I SPENT THE whole night and long, long hours the days and nights after that voraciously feasting on and savoring every page of Constantino's Isinay book.
If it were a food item and you're going to ask me to describe it, the least I could say is that it is completos recados. It has all the ingredients – nay, the items – I was looking for, including even some juicy bits about the exploits of an Isinay playboy of yesteryears.
What I was looking for, mainly, were words in Isinay – particularly authentic Isinay words and ways of articulating thoughts and weaving them into coherent language all of which I needed to enrich and substantiate my already around 12,000-strong collection of Isinay words as of April 2012.
Again, I'm not stretching it when I say I got much, much more than I prayed for.
Not only were the book's Isinay pages packed with Isinay vocabulary, expressions, songs (including the anino^), mottoes, riddles (lojlojmo^), stories (sutsur, appoyaw), and prose many of which I barely remember hearing or coming across before. Mercifully for us struggling Isinay survivors now, Dr. Constantino also did a wonderful job giving their English equivalents or translations. And on a one-on-one or paired-pages format at that. Thus, there's no need for me to squeeze some other people's brains or to second-guess what the more difficult Isinay words and phrases meant.
What's more, the book did not only focus on Isinay-Dupax but also contained equally golden items on Isinay Bambang. For Irupaj guys like me whose knowledge of Isinay-Bambang has not gone beyond takallo (corn), bansing (matches), mangaw (cat), dadak (frog), ansisinno^ (dragonfly), and masing-aw (delicious), the book is a vocabulary builder and should help one to better understand the Isinay phraseology of the Facebook postings of friends from Bambang.
As for Isinay Aritao, the book is also certainly a windfall as it contains very generous samples of vintage documents – such as patayav and testamento – written in unadulterated Isinay. The Aritao Isinay customs concerning marriage and those concerning death are certainly enlightening as well as entertaining reading for one concerned not only with the language but also now vanishing practices.
For children or even those who want to be equipped with bullets to tell their kids or grandkids bedtime stories, the book has a very generous menu, too, of legends, prince and princesses stories, fairy tales, and even ghost stories. I’m now 60 but you better take my word when I say that I became a child again – in fact, the voice of my father telling bedtime stories to my sisters came alive again – when I read the two versions of “Bidan di Ba-uuwar on si Araw” (Tale of the Turtle and the Monkey) contained in the book.
The moro-moro that used to be the most awaited attraction during town fiestas in the Dupax of my boyhood also got resurrected when I was reading Pablo Larosa’s comedia-estoque (sword comedy) titled “Bilay Don Juan Pugut si Reynoar Escocia” (Life of Don Juan Pugut of the Kingdom of Escocia).
I digress, but hindsight tells me now that, when I was a boy, the crowd-drawing moro-moro, even if it carried traces of Spanish influence, was largely helpful in keeping the Isinay language alive and interesting to children – be they Ilocano, Pangasinan, Igorot, or Isinay.
Indeed, the sights and sounds of the moro-moro of my youth came back and I saw myself, an Ilocano-speaking kid, picking up Isinay words here and there while watching with excitement the red-shirted “Moros” engaging blue-uniformed “Cristianos” in swordfights, when I read this part of Larosa’s script:
“Mebbes si ejao isaon. Saon si Emperador Bulbulagao manlajlajot ajdao. Imbevena situ y Apo an umalin mangibaja an dioy si osan comedia an paila mi sitien mablen ejao si fiesta. Besan amoya umuli toy deet visita siri beoymi pura la loman an sin-ili an neyaput di Babaddi. Dee tay otiat ba’bao mu asa pay mu umuli. Adios, goodbye.”
Larosa’s Don Juan brought back the images of that makeshift bamboo stage that each fiesta time came up on that formerly vacant spot between the house of Apu Ariston Reyes and the then Municipal Dispensary (now replaced by the front building of the Governor Alfonso Castaneda Elementary School). In my mind’s ear, I heard the “pasa doble” music played again alternately by the St. Vincent and Eagle Swing orchestras to signify who was winning between the Moros and the Christians… while a “princesa” was up there on a bamboo tower being taunted by a “bulbulagaw” carrying a naping-awan an parajol (dilapidated axe).
For the more serious Isinay language students, the inclusion of Isinay prayers from the first Isinay book ever to be published – the Catecismo de la Doctrina Cristiana de la Lengua de Isinay o Inmeas (printed in 1876) – should be interesting. In fact, even a fluent Isinay speaker like me would find the prayers challenging to read and to understand as their author/s used an orthography that looks alien compared to today's largely phonetic Isinay way of spelling words.
[ [DIOY RA TAY SI ATUPTUPNA]
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