Tag Archives: Tagalog

Nuno sa punso

Text: Nuno sa Punso

My informant is a friend of my family. 

Context: This creature is a small mythical creature that lives in the mounds. It is a dwarf (or dwende in the Philippines) creature that curses people who enters its home or forbidden areas. Usually people say that they live in anthills.

She said she first heard it during the time we first wandered around outside the house, or any unfamiliar older looking places. She believes in it’s message that you have to respect the old mounds or old places where you think the “Nuno sa Punso” lives. And you have to say “Tabi Tabi po” and repeat it 3x. It means “can I politely pass through your place”. It will protect you from them being angry and cause you to have bad luck, and sometimes cause you to get sick. She states that it’s relevant because the story has been passed down for generations. It also teach a good moral value of being respectful for the places and beings around you. Some people still think it’s real, especially in the province. The Philippines has a lot of old forest and mounds. So every time people from the city wandered around the place the locals usually educate them to pay respect to the inhabitants of the forest. Sometimes they have to do rituals and offerings for protection and safe passage of the travelers.

Analysis: 

Analyzing “Nuno sa punso”, this story comes across as a legend. The main drive of this story is of the creature that brings fear onto people who visit places they should not be in. The overall message of this story is to respect places you go to, as stated by my informant.

Though this message can hold to any place or anything because you should respect the places you go to regardless of whether they are sacred or not. The creature’s punishments show a consequence which is a punishment to people who go and do what they are told not to do. I think that this legend makes people become more wary of places but also more self aware. Doing bad things can lead to bad consequences.

I think this story circles back to how Filipinos deeply value respect to the elderly and respect in general. A lot of cautionary stories attached to creatures have to do with avoidance of bad actions. Filipinos deeply value their home in the Philippines, and this creature embodies that sentiment.

Kinakain Ng Mata

There’s like, “kinakain ng mata” Directly translated it’s like “you eat with your eyes,” um, which means like you order too much food for yourself and you just never finish it, it’s like what they tell people, like what they tell kids who like waste their food or like, just, don’t know their limits, for portions.

Background: My informant, as is their family, is Filipino, and they speak Tagalog often with their parents and siblings.

Context: This piece was collected in an in-person conversation in my apartment.

My thoughts: This expression reflects a cultural emphasis on the conservation of resources, especially food. It condemns food waste and reprimands making hasty decisions without thinking them through.

Circumcisions are Cheaper in the Philippines

Nationality: Filipino-American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Central Valley, California
Performance Date: April 24, 2018
Primary Language: English

This friend of mine is one of the sweetest guys I know. He’s quiet, but has a great sense of humor. One day, late at night, he blurted out, “is it normal that I was circumcised in the fifth grade?”. I knew I needed it for my folklore project. Most of the background information is contained in the transcript below.

The following was recorded during a group interview with 4 other of our friends in the common area of a 6-person USC Village apartment.

“What is there to talk about? I guess you guys are my friends… so… eh? I don’t know if it’s like a cultural thing here, but in the Philippines it’s really looked down upon if you’re not circumcised, like you’re just kind of like a dipshit, you know? You get made fun of. So then like it’s kind of like a rite of passage thing – which is really strange – that like somewhere around like, um, I don’t know like end of elementary school to middle school. You, like you should do it, you know? Yeah, so then, um, we had like a Philippines vacation and my dad was like, ‘oh yeah, you should do it’ cause it’s cheaper in the Philippines, so then I was like, ‘okay, I’ll do it dad’. And I was like really scared. It was just, I don’t know. It was really weird. And then, okay. My dad would explain what would happen and I’d get so scared. Because like, ‘oh, there are scissors involved’. Hahahahaha. People in the Philippines can get superstitious that you’d get infected if you did it too young or something, so you wait. Also, because the healthcare system there is really bad, so they’re afraid that like babies will get sick and die if you do it then. Anyways, then. Um, uh, I’ll just jump to when it happened, because it was really scary. I was just really scared and I kind of just let it happen. But, basically when I went there, it was like- it was really strange.

“Like I said, the Philippines healthcare is really bad, so they didn’t knock me out or anything. I was awake when it happened. Um, yeah, hahaha. They put me in the room, and my dad’s just outside. And the doctor – like I’m lying there, and it feels like a really bare room, like probably no bigger than this room, and it was really strange, and it was just a lot of lights and stuff, and it didn’t even really feel like a proper.. like… surgical place. There were just some beds and stuff, and needles and everything. So, like um, the doctor… the doctor dude he gets a towel and is like, ‘oh, I’m gonna put this over your head. Because you’re gonna be traumatized if you see what happens. You know? So they blindfold me pretty much, as it happens, and then he pretty much walks me through in like Tagalog – which is Filipino – what’s gonna happen. I don’t even remember much of it, I know I didn’t pass out. But like, they definitely numbed me in that area, you know? No needles going anywhere. They just, I don’t know, stuck a needle around your … groin? Area? Basically, the entire time, I couldn’t really feel – or like I couldn’t feel any pain, but I could definitely feel … things moving around. And like, being cut off. Just saying, and it was really strange. And it was just a lot of pressure, until like, afterward. Um, and I just remember going, ‘whoa, it’s not that bloody’, when they took the towel off because there wasn’t that much blood. And it was just really strange. And it took like two weeks to heal. And that’s all I remember. There were stitches that like, melted off. Because that’s like medicine. It’s not really a Filipino tradition – I don’t know if they do it so much anymore cause like, the Philippines has been getting a lot better, since back then. This was fourth or fifth grade. It was just kind of interesting. I don’t know how old I was, I don’t want to remember hahahaha.

“You know that Twilight Zone episode? Eye of the Beholder? I was kind of like that. Except there was no pig on the end, yeah. It wasn’t that bad. Just a lot of gauze and pills.”

This piece really sheds some light on the overlap between modern medicine and folk medicine. Circumcision is an ancient tradition, however the advent of modern medicine has propelled it further into the mainstream. This friend of mine describes how even to this day, modern Filipino circumcision are influenced by folk belief in that it is considered bad luck to get it down as a baby. Later, he mentioned to me how the timing of the circumcision (around the age of 9 or 10) was also meant to be a sort of ritual celebration of adulthood, although his family did not really celebrate it. Rather, they viewed it more as something that just happens without imparting a significance related to maturity.