Visayan Spelling

[ladislav]

In the Visayan languages, there is largely no difference between "i" and "e" and "o" and"u". Also, there is no difference between "p" and "f" and "b" and "v".
In the original Baybayin alphabets, those pairs were one sound/one letter. This is why many Visayans interchange those letters. They sometimes do not hear the difference and have a hard time writing those out correctly in the Roman alphabet.
This creates some confusion when it comes to spelling out names in English. Thus you may have both Jovilyn and Juvilin. And some Visayan would write " Hillo" in the chatroom.
I knew one lady whose name was "Ave". I always thought it was from Ave Maria. But it was actually Abigail. "Abi".
One lady's name was Vicky. I thought it was short for Victoria. However, it turned out to be "Becky". Her name was Rebecca.
In Waray, there is little difference between "l" and "r". So, "walay" and "waray" sounds the same to them. Just like it would in Japanese. It's a sound in between.
So, there is a Waray lady I know whose name is Junarin. Which in other Philippine languages would be "Jonalyn".
One of the few PH languages that actually have the " f" sound are tribal languages on Mindanao. In T'boli, a frog is "fak".

[publicduende]

In the Visayan languages, there is largely no difference between "i" and "e" and "o" and"u". Also, there is no difference between "p" and "f" and "b" and "v".
In the original Baybayin alphabets, those pairs were one sound/one letter. This is why many Visayans interchange those letters. They sometimes do not hear the difference and have a hard time writing those out correctly in the Roman alphabet.
This creates some confusion when it comes to spelling out names in English. Thus you may have both Jovilyn and Juvilin. And some Visayan would write " Hillo" in the chatroom.
I knew one lady whose name was "Ave". I always thought it was from Ave Maria. But it was actually Abigail. "Abi".
One lady's name was Vicky. I thought it was short for Victoria. However, it turned out to be "Becky". Her name was Rebecca.
In Waray, there is little difference between "l" and "r". So, "walay" and "waray" sounds the same to them. Just like it would in Japanese. It's a sound in between.
So, there is a Waray lady I know whose name is Junarin. Which in other Philippine languages would be "Jonalyn".
One of the few PH languages that actually have the " f" sound are tribal languages on Mindanao. In T'boli, a frog is "fak".

It's the same among Tagalog speakers, actually. No differences between "p" and "f" and "b" and "v" (the latter is very common also in South America), and they also tend to switch "i"s and "e"s and "o"s and "u", especially when talking informally/relaxed. We always hear "hinde" and "kase" instead of "hindi" and "kasi", for "no" and "because" respectively.

I had a long-ish conversation about this with one of my wife's best friend, a sales consultant with a big penchant for linguistics.

It does look like the entire Filipino culture is one where spoken language has not only meaning, but also "sound" value. When she said that to me, I immediately reminisced what I read several years ago about another great culture, this time an ancient one, the Celtic. The Celts, like the Filipinos, placed an immense importance on oral tradition. In other words they had no books and the bulk of their traditions and culture would propagate across space and time in the form of songs. Bards were a specific caste in their society, whose function was primarily to memorise thousands of such songs, mostly about heroes and myths, important events and places, etc., and belt them out at every possible occasion.

The thing that struck me is that these songs often alternated sections where words were actual Celtic sentences, with others where words and sounds were strung together, mingled and "played with" just because they sounded good in sequence. In other terms, songs would switch between sounds that would convey a meaning and sounds that would just entertain and please the ear.

I am no linguist but, given the vast musical tradition of both the Celts and the Filipinos, I am not surprised to notice that Filipino don't mind playing with their language in ways that would be considered inappropriate or useless in other Western cultures.

I read that modern Tagalog and Cebuano (Bisaya) are bastardised by modern English and Spanish loan words. However, it appears that both are deep languages, capable of rendering complex states of body, mind, and soul.

Wife's friend told us that rethorical devices, in Filipino languages, basically do not exist. To say "the colour of happiness" is not a synesthesia, as we would define in Western rethoric. Filipinos actually "feel" that happiness may have a colour. Another example, when hearing "the skies have blessed us", Filipinos think of a spiritual force residing in the skies who is capable of blessing men.

It's as if, when speaking, the "informative" blends with the "evocative" seamlessly, without the need to explicitly communicate a change of style, or context.

These connections between language and mind are, perhaps, what shapes the Filipino perception of reality around them, and beyond them. Perhaps that's why it's easy, for many of them, to come across as overly dreamy, romantic, or cheesy. Who knows...