The Google translation for 'apologize' that you've gotten literally means 'ask for forgiveness'. I don't think these have to be unapologies they're standard ways to apologize (and there are others, which are more formal and less common, that use entirely Tagalog words here's a website that offers 'Ipagpaumanhin po ninyo ang aking pagkakamali', literally "Please forgive my mistake":) You also often hear people borrowing the English word 'sorry'. The expression that the author quotes literally means something like 'be patient' (it starts with a Spanish loanword, meaning 'patience') it does have a 2nd person subject when its subject is overtly expressed (which it isn't, in the version that the author quotes), but then, so does 'Pardon me' in English, so I'm not sure how deeply culturally significant this is. The idea that lacking a single word for something means the concept doesn't exist in a language is fun. In Malay, there's no single word for 'sorry' so you say minta maaf, which means '(I) ask forgiveness'. "A bit thin" is a fair description, I think.] While most observers assume that he does this to communicate with the majority of Filipinos, it is also possible that he feels most comfortable in his native tongue and most likely also thinks in it. When he speaks publicly in the Philippines, Aquino prefers Filipino and hardly ever uses English. Most Filipinos use the word 'sorry' ad Mr Cruz's argument is a bit thin since the Philippine president a) is very fluent in English and b) would communicate with his opposite number in China in English. Filed by Mark Liberman under Language and culture.He is president of the Manila Times College and a former under-secretary (deputy minister) of education in the Philippines. The author has a PhD in English from the University of Maryland. In this general line of language, Google Translate offers this as Filipino options for English "apology": And it may be true that Filipino conventional unapologies are more transparently not actually apologies at all - perhaps some readers who know Filipino can comment on this.īut surely Tagalog would allow the president to say things like "I made a mistake", or "I failed to prepare adequately for this situation", or "I ask you to pardon me for what I did (or for what I failed to so)", if he wanted to do so. It's true that the conventional English phrase "I'm sorry" is often used in unapologies whose content amounts to saying "I'm sorry that you've chosen to take offense at something that was not my fault and anyhow was not wrong and maybe didn't even happen at all". But it is important for the people in Hong Kong to understand that it is lingually impossible for a Filipino to apologize in the British or American sense, because the words for admitting fault do not exist in Tagalog or Filipino. Needless to say, there may be political or lingual reasons for Aquino's reticence when it comes to apologizing to Hong Kong.
It's important to note that the personal pronoun used is in second person, not the first. There is no word for "sorry" or "apology." When Filipinos are at fault, they say in Tagalog or Filipino, "Pasensiya na." That literally translates into, "Please forget your anger" or "Please let it go". There is something peculiar about the Tagalog and even the Filipino language. The refusal so far of Philippine President Benigno Aquino III to issue a formal apology for the hostage-taking incident in Manila in August, 2010, in which eight Hong Kong tourists were killed, may be blamed partly on a lingual misunderstanding.Īquino's mother tongue is Tagalog, once the national language of the Philippines, now replaced by Filipino, which is based on it. Cruz, " Lingual misunderstanding to blame for refusal to apologize?", China Daily : Following up on yesterday's " No word for rape" post, several readers have pointed me to another recent addition for the "No word for X" archive, namely Isagani R.
0 kommentar(er)
