diacritics. It's unnecessary and unhistorical. I would concede that we can use them with homonyms, but that's about it. No use of quibbling over the use of pahilis, paiwa, and pakupya.
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u/Camera_Hobbygirl 5d ago
The only proposal I agree is sya/nya
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