The making of Pinoy Dictionary Today

Wikipedia and Google Define referred some entries from Edgie Polistico's Philippine Food and Cooking Dictionary

2011-03-24T20:36:00.010+08:00

Edgie keeps on setting footprints throughout the countryside and in Metro Manila.

Check this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalamay
Wikipedia picked an entry from my food dictionary.

Google Define also made a reference to Pinoy Dictionary Today in defining balut sa puti.

I appreciate and they made a link back to my original post.

My coffee mug. It's too expensive to be a coffee addict.

Click here to visit Edgie Polistico's Philippine Food and Cooking Dictionary

Click here to try the illustrated version of the same dictionary

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Reminiscing the moments gone by.

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It has been two and a half decades ago when Edgie started compiling and re-writing his dictionaries. He was 15 years old and was a third year high school student in his hometown, Inopacan. At that time, this quiet coastal town in western part of Leyte has not seen yet the light and power of electricity. Edgie used kerosene lamp at night to light his small room where he spent time browsing through his notes and some old books and a worn out copy of Webster dictionary of his Lolo Tolong.

To sustain the light, he used to sell tangkong (the swamp cabbage or water spinach, a vine that is often used as fodder for pigs) so this guy could buy kerosene with the money he earned from selling tangkong. With his father's old and rusty bicycle, Edgie would peddle tangkong around town or deliver the harvested vines directly to Aling Suling, an old lady who owned a sari-sari store (variety store). Aling Suling was his suki (usual buyer) in the market.

The kind of tangkong vines that Edgie used to harvest back home.

There were those moments that coffee beans in the upland were ripe for harvesting that Edgie would join his mother in climbing the mountains of Caminto and Cabulisan to help her harvest some coffee beans. The money he earned from selling coffee beans would go to her mother's purse for the budget in their daily needs back home. Edgie would only asked her mother to buy him a pair of shirt and short pants (long pants was too expensive for them then) for school and few notebooks and newsprint bond paper (the cheapest one) as writing pad in his research on Cebuano and English words. He was the only one in their school who took notes using folded bond papers. He binded and fashioned the bond papers to look like a thick hard-bound book complete with sheet of plastic acetate as protective cover. To these days, Edgie still keeps his binded notes to remind him of his struggling life in high school.

When it was time to harvest abaca in the mountain, He would again join his mother in the mountain and found himself in the group of manunuksi (abaca strips harvester) trying hard to peel lapnis (strips from the stem of abaca) with a curve blade of tuksi (the tool used in peeling strips of abaca fiber).

When it is time to harvest coconuts, this young man would join also his parents in gathering coconut fruits and helped the mangungopras (copra maker) in splitting the coco fruits with an ax, as well as in prying the nuts using the lugit (tool used in prying out copra from the shell of split coconut) and in drying copra in the tap-anan (copra dryer that uses heat and smoke from burning firewood). From the mountain, they have to walk their way for almost the whole day with several episodes of heavy panting or catching of one’s breath in going up and down the mountainous terrain.

Years went by very fast. Finally, he finished high school without minding the hardship in life. When college came, his uncle sent him to the Divine Word University (DWU) in Tacloban City. It was from this university that Edgie seriously pursued his research on Visayan languages. While in collge, Edgie spent lots of time in the Filipiniana Section of the DWU Library that more often he would stay there browsing books like bookworm till the library would close at night.

On weekends, after doing routine house works and errands, he would take the big Oxford dictionaries from the study room of his uncle and continued with his research.

The would-be-lexicographer does research whatever light is available. This one was during his stay in his uncle's house in V&G Subdivision in Tacloban City

When he got his first job at the Provincial Capitol of Leyte as the personal secretary of his uncle who was then elected Provincial Board Member, Edgie bought his first pocket Collin's English Dictionary with his first salary.

As the years went by, he got a job as data encoder in a big insurance company where he had his first chance to use computer in his research and other linguistic studies. With his earnest desire to know the basic of computer programming, though short of resources, he resorted to self-help by reading any available book about computer in the library. When Edgie tried to fix the Word Star Processor of their office computer, he accidentally uncovered the source code of the Word Star application (the grandfather of MS word). He eventually deciphered the programming language of Word Star.

Edgie's study table and mini-library at home in Makati City. The shelves are filled with my collection of different kinds of dictionaries.

Edgie hates to pull this project out from online sharing. To keep this project going, he needs your help. Let's save this project and continue to extend free subscriptions.It is funny to reminisce the ole days upon realizing that the lexicographer of this project could no longer go back to sell tangkong as the swamp where they used to grow had dried out long ago due to climate change. Coffee trees in the mountain were fast disappearing a decade ago, while the abaca industry had long gone when mosaic and bunchy top viruses wiped out totally the abaca fields in the mountains in his hometown. The coconut trees back home are already too old to bear fruits, there maybe some good fruit-bearing trees left but the price of copra now is dirt cheap.

It took him long to fully understand what he needed to know about computer programming as this young man could not afford yet then the cost of going back to school. It was in 2004 that Edgie was able to write and design his first software application for the Edgie Polistico's Cebuano-English Dictionary. When savings permitted him to go back in college, he set aside money and studied computer system programming and design at computer learning center in Makati City and in Alabang, Muntinlupa City.

The certificate of copyright registration and deposit in the The National Library in Manila.

After a decade and a half, here we are now in the internet.

Here, Edgie shares what he gathered, learned and stored from his research . He could have gone far doing better this project if he only have all the resources he needed in pursuing this sort of project.

With the present economic situation and scarcity of financial resources, it is really hard for Edgie to pretend that he can still afford to cope up with the rising cost of pursuing this project. Edgie needs help. Thus, he appeals to have your support and solicits financial assistance. No matter how small is your contribution, it is still a big help to this project.

Send your donation by clicking the "Donate" button, below.

The Edgie Polistico's Cebuano-English Dictionary in CD. Hundreds of copies had been given away for free wherever Edgie goes in the Visayas and Mindanao.

The high costs of conducting research, travels, and operational cost of documentation and writing, as well as the cost in the production and distribution of free CD copies, greatly impaired the operation of making and giving away copies and updates, particularly in the provincial areas where online access is not yet accessible.

The big chance of saving Edgie now from the hounding "writer's block" is to provide him the financial assistance and other resources he needs to keep his project going. Your generosity would help sustain the light that has long kindled this project - starting from Edgie's kerosene lamp way back home long long time ago.
Kindly spread the word.

Salamat ug MABUHI KA!

2001.................................................................................................... 2007

Edgie spends most of his days in Makati City sorting out information from various references.

Click here to visit Edgie Polistico's Philippine Food and Cooking Dictionary
Click here to try the illustrated version of the same dictionary
Click here to download free copy of my digital Cebuano-English Dictionary

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CLICK HERE on how you can help this project
or click the "Donate" button

Thank you for giving.

Micky Fenix partly featured Edgie's dictionary in the Philippine Daily Inquirer

2010-06-26T11:00:00.056+08:00

Country Cooking
By Micky Fenix
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 19:15:00 12/26/2007

Filed Under: Food

In other words

MANILA, Philippines—I had an enjoyable time reading the e-mail of readers who contributed their own food words that take on another meaning in the language. Some of them even explained some of the words that puzzled me in that column.

Arbee Acleta wrote that her “cruel” teacher told a classmate who couldn’t make the grade to “just go home and plant kamote.” Since then, that classmate was called kamote.

Another teacher of hers used larong buko to indicate that their play in Physical Education class was disorganized. She and her classmates described one of their teachers as nag-aalmusal ng kamias because she was always bad-tempered early in the morning.

Some of her other contributions are: utak-biya, utak-mani or utak-lugaw to mean brainless or stupid; mala-ampalaya to mean old maybe because the vegetable is wrinkled all over; mala-labanos and mala-gatas for creamy white skin; giyera-patani for a torrid exchange of accusations; amoy-chico to describe someone who is inebriated; ginisa for having undergone serious interrogation.

Aimee Gonzales had several contributions of her own.
Balat sibuyas - very sensitive
Balat kalabaw - thick-skinned
Marami ka pang kakaining bigas - a person who has a lot more to learn
Matamis na alaala - literal English translation is sweet memories
Makunat pa sa bokayo - penny pincher
Ginisa sa sariling mantika - a deal or an arrangement that seems favorable but in reality the person is being conned or swindled; a rip-off

Aimee’s mother had her own food words.

Hinog sa pilit - “That is [what] my mother [says] when she was not convinced of our plan but gave in because we were insistent and the end result ... did not meet our expectations.”

Mas maasim pa sa suka ang mukha - “That is my mother again whenever she sees us making face because we have to do something we are forced to do or wear something we [do not like especially for Sunday Mass].”

Namantikaan na ang labi - “Another one from my mother whenever she gets annoyed with my brother who throws tantrums when he is hungry; after feeding him, my mom would say, ‘Masaya ka na, namantikaan na naman ang labi mo’.”

Sexual undertones

Aimee’s brother asked about a word kanto boys used—masabaw. She said that earned her brother a scolding because it had sexual undertones and was used mainly for women the guys at the corner thought were sexy.

May katas pa - “same as above, with sexual undertones, sort of; still sexually capable in spite of old age.”

Mai Emnas of Tacloban City sent some Cebuano terms.

Namayabas is the same as nagbulakbol in Tagalog. The root word is bayabas or guava and she wrote that “it refers to those days when one is young and is with friends, who’ve jumped the school fence to cut classes and pick guavas out of someone else’s backyard.”

Kapayason, she says, is “generally a Cagay-anon term derived from the word papaya. It means and describes a braggart. For the life of me I have not solved the mystery of why the papaya is used to describe a person who’s got more huff than puff. It’s a term I heard often growing up in Cagayan de Oro, which my Cebu-based cousins never seem to use.”

Nag nu-os-nu-os is used in Leyte (the Cebuano said) to mean urong-sulong, referring to a person’s vacillation over decisions or choices. Nu-os or nukos is Visayan for pusit or squid. The term, she says, describes the way the squid moves in water.

Mura og labanos means white as a radish and refers to the color of the skin. Mai wonders why many Filipinos like to be fair-skinned when the downside are freckles, acne, large pores, warts.

Another reader, Edgie Polistico, did give a “long and winding” explanation for why the kamote was used to indicate a stupid person. It takes him back to his youth in his hometown in Inopacan, Leyte where a radio drama broadcast coined it from the Tagalog word kamot or to scratch because that was what children who didn’t know the answer to a teacher’s question would do, scratch the head. But since kamot in Cebuano meant the hand, he said the “e” was added at the end so, from Leyte, the word and its meaning traveled to Manila with immigrants.

Edgie seems serious about knowing food words because he also attached part of his glossary on Philippine Food and Cooking that he says is part of his bigger project—a Cebuano-English dictionary.

E-mail the author at pinoyfood04@yahoo.com

(click here to see the original post of this article in Inquirer.net)_

____________________________________________
Mickey Fenix belongs to Thursday group of Philippine Daily Inquirer's columnists under the Lifestyle (Food) section. She writes her gustatory adventures and encounters in the local scene and sometime about her crossover to foreign places - she aptly called her weekly column as "Country Cooking". She also serves as the Editor-in-chief of FOOD magazine that is published monthly by the ABS-CBN Publications. This food mag creatively features some of Pinoy tastes, as well as international food and cuisine, and even travel. Currently, it is the best seller food magazine in the country.

In the photo is Edgie with Ms. Micky Fennix at the Press Luncheon of Capiz-tahan (Fiesta-cular Philippines) in Gateway Suites, 4th level, Gateway Mall, Araneta Center, Cubao, Quezon City last February 16, 2011.

Try this: Edgie Polistico's PHILIPPINE FOOD AND COOKING DICTIONARY

Cebuano-English Dictionary FREE download (Version 2.8.75)

2010-05-24T20:30:00.042+08:00

The FORBIDDEN and DANGEROUS Pinoy dictionary.
Find out why.

FREE DOWNLOAD

Edgie Polistico's Cebuano-English Dictionary
and free samples of other Pinoy Dictionaries
Updated as of 26 October 2010
Download your FREE copy of this digital dictionary:
(c.) 2009 - Edgardo Bongato Polistico, Manila, Philippines
Compatible with Windows 7, XP, 2000, 98 and Me
Not fully compatible with Windows Vista.

Freebies include the following html files:

Philfest.html - Edgie Polistico's Dictionary of Philippine Festivals (sample copy
PhilFoods.html- Edgie Polistico's Dictionary of Philippine Food and Cooking (sample copy
PhilPlaces.html - Edgie Polistico's Dictionary of Philippine Places (sample copy)
EBP-suffixes.htm - Edgie Polistico's studies on affixes used in Cebuano is recommended for those who are non-Cebuano speakers to easily learn the many mode and transformation of base words. This will help you understand how Cebuano root words transform to have new or another meaning. (sample copy)
TagLish.html - Edgie Polistico's Tagalog English Dictionary (sample copy)
ZIPCode.html - Edgie Polistico's compilation of postal ZIP Codes used in Philippines. It covers Metro Manila and all provincial towns in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao (sample copy)

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Daghang salamat ug...

MABUHI KA!

Dictionary of Philippine Food and Cooking - (updated as of 18 December 2010)

2009-12-27T15:24:00.011+08:00

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE DICTIONARY