The many ways Filipinos express emotions

My sister came home once with the news of how her boss heard his daughter’s first laughter on his cell phone, and howgarakgak , an Iluko word, instantly came to her mind; but could she tell her boss how this actually describes the sound that thrilled him? How a baby’s laughter first cracks like a branch and screeches with heaves of absent breaths before it bursts into short squeals?

But she held back, knowing that in its English translation, this burst of joy, not just laughter, has no equivalent in a single word with the exact sound—each vowel said purely, instead of a “schwa”.

Laughter has its own word in Iluko, of course, katawa, hinting at briefness, and even at times, insincerity. And when in an attempt to hide laughter caused by someone’s embarrassing display, it brings on ayek-ek, an uncontrolled, continuous tamped down burst that soon turns into a series of mildly violent coughs. Here, I wish to add the Tagalog (Filipino) hagikgik, surely, “giggle” in translation, and note how in saying it, one feels how the body shakes.

There’s “gigil”, too, referring to an urge to pinch someone, who one finds extremely cute like a baby, out joy, one of two words that have made it to Tim Lomas’s Positive Lexicography Project ,just now a-building at the University of East London, for feelings without equivalents in English. Lacking in his research though would be the opposite meaning of “gigil”, an urge to harm an annoying person out of vexation.

If in English, what could describe how fans feel meeting their favorite pop star might be mere adulation that brings about screaming; in Filipino, it’s killig, a deeply tickled feeling that brings on body twisting gestures as if to coil around the star, or a jittery flutter of limbs, when talking to a “crush”. Haven’t we even compounded the word, to indicate a deeper feeling, switching our tongues to Taglish in “kilig to the bones”?

With his project, Lomas aims to further enrich the English language with “’untranslatable’ experiences, as had some French and German words that wormed their way into its vocabulary, like ‘frisson’ and schadenfreude’ hence, a more nuanced understanding of ourselves.” Apparently, his choices “represent very precise emotional experiences that are neglected in our language,” as he so states.

I wonder though if Lomas has considered how language, being deeply entrenched in culture embodies the totality of one’s being layered over by influences of earth, air, water, living things; with what language we whisper, sing, murmur, chant, declare, shout, scream, write for one to read under fluorescent light, Coleman light-flood, moonlight, candle light–how we whine and laugh and cuddle up wordless or word-full, with what flowers we offer our sighs, what trees we carve arrow-pierced hearts, from what looming shadows we scamper away, what wings we shoot down, from what edges of cliffs we plunge off to get to our dreams.

So far, it’s words about good feelings that interest him. For me, those of sadness and grieving might deepen the understanding he seeks. In languages like mine born of life, a borrowed word–just one, say “cry” or “sob”–fails to bring out how anug-og in Iluko pictures a bent figure broken in grief, shaking with spasms of pain, sobbing an animal cry that escapes from the depth of caves.

Dung-aw, simply translates as lament in English but in Iluko, unravels a dirge, which a man or a woman unleashes during a wake. An Ilokano says dung-aw and instantly pictures how a woman or man, not necessarily kin to the deceased but known to the family—who isn’t family in a neighborhood or town, even, anyway? Veiled in black sadness has wrinkled, creeps to the dead, kneels and beating breasts, relates a life story now a dirge on the footmarks which those attending the wake follow in sorrowful steps, sniffling, but some chuckling, too, with humor thrown in–what life is ever without it?

Or saning-i, one of my favorite words, portrays someone–usually a woman in a dark corner splayed on the basar (suelo in Tagalog, floor in English), propped by a teddek (wooden post), the neckline of her dress naka-tallay (off shoulder in a careless way), the hem of her dress, nakayamukom (gathered)—deeply hurt, flayed in spirit, melting in helplessness, too enfeebled to even scream or sob, simply shaking with sorrow in what sounds like staccato coughing broken by wet sniffles. Saning-i is also the cry of a child suffering from chronic hunger pain as in children whipped into living skeletons due to kwashiorkor, or a baby burning with fever.

Language could be as mysterious as the spirit, indeed. Take how the Filipino word for snow–yelo (hielo) when later experienced in reality by immigrants to Northwestern America, turns into kaskas yelo or how Filipinos look at fresh-driven snow the first time as they scoop it to taste, recalling or wishing for a glass of halo-halo in hand. Given how Filipinos have infused foreign languages with their own spirit, I wonder what more might Lomas discover in us.