| What does Sarapen mean? (A sample of the real thing)
Penpen de sarapen
de kutsilyo de almasen.
Haw haw de carabao
batuten.
Sayang pula, walang pera.
Sayang puti, walang salapi.
That is a children’s rhyming chant from the Philippines.
Specifically, it’s a Tagalog rhyming chant. There are different
versions, but I suspect mine is slightly wrong. What can I say, it’s
been years since I learned all this stuff. My brother says it’s “Sayang
pula, tatlong pera” and so on, and my uncle adds the verse:
Sipit namimilipit
Gintong Pilak
Namumulaklak
Sa tabi ng DAGAT!
He also says that there are more verses that he can’t remember. But
what does the rhyme mean? You got me, I only have a Grade 4 education
in Tagalog. I think it’s a nonsense rhyme anyway. “Kutsilyo” is knife,
“almasen” is warehouse (in Spanish), and “carabao” is water buffalo.
The “sayang pula” verse makes no sense to me at all: Too bad it’s red,
there’s no money, too bad it’s white, there’s no money? What is that
supposed to mean? I originally remembered this as “oras pula” and “oras
puti” or “red time” and “white time”, but no one else in my family
remembers this version, so perhaps I just made it up.
My uncle’s verse is more intelligible. I don’t know what the first
line means, the Tagalog is too deep for my pitiful Taglish to decode.
“Gintong pilak” should probably be “Ginto’t pilak” or “gold and
silver”. Then it would be, “gold and silver flower beside the sea” for
the rest of the verse.
I know, this is really muddled. Still, this confusion helps to
illustrate several points I’d like to make about migration, diasporas,
and identity. First, my admittedly poor Tagalog language skills are not
unusual for second generation Filipinos or for 1.5 generation people
like me. This probably has to do with the fact that 1st generation
Filipinos are already relatively proficient at English compared to
other immigrants, and therefore their children have less incentive to
learn Tagalog. The reason so many Filipinos are already fluent in
English, though, is that the Philippines was once a colony of the
United States. Even though the Philippines was officially granted
independence in 1946, the colonial period still exerts a strong
influence on events today. It’s common for ex-colonies to supply
immigrants to the former colonial master — look, for example, at
France, where Algerians are a significant minority, or look at the
United Kingdom, where people from the Caribbean can be found in
abundance. In other words, even today colonizers still profit from
their former empires. In order to understand the present, one must turn
to the past.
More at the real blog
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