What’s In A Word?

What’s in a word? Well, the culture. Linguistics is a scientific approach to study language. It analyzes phonetics, morphology, semantics, syntax morphology, and even pragmatics.

All of these are reflections of the culture where that language is spoken. If you can dissect the language of a culture, and study how it developed, you will understand how the culture evolved.

Kanin at Snow

In the Philippines, there are several words for rice and the different states it is in:

• Kanin (cooked rice)
• Bahaw (cooked rice that has stayed for quite some time)
• Malata (cooked rice with too much water)
• Tutong (slightly overcooked rice making it a bit crispy)
• Sunog (overly cooked rice that has turned black)
• Kaning lamig (cooked rice that has already gone cold)
• Hilaw (undercooked rice that needs more cooking time)

However, when asked how many terms they have on snow, they will say only one, niyebe which not a lot of Filipinos know, or simply “isno” which is the Filipino pronunciation of snow.

In Alaska on the other hand, if you ask how many words they have pertaining to snow and the different states they have, they can give you a whole bunch. They have:

• Aput, (snow on the ground)
• Qana (falling snow)
• Piqsirpoq (drifting snow)
• Qimuqsuq (snowdrift)
• Matsaaruti (wet snow that can be used to ice a sleigh’s runners)
• Pukak (the crystalline powder snow that looks like salt)
• Aqilokoq (softly falling snow)
• Piegnartoq (the snow that is good for driving sled)

These are just a few examples. It has been written that they may have more than a hundred different words pertaining to snow. But when asked the number of terms they have for rice, they might not even have one. Because they have no rice on ice.

Because of this, it is interesting to study why a couple in the U.S. may be called a husband and wife, where the husband is the male and the wife is the female. However, in the Philippines, when two persons get married, they are simply called “mag-asawa,” and both the husband and wife are called asawa. When introducing, the male can present the female as my “asawa” while the female can also present the male as my “asawa”. But in the U.S., the male presents the female as his “wife” and the female presents the male as her “husband.” It cannot be interchanged.

So in the U.S., though the couple has been married, they still have separate terms, husband and wife. While in the Philippines, when they get married, they love their individuality and become one and the same, asawa. This being the case, how would that reflect on how the societies perceive the concept of marriage and the merging of two individuals? Do they truly become one, or do they simply live in the same house?

What’s in a word they ask. Aren’t they just a combination of letters, or sounds, or even actions that are used to describe something? Yes, they may be so, but what is interesting is not that the words describe something. It is understanding the something that the word describes. And that is the culture that exists behind the words we use.