Unpacking “tahanan”

The Department organized this year’s installment of Lexicon Unpacked, “Tahanan,” in commemoration of the 104th founding anniversary of the Department and the 10th anniversary of the UP Diliman Faculty Center fire. Held online last 02 September via YouTube livestreaming, the lecture explored the Filipino words bahay, tirahan, tahanan, and uwi, and how these terms contribute to our conception of ‘home.’

bahay, tirahan, tahanan

The first speaker, Asst. Prof. Divine Angeli Endriga, presented “Home Sweet… Ano? Bahay, Tirahan, Tahanan,“ which looked into the etymology, morphology, and collocations of the terms bahay, tirahan, and tahanan in order to identify the similarities and differences between how these words convey the meaning of ‘the place where one lives’.

Endriga began her presentation by discussing the history of the three terminologies through their corresponding protoforms, or the hypothesized older form of the word. The Tagalog bahay ‘house’ comes from the Proto-Malayo-Polynesian (PMP) *balay ‘public building’. On the other hand, the history of tahanan and tirahan are not as straightforward. The origin of the word tahanan is usually attributed to the word tahan meaning ‘to stop’, as in the expression tahan na. Thus, tahanan is often referred to as a place where you can stop crying. However, Endriga discussed that the root of tahanan actually came from the PMP *tahan ‘abode, place of residence’, and the Tagalog tahan ‘to stop’ has a different origin. For the case of tirahan, its root tira developed from the PMP *tida ‘leftover, remainder’. The Tagalog tira eventually gained the meaning of ‘remaining’ or ‘staying’. Tirahan, its nominal form that is suffixed with the locative –(h)an, eventually lexicalized into a word that means ‘residence, abode.’ 

Endriga also presented the various nominal and verbal affixed forms for bahay, tirahan, and tahanan. The word bahay in particular is notable for its productive affixation and for being the only word out of the three to have forms that refer to the construction of the physical structure of a house, such as nagpabahay ‘had a house built’. Tirahan also occurs with a productive verbal affixation, including the recent perfective form kakatira. The affixation for tahanan and its root tahan is not as productive because its modern usage is more formal and archaic. In addition, Endriga also observed that tahanan and tirahan have affixed forms with the same meaning, such as nanahan and nanirahan. This implies that the two terms were used similarly, although tirahan seems to be a relatively more recent construction based on the early Spanish dictionary entries. Across all terminologies, the most prominent affixations are the actor and the locative focus forms, pertaining to who lives where.

To further explore the different contexts in which these words are used, Endriga discussed their collocation or the surrounding words these terminologies occur with through the analysis of their mentions in databases, news, literature, and songs. All terms somewhat involve a physical structure. Bahay refers to the actual physical entity, tahanan to its relationship with the person, and tirahan to the function of the place. However, there is still a divergence in the usage of these terms and how they interpret this structure. For instance, bahay is a bound or enclosed space, having references to areas, activities, and relationships inside and outside of the house such as kasambahay and kapitbahay. It can also be used to name institutions, activity centers, anatomical containers and animal enclosures, like bahay-ampunan ‘orphanage’, bahay-bata ‘uterus/womb’, and bahay-pukyutan ‘beehive’. On the other hand, tahanan has an emotional and affective evaluation, which can be seen in the expressions masayang tahanan and ulilang tahanan. What constitutes a tahanan often pertains to a sense of belonging and family, as seen in the titles given to parents, haligi ng tahanan and ilaw ng tahanan. It can be a home to non-physical things and refer to a physical or a figurative place, as how one could refer to a person as their tahanan. Lastly, tirahan is primarily used as the general habitat of living things and does not have to be necessarily enclosed. This is the term often seen as the equivalent for the English ‘address’ and can be found in administrative or government forms. It is considered a right that necessitates money and is time-bound, as the term can be accompanied with reference to a permanent or a temporary stay. Evidently, the terms have overlapping meanings especially with regards to the physical meaning of ‘a place to live in’ but are not freely interchangeable as they occur in different contexts.

At the end of her presentation, Endriga explained that tahanan and tirahan had been used the same way, but tirahan eventually took over the full meaning of ‘residence’. This allowed tahanan to be enriched with the meaning of ‘home’ and an affective evaluation.

uwi

Instr. John Michael Vincent De Pano’s presentation, “Uwi: What we mean when we ‘go home,’” discussed the origin of the word uwi and other connected terms that may share its history. 

De Pano first looks at the songs Tahanan (2019) by Munimuni and Ang Bandang Shirley’s Nakauwi Na (2013), noting how they portray what home is to Filipinos, a place to return to. In the Leipzig Corpora Collection, a database including Filipino news articles up until 2020, the word uwi and a variety of its affixed forms such as pauwi, umuwi, and makauwi occurs frequently alongside bahay and tahanan, but not with tirahan.

Uwi is usually defined as the act of returning home, or bringing something home. In terms of its history, the Tagalog uwi ‘go home; bring/take home’ comes from the PMP *uliq, which has a variety of meanings. Aside from ‘to return home’, the protoform also means ‘to return something,’ pertaining to either taking something home or returning it to its original owner or status. The Tagalog uli ‘to return (something)’ also originated from *uliq, which makes it doublets with the Tagalog uwi as these two terms have the same origin. Given this, it can be claimed that the Tagalog word sauli consists of sa- and uli, but the function of the prefix sa- in this word is still uncertain. The protoform *uliq also has the meaning of ‘repeat’. Although it is similar in form and meaning with the Tagalog ulit, the latter comes from a different reconstruction and is not genetically related with uwi. De Pano also tried to look into the Tagalog muli, which is possibly m- attached to uli, but its etymology cannot be ascertained because of the lack of concrete evidence. De Pano concluded by emphasizing the shared histories and cultures that can be discovered while looking at the history of a word, which can also be seen as an attempt to find ‘home’.

This year’s installment of Lexicon Unpacked is available to watch on the Department’s Youtube Channel.