NOMADS
OF THE PACIFICS
Over 2000 years BC ago, the longest marine migration of people in the world
started. The Neolithic people from Southeast Asia riding on outrigger canoes
began a series of eastward voyages to the Pacific. They carried with them
the Malayo-Polynesian language that we know today. The Philippines alone
has over 100 dialects belonging to this language family.
The much earlier indigenous Filipinos probably came through the land
bridge somewhere in Palawan . This was during the time when foot travel
was possible to the Asian mainland and this theory was supported by the
presence of elephants in Sumatra. These giant pachyderms could have not
been possibly transported by sea.
These ancient mariners learned from their observations of the current
of the wind and wave started chasing where the sun rises. Some drifted
as far north (probably because of tropical hurricanes) of the Philippines
in Formosa where you can see traces of the Malay language among the mountain
people. The clans settled and formed Barangay alone the coast line ready
to make the next voyage. They were governed by Barangay ashore and afloat
because these ocean-going canoes were also called "Barangay." The rest
leap- frogged to the various islands toward the fabled eastern Eastern
Island where they fatefully met their end.
My observation of the language connections...
HILAGA
Hilaga is the Tagalog term for north. It can be seen as more evidence of
early Tagalogs' keen observation of his natural world. HILAGA is formed
from"hil" and"ga" The distinct word "hila" means to pull and the syllable
"ga" basically means to stop or rest. The word hila explicitly illustrates
another observation made by early Tagalog which this time pertains to the
science of dynamics, in the field now known as Kinetics. Broken down into"hi"
(actually h-i which basically means move-not) and la which means travel,
"hila" pictures the action of moving even without exerting any effort.
With the suffix "ga" which means to stop, "hilaga" then refers to being
pulled then stopping or coming to rest.
Even before the invention of magnetic compass about 5,000 years ago,
ancient men knew that lodestones or metals possessing magnetism, iron filings
and iron particles in molten rocks tend to point to the North, which in
a sense, are being pulled and then coming to rest pointing in that direction.
Ancient Tagalog must have surely observed this phenomenon of lodestones
pointing to the North that he applied the term Hilaga to that particular
direction. Pilipino Encyclopedia source:mr&ms
SILANGAN
We wonder sometimes how words originated. The word (country) Japan (Nippon)
is a Chinese word for the Land of the Rising Sun or Land in the East relative
to the Chinese mainland location. In Tagalog, East is silangan meaning
the direction where the sun rises. This is from the root word silang meaning
also born or coming from.
ILOCANO
The late William Henry Scott, historian and author of many books, once
wrote that the Visayan sailors of Pre-Hispanic times knew of the mariners'
compass. they called it padaluman, the place of the needle. observation:
the Ilokano for west is laud, which is the same word as the Malay/Tagalog
laut meaning sea (and i'm sure it has the same meaning in other Philippine
languages). that's interesting to me because the sea is to the west Of
the ilokos. The etymology is clear: the early ilokanos knew that no matter
where they were in their region, if they kept going west, sooner or later
they'd find the sea. amianan: north. the direction where the amihan, north
wind blows. (i'm sure it's the northeast monsoon, which blows around Christmas
and brings the cold from Japan and eastern Siberia that is meant here although
there is another Ilokano term for the monsoon Itself.) abagatan: south.
the direction where the habagat wind blows from. i've only seen this word
in the line, "lalo na kung hipan ng hanging habagat." what's that song?
libis ng nayon. daya: east. the root word is related to Indonesian jaya,
as in Irian Jaya,
the Indonesian province on the island of New Guinea. Scott wrote that
daya in languages all around the Malay archipelago (Philippines, Indonesia,
Malaysia, Brunei) meant high. again, ilokano geography seems to have influenced
how the word evolved. East of ilocos are the mountains of the cordillera
(if one classifies the Malaya mountain range a few miles inland as hills).
So daya seems to signify the high place.
OVERVIEW:
Language is the character and soul of the people. Our ancestors conquered
the sea way before the Western navigators. They were the Nomads of the
Pacific and the Moros were the Vikings of the south seas. With their natural
instinct, acquired knowledge, and legend of the sea they surfed the span
of the largest and deepest ocean of the world on the barangay equipped
with the latent sail (probably Arabian influence). They made the Malayo-polynesian
the largest language family in the world during the long amphibious journey.
Had they not failed in the Easter Islands, they may have discovered America
long before Columbus in 1492. The descendants of these gallant seafarers
rode the Spanish Galleon trade ship and found thier ways in southern California
and some settled in the Bayous of Lousiana called St. Malo in the early
18th century.
phix7@yahoo.com
Nestor
Palugod Enriquez
*Nestor Palugod Enriquez, phix7@yahoo.com
*Tagalog "Hilaga" direction provided by Jojo Cruz
*Ilocano directions by Victor Saymo
Last updated on 95/08/14 22:36:08 EDT.