Best Posts in Thread: BISAYA, OR NOT TO BISAYA?

I would add if your filipina gf/wife speaks Tagalog or Cebuano/Visaya live in a matching mother tongue region.
If not she will find the other expat wives talking in their mother tongue and feel out of the group.

My lady (from a Tagalog area) has learnt enough Visaya here to understand it but is shy to talk it so sticks to Tagalog and her close Visayan friends will talk in Tagalog just for her.

 

I have never bothered, my Filipina wife (and kids) have better English than me.

But I do have a large group of male Filipino friends, I should learn so following with interest.

 

My understanding as I try to learn from my wife....

Po is a term that is generally used in tagalog, as stated is a term of respect to persons that you intend to respect. It is not commonly used when speaking Visayan.

Ate and kuya are generally the same and used for brother/sister. Kuya is the tagalog version, ate is the visayan version. Age doesn't matter, my wife calls her younger brother ate all the time.

Die and dong are short for endi and dodong, my wife uses these when speaking to her nieces and nephews. But she also uses this playfully with our dog, so I believe they are general terms of affection for those close to you, endi for females and dodong for males.

 

I may be wrong but as a foreigner, intuitively i simply avoid all of these expressions as they seem to be reserved to people native to the area. Maybe not. I even try to use real names rather than nicknames, for example “Anna”, not “ging ging” when addressing people, almost as if I don’t have the right, not knowing how the nickname came to be in the first place.


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A really complicated situation. I just don't use any form of address to anyone and that avoids getting it wrong. In fact, I never even used any form of address for my parents-in-law (2 sets now) as I don't like using terms such as mum, mother etc for a non-biological relation. I got through about 40 years with my first mother-in-law without addressing her in any way - just "Would you like a cup of tea?" etc. My asawa has been referred to in the UK as ate by an older Filipina but says it did not bother her (oh yeah!). Here she uses Ate/Kuya a lot and says it does not matter if the person is younger or older - but in her family there are various forms of address, including (for females) manang, ate, inci, inca (pronounced as inka) and then use terms kuya, inco for their husbands (inco for husbands of BOTH inci and inca!). After going around in circles with my asawa on the confusion of all of this she said (a tad irritably) "Well, it's just foreigner gets confused on this". Now I know where they get their love of complex and puzzling bureaucracy.

 

I have a very important conference soon, via Zoomeet, and need a highly competent translator - totally versed in Bisaya to English. You seem perfect for the job, amigo. Naay beyed?

 

notmyrealname should add 'tae' to his list of sh8t.