Isinay Units of Measuring Rice

THE PLASTIC RICE dispenser that is increasingly becoming a common “appliance” in Filipino kitchens today may one day soon render obsolete the use of certain units of measuring rice. 

One such unit of measure is the leche. It is simply the tin can of condensed milk  -- hence the name leche, which  is Spanish for milk -- the rough edges of which had been smoothed to prevent fingers from being hurt.

Leche, ready-to-cook rice, and cat on a winnowing basket.

Based on the tin can’s label (the brand of the one in the photo is Alaska), one leche (sinletse in Isinay, sangalitsi in Ilocano) is equivalent to 300 ml. (As a side note, I recall the condensed-milk  brands we had when I was young were Milkmaid, Liberty, Darigold, and Carnation.) 

I’m not sure if the leche has the same carrying capacity as the salmon (also a tin can but instead of milk it originally contained canned salmon or sardines). But I remember hearing such Isinay term as sinsalmon (one salmon) when Isinay folks would come to the house to either buy or borrow rice.

In the Ilocano village where I grew up, salmon was also used by my grandmother as term when she measured glutinous rice (diket in Ilocano, dayaot in Isinay, malagkit in Tagalog) to be soaked then pounded with al-o (pestle; e-u in Isinay) in the alsong (mortar; lusung in Isinay) when she made my favorite tupig. 

When we still had prolific fruiting Coffea arabica trees in our backyard, I also heard salmon being used quite often as indicative measure for how much coffee beans my Auntie Tibang (Primitiva Benitez Castro) would isange (roast) then bo^bo-on (grind) in preparation to serving brewed coffee each time there is a social gathering such as parasal (prayer for a departed one) in the house.

I recall salmon was also used to quantify how much goby fish (bunog in Ilocano, sappilan in Isinay) a fisher has caught from the river, how much black snail (ambeveyo^ in Isinay, leddeg in Ilocano) a shellfish gatherer has collected from the payaw (ricefield), how much iniruban (daluj-daluj in Isinay, pinipig in Tagalog) resulted from the tedious burning then pounding of newly harvested glutinous rice, how ripe duhat (lumboy in both Isinay and Ilocano) or boiled peanuts is measured and sold by a vendor.

I have yet to find out if the Ifugaos, Ibalois, Ifontocs, Ibanags, Gaddangs, Tagalogs, Bicolanos, Warays, Cebuanos, Maguindanaos, Maranaos, et al. are using the same tin cans for measuring rice, but at least in Dupax both the Ilocanos and Isinays used the leche and the salmon when I was young to takal (measure) or determine the amount of rice to be cooked, to be lent to a neighbor in need, or to be fed to chickens.   

Of course, I recall my grandparents also used black coconut shells (ungut in Isinay, sabsabut in Ilocano, bao in Tagalog) to scoop out rice from their Ilocos-made burnay that used to be a container of my Apong Lakay's basi, but that's another story.

Also another story is that I have yet to ascertain if the Tagalog gatang as well as the chupa are the same or rather yield the same quantities as the leche, and how many such leches, gatangs, and chupas would make one ganta, another unit of measure that was the market standard for rice, beans, sugar, salt, etc. before it became displaced by kilos. I’m not sure now in which grade we were taught this term in our elementary school Arithmetic, but I do recall one lesson went something like “4 chupas equals 1 ganta” along with “25 gantas equals 1 cavan” and “3 liters equals 1 gallon.”

Back to our milk can.

And what, you might ask, does the rice dispenser have to do with the banishment of the leche?

Well, as the photo shows, rice dispensers are equipped with levers marked 1, 2 and 3 to indicate the number of cups they are able to spew out into the collecting box at the bottom.

Which means that you only need to press the measurement of your choice or do some simple arithmetic depending on the number of people who are supposed to partake of the rice when cooked (for example, 2 cups for 3 people, 2 cups plus 3 cups for 7 people, etc.) and, presto, down pours the exact amount of rice you need to cook.

Before the memory of it gets sidetracked, I hasten to add here that when I was a kid commonly used as rice storage containers (pampurutan in Isinay, pagbagasan in Ilocano, palabigasan in Tagalog) were the rectangular biscuit cans equipped with round lids to keep the house rats and cockroaches away. Others had large burnay (mawaga in Isinay, tapayan in Tagalog).  

Alas, these containers are now being replaced by manufactured rice dispensers, in much the same manner that the kaldero (kettle) is now being replaced by electric-powered rice cookers.

Incidentally, I’m not sure if cooking rice is still part of the household chores of Dupax kids of today, be they Ilocano, Isinay or what not. But when I was old enough to carry the kaldero, be trusted with my arithmetic, became familiar with the middle-finger system of estimating the water to go with the rice after washing it, and already able to kindle the firewood on the stove, such chore was among the assignments I liked most.

Well, one reason I welcomed the rice-cooking assignment was because I enjoyed the fire-tending part of it as I loved to watch the dancing flames of the firewood and the flickering later of the resulting red embers. Besides, cooking rice saved me from washing the dishes.   

To end this sharing for now, I guess that not many kids of Dupax and even in other rural areas of the Philippines are still doing what my sisters and I used to compete for when we were small -- eating the deliciously burnt rice (na^gov in Isinay, ittip in Ilocano, tutong in Tagalog) at the bottom of the kaldero. 

Yes, aside from being a good Boy Scout, that was one more reason I didn't say no to cooking rice at the time -- because it gave me grand privilege or first-priority right, as it were, to scour the kettle for the aromatic and delicious rice tip.

Life Sans Electricity (Or When Kids Enjoyed the Moon and the Stars)

THE FOLLOWING photograph of the 236-year-old St. Vincent Catholic Church of Dupax shot by an Isinay friend near midnight last December and recently shared on Facebook brought me back to that time when Dupax did not yet have the convenience of electricity.

Photo of the St. Vincent Church of Dupax taken around 10:00PM sometime before the end of 2011 by Nardo Laccay. If there were no electricity to enable the use of "rope lights" on the facade of the church and to create the "star with bright rays" on top of the bellfry, this beautiful picture (probably the first such taken at night) would not have been possible.

Yes, children, once upon a time… Dupax was very dark at night.

I remember each time I would go to I-iyo and come home late in Domang when I was a kid, I often made the sign of the cross each time I would pass by the Spanish-era Dampol bridge. Making the sign of the cross then made me feel braver and I believed then that it would ward off ghosts.

If I were a kid today, I can now walk alone at Dampol Bridge without fearing that there is a banij (ghost), lampong (elf) or a kapre (huge cigar-smoking ghost) or something in the mango tree at the Abannatan side of Ama Quito Guzman's house, or calling with the familiar "ssst... ssst" behind the huge trunks of the gigantic acacia trees on both sides of the road in front of the St. Mary's High School.

In other words, pinavlen abeveyoyan (dear townmate), if you had been out of Dupax for decades now and compare what you knew then with the Dupax of today, you better brace yourself for a culture shock.

Today, because of the presence of electricity, the streets are fully lighted. No need to bring your flashlight at night when you need to go anywhere in Domang or Dupaj, or in Santa Maria, Tannibung, and Manggayang in the northwestern part of Dupax del Sur, or in Ongkay and Palobotan in the southeastern part.

Today, because there are more lights and the main roads are concreted, the risks of meeting such mishaps  as mirungpil si batu (hitting your toe on a stone) and makagatin si attay si asu bon ila ya nuwwang (stepping on dog feces or carabao manure) that were common when I was a kid are much, much lesser now when you make pasyal (tour, visit) in much of Dupax del Sur.

Today the formerly dark and muddy road connecting the Galapon part of Dupaj to the Laccay area of Domang is no longer so scary to pass through at night. This is very much unlike during my childhood years when there was yet no bridge and if one passed through it at night to summon Nana Nieves Galapon (the only nurse cum medical officer at the time), or if one visited the house of the Boada family in the Uruddu part of Dupaj, there was fear that an immanuy (spitting cobra) or ine^eyaddang (python) may be on the way.

Today, because of electricity, in almost every home you can hear the blare of the television all day long. Kids are now also seen playing with electronic gadgets such as Play Station and cellphones.

Today, instead of picnics by the Yeso part of the wangwang (river), the "can afford" birthday celebrators now rent videokes and over cases of ice-cold beer and microwaved pulutan, they make your eardrums undergo extreme challenge with videoke-aided singing from evening till morning.

Today, the same videoke has changed the way Dupax people, be they Isinay, Ilocano, Igorot, or Tagalog, mourn their newly departed relatives. Thus, one could safely conclude that because of electricity, the tradition of getting the services of the St. Vincent Orchestra and the Eagle Swing Orchestra to play all night has practically been lost. Today, the musicians are now only occasionally summoned to play funeral music on the hour of the burial when the body would be taken from the house to the church and then to the cemetery.

It was, indeed, a different life altogether when I was young.

For night light, we normally used the kingke (kerosene lamp either made of aluminum or improvised from bottles). To go out at night, we used flashlight if available, or a Siok Tong bottle half-filled with gas and equipped with a strip of kamiseta (shirt) cloth for pabelo (wick). Alternatively, we made do with the moonlight.

On special occasions, again such as when there is a vigil for a departed, we made do with the hasag usually lent by friendly and relatively well-off neighbors or relatives. This equipment was a pump-and-gas-powered lamp that we pump-primed with the use of alcohol and while later became known as Petromax. We used to own one in the house that Papa and I lighted when he needed to do his lesson plans, and the shiny metal base of which my sisters enjoyed as it showed distorted and monster-like faces when they looked into it.

We cooked and had supper before it got too dark so as to save on the kerosene of our lamps and so that we could have more time to enjoy the evening before the church bell rang at 8 o’clock. Most often in my case, however, I preferred early supper for the simple reason that I was often the night dishwasher and it would be very challenging to do the task particularly during stormy days where the wind would blow and put off the light of the kingke and my sister Arlyne would make the radio program "Gabi ng Lagim" and "Katotohanan o Guniguni" sound of a howling dog awwwuuu!

With no TV or even street lamps then to divert our eyes, we watched the full moon rise. Some other nights we had fun running after fireflies.

If there is no moon, we competed counting or identifying the stars. My favorite when I was in Grade 3 was Cassioppea as I didn't know what "dipper" then meant.

We played hide-and-seek on the street. In my Domang part of Dupax, our favorite place was the area near the big Mejia house, first because there were a lot of boys and girls in that neighborhood, and second, because of the presence then of a conical stone and cement structure that our elders said used to be the base of a wooden cross, thus its name kudus (cross).

And we sang Isinay and Ilocano songs related to the bright moonlight. Thus, every kid in Dupax at the time learned by osmosis the lyrics and tune of the Isinay love song "Osan Lavi Masne Ri Buwenar" and the Ilocano folk song "O Naraniag A Bulan.)

And because there was nothing else to listen to aside from the night cicadas and the eerie sound of the katydid (tugtug-gayang), the klung-klung-klung of the kalluung (boat-like wooden structure used for pounding rice)was our lullaby.

POST SCRIPT

On the night of January 3 this year one of the buildings of the Governor Alfonso Castañeda Elementary School (GACES for short) near the Municipal Hall of Dupax del Sur got damaged by fire. News broadcast on local radio (I guess it was DWRV Bayombong) the following morning reported that firetrucks from neighboring Aritao and Bambang came to the rescue.

In praying that such a rare third-day-of-the-new-year “entertainment” will no longer have a repeat performance in the near future, I hoped that it would serve as big shot in the arm of my hometown’s local government unit. I hoped, too, that the impression (mentioned in Facebook by a concerned Isinay lady) would not become etched forever that many of the people who were there on the fire scene only went there to watch without doing anything even as perfunctory as helping a lone guy carrying a pail.

I shall not anymore add salt to the injury that Dupax del Sur does not yet have a fire truck or even firefighters of its own. For sure Mayor Romeo Magaway is wise enough to know what fire-safety moves need to be done, as well as who to approach for help in softening the damage to GACES.

This was how the 3-room GACES building that got burned in the night of January 3, 2012 looked like when I passed by it in the afternoon of January 4. The far background is the town hall of Dupax del Sur.

Incidentally, I recall the burned school building sat almost on the same spot where there was a huge acacia tree. I remember that decades, nay, more than half a century ago, under the tree was a toilet-sized structure that my mother once told the “nauntun” (Ilocano word for someone always asking endless questions) child in me was a generator or something.

I didn’t pursue my line of questions then but years later I connected the dots and linked that generator under the acacia tree to the coil of black and frayed electric wire with bulb socket that used to gather rice-dust and cobwebs in one of the compartments of our now gone eyang (rice granary).

Now, to go back to our GACES building, the report that the cause of the fire was traced by investigators to faulty electrical wiring made the remnant child inside me wonder a little bit: Could the fire have happened if Dupax still had no electricity?

Talking to Dogs in Isinay

STRANGE how the memory works. I had just finished giving our three dogs their lunch of rice plus pork rejects that I cooked with papaya, and was watching them do their toilet in the camote patch near our house – when suddenly the word ara-ara popped in my mind.

The word is an Isinay command for a dog to do what they do best – bark and chase and/or bite someone such as a quail, rat, lizard, or chicken hiding in the cogon grass.

I wonder if dog owners in Dupax still use that term. But decades – nay, almost a half century – ago, I used it to mobilize my dog Dargo each time he would accompany me in my Vitamin C-foraging nature walks in the guava and sapang bushes in Pitang and I wanted him to go after something moving in the thickets.

We would say ara-ara to kid someone being barked at by a dog that we of course knew was all sound and no bite.

We would say ara-ara, too, to jumpstart a dog to fight or drive away a neighbor’s dog that strayed in the yard and is chasing our chickens.


And we would use the command to push our dog to fight other dogs.

Stopping a Dog

The opposite or rather the antidote for ara-ara is isa-isa, also uttered quickly and in a commanding tone.

This latter dog command is used at least three ways.

First, you shout isa! isa! when you pass by or go to a neighbor’s house and you want someone inside to hold or pacify their barking dog.

Second is when you use it as a warning of sort to a dog or its master when you wanted the dog to stop barking at you.

Third is to stop or drive away a dog from eating food in the kitchen (mangkallung in Isinay, magdungkal in Tagalog, agkallong in Ilocano).

We also used isa! isa! to stop a dog from running after a chicken particularly if it is addicted to biting and devouring dead or alive chickens (mammanu^ in Isinay).

And we used the command to stop a dog from howling (man-ayuwong in Isinay, umalulong in Tagalog, agtaguob in Ilocano) like the one you normally hear on Filipino horror movies.

A side note on this howling. Dog experts say that dogs that make such irritating sound at night are either feeling cold or are not feeling well. There is, however, this belief among many Filipinos, not only in Dupax, that when a dog repeatedly howls in the middle of the night, someone in the neighborhood is going to die.

If, after repeated isa! isa!, the dog still doesn't stop howling, a normal Isinay in my time would go to the dog and shout "Naveyandah an asu!" (You pesky dog!) and often accompany the scolding with a couple or more of whipping the poor animal with a bamboo stick.

Calling a Dog

And how do Isinays call a dog to go to them?

The normal way is to call the dog by its name (example: Potot, Balbon, Kulut, Bantay, Blacky, Whitey, Brownie, Spot).

Another method is to whistle "whi-weeeep!" or "wheeet-whit-whit-whit!"

Still another is to gently shout titit! Or tuuuu! Or both titit… tuuuu!

And when any of these methods fail to call the dog, you may try banging on the kaldero (rice kettle) or the palanggana (basin) used as dog feeder.

How the Goby Fish 'Bukto' or 'Guggur' Used to be Caught in Isinay Rivers

THE WHITE GOBY FISH (bukto in Ilocano, guggur in Isinay, biya in Tagalog) was always a prized catch among us boys of Dupax in the 1960s who loved to comb our then fish-rich river with our spearfishing guns.

For instance, my fishing friends, the brothers Arthur and Duardo Guillermo, and I used to envy one another as barrio kids if one of us was able to nail one or more of such fish, particularly if the only catch we had were the small and relatively easier to get stone goby (bunog in Ilocano, sappilan in Isinay, biyang-bato in Tagalog). In fact, it was sort of a badge of honor for boys as river fishers then if the whiter and much, much bigger bukto was hanging either on top or at the bottom of their string (called ubun in Ilocano, turu^ Isinay) of small-goby catches.

Normally we went after the bunog that preferred the stony shallow parts of the river in I-iyo (officially named Palabotan) or in Mammayang further upstream on the road to Carolotan. But when either our bare backs started to feel the heat of the sun or we got tired of bending over and lifting every stone to spear the bunog, we moved on to the deeper and more placid part of the stream.

There, among the sparse rocks or camouflaging with bamboo leaves, tanubong stems, and other such river debris, we would keep our goggled eyes sharp and the tip of our pana (speargun) ready for the bukto. Almost always the bukto would lead us to parts where there are juvenile mudfish (buntiek in Ilocano, tuldu^ in Isinay) or a school of tilapia and gurami.

If at first we are not able to get the bukto or its associate mudfish, we would follow the fish when it swam to the next accumulation of algae and river debris, and failing to get it for the nth time, we would call it quits and spent the rest of the time swimming, competing on who could stay longest under water, or diving (with bathing carabaos as diving board).

I may divert, but quite often we would pry blood-fattened leeches (alinta in Ilocano, linta in Tagalog, bilavil in Isinay) that took advantage of the generosity plus docility of the carabaos enjoying the refreshing coolness of the river. And what did we do with the blood suckers? We tested our bravery at handling the wriggling and slimy worm on our palms. Then we would punish them either by throwing them in the hot sand to roast in the sun, or we placed them on top of a rock then pounded them to smithereens with another stone.

While we're at it, I remember another form of punishment that we meted on leeches that sucked too much of the blood of our farm animals. I'm not sure if it is done in other parts of the Philippines, but our method involved inverting the blood-ballooned leech inside out by pushing a stick on one end then letting it pass through the other end. The leech would not die in the process, of course, because after it has spilled all the blood it sucked, we next set it free to swim in the water with its body now inverted and its formerly fat and full size now emaciated.

Yes, both catching fish and playing with leeches could have potentials to add more bones and muscles to the tourism call "It's more fun in the Philippines!"

But back to our fish.

The bukto was also a favorite of river fishers who used the hook-and-line at the tip of a long bamboo pole as fishing method. The gear is called liwliw in Ilocano and siwattan in Isinay. My recollection on this includes that of cigar-smoking women patiently sitting by the riverside for the fish to bite, and armed with starch-bag (pagalmiduran in Ilocano, panotsotan in Isinay) to put their fish catch in.

Oh yes, except for a few precious times on a tilapia pond near the Yeso part of Benay River with my (reportedly missing for many years now) Isinay neighbor-friend Oret Calacala, I didn’t fall much for angling as a fishing method. For one thing, I preferred the more active and exciting spearfishing method that made me enjoy swimming and brought me to an entirely different world under water.

I also didn’t engage much in angling because when you carried a bamboo pole for the purpose on the way to the river or a pond/small lake(ban-aw in Ilocano; banaw with no hyphen in Isinay; lawa in Tagalog), it made you so obvious such that Ilocanos would greet you with “Sinno ti kaduam a mapan agliwliw?” and in Isinay “Siran si aruam an omoy maniwattan?” (literally: Who is your companion in going angling?) Equally annoying, on your way back home some istambays or other such meddlers would see you with your pole and ask how many fish you caught and to please share them some.

When I was in first year high school, my Apong Pedro acquired an electronic fishing gear (simply called koriente then). And each time he felt like going on a fishing expedition, he made it a point to let my grandmother go to town to break the news to me. My role included diving for stupefied fish under some boulder that would be difficult for the scoop of his electronic fisher to reach. I also enjoyed being a cook for both of us, a task that invariably involved setting up a three-stone stove, gathering firewood, boiling the rice, gathering edible fern, picking ariwat (duu in Isinay) fruits or young leaves to flavor the fish if wild tomatoes are not in season.

Our favorite fishing place was the Nabetangan River, on the left when you are in Mammayang and you face Carolotan. Not only were there plenty of bukto/guggur there as not so many people go to that former Ilongot territory.

But there was one time we followed the stream/creek (waig in Ilocano; wayil in Isinay) that led to the waterfall-cum-flatrocks part we locals called Payasapas (probably an Ilocanized word or a variant of the Isinay term peyasapas for waterfall). In that expedition, we found the mountain stream up there didn't have plenty of bukto nor even bunog/sappilan, but we were able to electric shock big mudfish as well as a number of the biggest edible frogs I ever saw in Dupax.

If at all there was a better catch than bukto, however, it was a palm-sized tilapia, a dalag (mudfish, snakehead fish) with diameter no smaller than the size of a boy’s wrist, or a paltat (catfish) longer than one dangan (about a half-foot).

Then what did we do next to our fish catch?

Be they goby, mudfish, catfish,

tilapia, or gurami, along with shrimps and occasional small eels, we cooked them in a delicacy that Isinays call inlangeyan. It's not actually a purely Isinay cooking as Ilocanos call it inlingta. The basic ingredients are simply salt, lots of ginger, lots of tomatoes, little or no water, and (if available) long pepper as topping.

A Fish Whose Isinay Name Also Refers to a Skin Disease

AMONG THE THINGS that make the writer’s heart in me beat faster is the sight, encounter, or re-introduction of objects that resurrect people, places, and events the imprints of which have laid dormant – nay, almost forgotten – in the far corners of my mind.

Among such re-introductions came this morning while I was having coffee. Here’s the photo I took of the triggering item or items:

Yes, it’s a bowlful of fish that my super tolerant wife has asked if I wanted her to buy from the itinerant vendors who come to our part of Baguio now and then and shout “Isdaaa! Isda kayo diyan!”

Both my wife and the vendor called the fish bunog. When I asked the seller where they came from, he said Naguilian. And when I asked “Pupokan?” (grown in a fishpond), he replied “Karayan” (river).

My beloved household manager’s normally astute bargaining talk wasn’t effective in bringing down the P150 per kilo price of the fish. Nor was she successful at asking the P30 per bundle of four boiled mais be brought down to the prevailing P20 in the Baguio central market.

It’s not every day that such type of freshwater fish is sold in Baguio. This rationalization, plus the myriad memories that the fish – and the corn – brought back to life, nevertheless made the price sulit (well worth it).

I shall leave the boiled corn for a separate vignette some day and instead focus on the fish.

Indeed, as I was anticipating another mouth-watering lunch while cleaning the fish preparatory for my wife’s cooking it – ikkam ti laya ken kamatis lang (add ginger and tomato only), she said – several recollections connected with the fish raced in my mind.

I shall post separate essays on the images – and tastes – evoked by the fish after this.

Suffice it to offer for now that in the prevalently Ilocano and river-blessed part of upstream Dupax del Sur where I grew up, we called this fish bukto. Among the Tagalog, it is called biya. In Caraga Region, particularly the communities around Lake Mainit where it abounds, it is called pidyangga. In English, it is called white goby.

I have yet to ask knowledgeable Isinays of Bambang and Aritao, but among the Isinays in Dupax, particularly the farm-tilling ones who are familiar with river fish, it is called guggur.

Interestingly, guggur is also an Isinay term for psoriasis or other such skin diseases. (The Ilocano for this word is gudgod.) Thus, a person afflicted with it is described either as naguggur or nahugguran. (In Ilocano, nagudgod and ginudgod.)

To go back to our stream, yes, in Dupax, we didn’t and still don’t call the white goby bunog. For the bunog as we knew it in my hometown referred to a bluish, quite slippery, very much smaller, and riverstone dwelling fish that Isinays call sappilan (biyang bato in Tagalog; river goby in English).

To pause for now, I learned how to clean bukto/guggur/biya from my grandmother Feliza Lacandazo Pudiquet:

No need to remove its gills (asang in both Ilocano and Isinay, hasang in Tagalog), no need also to open its stomach and remove its intestines (bagis in Ilocano, bitu-a in Isinay, bituka in Tagalog, tina’i in Visayan) and its bile (apdo in both Ilocano and Tagalog, bisit in Isinay). Just press your right thumb on the stomach of the fish then squeeze out the blackish thing inside.

The black thing is the fish excreta (takki in Ilocano, ta-e in Tagalog, ta-i in Visayan, attay in Isinay). It’s actually all right to leave it as is – it’s not poisonous. Besides, not all fish in a bunch have such thing. But in case you find one and want to press it out, be very extra careful not to squeeze out the golden yellow round particles – they are the bukto’s eggs (roe in English, bugi in Ilocano, buoh in Isinay, bihud in both Tagalog and Visayan).

The fish eggs make the taste of the fish itself more exquisite!

Merry Christmas in Isinay

SORRY FOR THIS, but I would not like to let Christmas be buried by the New Year without posting this item.

After all, it was one of a number of items that I intended (but failed) to publish here as soon as last month's chilly nights started to make me wear my "ukay-ukay" sweaters.

It's my try at answering the question WHAT'S "MERRY CHRISTMAS" IN ISINAY? -- a query that was in fact posted in Facebook by one whose account is named something like "LGU Dupax."

Well, thanks to the tip of one of my Facebook friends who recalled that the Isinay term for CHRISTMAS is DUVIRAL, I went on a "1 plus 1 equals 2" mode and came out with this: "MAGAYHAYAN DUVIRAL."

Thus, if you wish to greet someone FELIZ NAVIDAD or MALIGAYANG PASKO in Isinay, you can use -- at your own risk -- the also two-word sentence MAGAYHAYAN DUVIRAL.

I inserted "at your own risk" simply because that greeting is rarely -- put that very, very rarely -- used among Isinays anymore.

In fact, if you use that greeting in Dupax (and I guess even among die-hard Isinays in Bambang and Aritao), you will certainly encounter quizzical looks similar to those directed to warty creatures from outer space.

A possible alternative, if you insist on using Isinay (and if my peso-worth of advice would count), is: MAGAYJAYAN PASKU.

[Note how I use MAGAYJAYA and MAGAYHAYA interchangeably. The first spelling is a carry-over from the Spanish tongue that pronounces J as H. The latter spelling is a more contemporary or modern one and takes after the current orthography of the Iloko and Tagalog languages.]

Anyway, the greeting with the least resistance would be MERI KRISMAS. It is the same whachamacallit used in any language and in any corner in the country's 7,100 islands each time Christmas comes around in the Philippines nowadays.


OH YES, while we're at it, please accept your Isinay Bird's apologies for having acted like Ebenezer Scrooge (in Charles Dickens' 1843 novel A CHRISTMAS CAROL) insofar as posting items in this blogsite last month was concerned.

There were meteor showers of ideas for this blogsite that came within my reach in the cold nights of December. Here are examples:

"Goodbye to the Diana"
"Sop As Da Boys and Other Carols"
"Maguey for Christmas Trees,Soapsuds for Snow"

How come I wasn't able to write and post them?

Well, as they say in Tagalog, tao lamang po ang inyong Isinay Bird.

Somehow something got in the way... and before I knew it, Christmas was gone and it is already January.

2012 as Isinay Year?

MERRY CHRISTMAS.

Christmas in the Philippines officially ends January 6 (Three Kings Day) so I'm not yet so late as I write this greeting here.

The United Nations has made several years quite memorable by declaring them as "International Year of" so and so. For instance, last year was International Year of Forests and this year 2012 is International Year of Cooperatives.

One wishes the guys who call the shots for such concerns in the international body would also give attention soon to the world's endangered languages -- and one of these days designate an International Year of Vanishing Languages.

I'm pretty sure a lot of Isinays will be happy should such a dream come true. And your Isinay Bird will surely be one of them.

It may be far-fetched for now but, indeed, if the rivulets of concern for the increasing loss of languages such as Isinay (also spelled Isinai and also occasionally referred to as Inmeas and Insinay) will be canalized to form a bigger river, then probably the world will listen.

Meantime, it may be enough for now to feel and act as if this new year 2012 is a special year for the Isinay language and, for that matter, Isinay culture and people.

This corner will go a little further: 2012 is the target year for the coming out of the final draft of the Isinay-English Dictionary that your Isinay Bird has been happily working on, though in spurts, for the past four years now.

Right now I'm visualizing the manuscript to be between 200 and 300 pages of letter-size bond paper, a number of which shall carry illustrations, photographs, boxed vignettes, lists, historical bits, etc. -- all of which pertain to Isinay both as a language and as a culture.

For instance, the book shall list the Isinay names for certain food items, trees, birds, vegetables, fruits, insects, fish, shells, toys, kitchen utensils, farm implements, carpentry tools, etc. It will also name parts of the body, parts of the house, parts of the human face, the five fingers, etc.

To protect non-Isinays from "being sold" in case they go to Aritao, Bambang, Dupax or anywhere else in the company of Isinay-speakers, there will also be items such as "four-letter words" in Isinay, directions in Isinay, curse words in Isinay, as well as tastes, sounds, numbers, and actions.

As lexicographer, I shall also try to name the generous individuals who helped me come out with the list of words used in the dictionary. I shall also acknowledge those who, without their knowing it, have contributed to enriching the list through their emails and postings in Facebook, YouTube, and e-groups.

As far as I know, the dictionary may not be the first (as certain Spanish priests assigned in Bambang and Dupax in the 1800s have already broken ground on this), but it will certainly be the most comprehensive so far as it will not only include Dupax and Bambang Isinay but also "Ilocanized" and "Tagalized" Isinay.

So all of you fellow Isinay/Isinai advocates, lovers, protectors out there in Nueva Vizcaya and the world over, please watch this corner for further news.

AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR.