First book on pre-historic roots of Kapampangan language out

• Source: punto.com.ph/News/Article/26521/Volume-10-No-49/Feature-Article/First-book-on-pre-historic-roots-of-Kapampangan-language-out
• Thursday, January 12, 2017

By Ding Cervantes

ANGELES CITY- A university here has announced the publication of a “major work” on Kapampangan language featuring its prehistoric root words and syllables derived from Asia languages, in a scholarly book expected to be patronized by Kapampangans all over the world.

Robby Tantingco, director of the Center for Kapampangan Studies of the Holy Angel University (HAU) here, said the 950-page book titled “Capampangan Roots: Primitive Words and Syllables from Polynesian- Austronesian, Sanskrit, Chinese and Bahasa Languages as Roots of the Capampangan Language.”

“It is the result of long years of research by Macau-based poet-artist-cultural advocate Oscar Balajadia a.k.a. Papa Osmubal, native of Magalang, Pampanga and alumnus of HAU,” Tantingco said.

He said “the book is part of a two-book series that complements Balajadia’s earlier four-book series entitled ‘O Jo, Nu Ca Menibat’, also published by HAU.”

“Balajadia dissected and broke Kapampangan words down to their basic syllables and discovered similarities to syllables of other Asian languages in form and meaning. For example, the root word of Pampanga is pampang, whose root syllable is pang, which is Mandarin for ‘beside something,’” he noted.

Tantingco said readers would be “surprised how interrelated languages are all over the world, due to east-west, north-south and backagain waves of migration.”

“For example, I thought ‘catre’ which is Kapampangan for ‘bed’ came from Spanish. As it turned out, Spanish had borrowed it from Sanskrit. So now I know catre is Sanskrit but I don’t know if catre reached Kapampangan directly from Sanskrit or it if passed through Spanish before reaching Kapampangan,” he added.

The book is available at HAU and could soon be obtained in major bookstores in the country, Tantingco also said.