18 Hokkien loanwords in Tagalog for the Chinese New Year

(Updated 2:56 p.m., Feb. 12) Being the language of those who were the most heavily colonized and otherwise influenced by foreigners in Philippine history, Tagalog is made up of thousands of borrowed words—from Malay to Castillian Spanish to Japanese to English to Nahuatl to Sanskrit to Arabic to Hokkien Chinese.

 

The presence of words from each culture holds clues to several periods in our history and what may have possibly happened then.

 

Hokkien Chinese, in particular, is one of the most common Chinese languages spoken outside the mainland. It originated from Fujian province in the south of China—a center of migration and trade, which explains how it was brought to the Philippine archipelago by merchants and migrants.

 

Having just celebrated Chinese New Year and because 18 is this year's lucky number, we zeroed in on 18 loanwords from Hokkien Chinese.

Who would have thought? The words ancestral Filipinos chose to borrow from their trade partners seem very telling, don't you think?

 

— JDS/BM, GMA News

This story originally included words that did not actually originate from Hokkien Chinese, according to Bahay Tsinoy director Meah Ang See. We have amended the list.