Snoworld™

This is the history of Mr. Nang and Ms. Ng. No, not a real person and this has nothing to do with China or the Chinese either. This is about putting an end to the confusion and debate regarding “nang” and “ng” in the Filipino language.

Let’s begin.

When the Spaniards arrived in the Philippines, the Nation was writing in what the Spaniards called “Baybayin", from the root word “baybay” or “to spell by syllables". Since they were the conquerors they introduced their own writing system - Latin. Yes, the one you are seeing write now as the letters: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz. The Latin Alphabet.

Problems arose when it came to the reading and pronunciation of the two Latin letters “n” and “g” ("ng") together. Take for example the word “pangalan". For the Filipino people of that time, the Latin letters “n-g-a” is only a single letter “nga” because that is how Baybayin and the Philippine Languages are - always CV or CCV.

Follow up:

When Filipinos of that period read and pronunce “pangalan” (written as-is), it was like this: pan-ga-lan. To make it easy to determine the correct pronunciation, the use of a long tilde was introduced so it was written as “pan͠galan", telling the reader to read and say it as “pa-n͠ga-lan". We are actually still using the syllabical system of Baybayin, that is why we were taught before of: a ba ka da e ga ha i la ma na n͠ga o pa ra sa ta u wa ya. CV/CCV is embedded in all Philippine Languages - major or minor.

The Original “ng” (n͠g)

The rule is simple: if the Latin letters “n” and “g” together (meaning “ng") is followed by a vowel (a, e, i, o, u), a long tilde is added above like so: n͠ga, n͠ge, n͠gi, n͠go, n͠gu. Other examples are: balan͠gay [ba-la-n͠gay] (Tagalog of the Spanish word “barangay” [ba-ran-gay]) and n͠gunit [n͠gu-nit].

This was the original meaning of “ng” before the Spaniards arrived in the Philippines. It is called by linguists as “prenasalized sequence /ŋɡ/".

The Velar Nasal /ŋ/ (ñg)

Thanks to the Spaniards, they introduced a system in our Baybayin writing script that cancels out the trailing vowel in our alphabet (ba, ka, da, nga) - the virama (cross sign). This affected our Baybayin (single) letter “n͠ga” and our pronunciations. The velar nasal /ŋ/ entered our language. It became possible to have words like “ang", “bing", “ping", “pong". In short: añg, eñg, iñg, oñg, uñg.

Other examples: “nooñg unañg siglo", “tayo nañg lumuwas”

Early 20th Century /ŋ/ (ng) and /ŋɡ/ (ngg)

As years passed by, the use of tilde has gone out of usage. It faded away from our memories. Confusion in pronunciation and correct reading/meaning re-entered again. Thus in the early 20th Century, “ng” was changed to represent the velar nasal /ŋ/. While the prenasalized sequence /ŋɡ/ was changed to “ngg” in Latin.

So instead of the original format balan͠gay [ba-la-n͠gay], it is now balanggay [ba-la-nggay]. Instead of pan͠galan, it is now panggalan [pa-ngga-lan]. The sad thing here, we do not follow this new “ngg” format for every prenasalized sequence /ŋɡ/. When it should be: ngga, ngge, nggi, nggo, nggu - we still stick to the original: nga, nge, ngi, ngo, ngu (but without the tilde).

{continue to the next page}

Pages: 1 · 2