REINERIO A.

ALBA
Have you experienced being near two gays who were talking in quite a different
language altogether? And were you not surprised that you could understand some of
the words they were saying?
Yes. It is gayspeak, that wonderful lingo, argot, or jargon, which Filipino gays in general
seamlessly switch into when they are gathered together or most immediately when they
are around other people in order perhaps to cloak their intimate conversations, the
better to protect the virgin ears of those around them. Historically though, it is known
asswardspeak, a word coinage in the 1970s attributed by Jose Javier Reyes to
columnist and movie critic Nestor Torre. Reyes himself devoted a book on the subject
titled Swardspeak: A Preliminary Study. No other term has replaced swardspeak in local
usage since the 70s but Ronald Baytan (in his essay Language, Sex, and Insults:
Notes on Garcia and Remotos The Gay Dict) opines that the term sward these days
has become anachronistic, making it improper to call the language of the gay people as
swardspeak preferring instead to term it gayspeak.
Consciously or unconsciously, even straights or heterosexuals have peppered their
vocabulary with words traceable to gayspeak. Mention the word anech (from ano or
what in English with anesh, anik, anikla as varieties) to anyone in the metropolitan
area and in all likelihood, the person being spoken to will reply as casually. There are
also the familiar words chika, chuva, and lafang. Thanks or no thanks to media
(depending on which side youre in), gayspeak has come into public usage. In 2004, the
first gay show on TV history, GMA-7s Out, devoted a section of its show to gayspeak,
threshing out a word like purita (meaning poor) and explaining its context to the largely
entertained and enlightened audience. Such a section, of course, had its predecessor
in Giovanni Calvos 80s show Katok Mga Misis where he taught the viewers one gay
word after another. It was Calvo who also coined badaf(babae dafat or woman
supposedly) and ma at pa (for the contracted malay ko at pakialam ko).
This commonness of gay words is fascinatingly infectious. For one, I was recently
surprised when my own 60-year old father used kinarir in his usual morning
conversation with my mother. Karir, of course, is from the word career, and when
someone is seen seriously involved with something or even someone suddenly,
everyone readily flicks the word kinarir and understands it for what it is.
But how are gay words formed in the first place? Murphy Red, in his essay Gayspeak
in the Nineties (Ladlad2), said that gayspeak observes no rules as far as its structure is
concerned but its evolution is rapid , like the queens who have started to break the
walls of the subculture. He cited the word chaka (meaning cheap) and how it evolved

from chapter, champaka, chapacola, or chararat to champorado, chapluk, chapa, chop

suey and champola.
Lets take the word ahas (snake), a word which symbolically has become synonymous
with traitor or in gayspeak, someone who took away ones jowa (boy/girlfriend or lover)
covertly. With a gift for words, gays have turned to another word to encapsulate the
whole insidiousness attached with the foul deed and found anaconda, visually
appropriating the hierarchal size of the acts severity. Eventually, the word has been
shortened to plain ana.
Interestingly, there is also the evolvement of Cebuano gayspeak involving a different but
rather quite amusing process akin to the repapip (from the loosely used pare) of
the jeproks days. But unlike repapip, which only involves the reversal of the syllable,
Cebuano gayspeak requires that the word is read or uttered in complete reverse.
Examples of this would be dili or no reversed as ilid (but in true Cebuano gayspeak, has
becomed ilij),lain or bad reversed as nial, and uyab or lover reversed as bayu.
The way most gay words end in a flourish for most Tagalog gays certainly mirror the
importance as well placed by the bayot in the delivery and enunciation of his gay words.
This is how presently a single word can have various permutations as cited by Red. The
word sight (verb meaning to see) easily becomes German-sounding (sightzung),
Japanese-sounding (sightsuraka), Spanish-sounding (sightchilla), Chinese-sounding
(sightching) or even French-sounding (sightcois).
Baytan showed another way of developing gay words, which is through allusions, citing
the word luz clarita, which means to lose as a play on the word lose. An example of a
literary allusion is Kerima Polotan Tuvera, the name also of a highly-respected essayist,
which a select group of gays have used to lengthen the already much-used keri(from
carry, used originally in the context of how well one is able to carry a
dressmagaling kang magdala ng damit and by extension, one self, eventually
evolving to its current popular usage to refer to that which is pleasing to the eye). Now,
this is where the issue of class comes up, as pointed out by Baytan. Most gays may get
the meaning of Kerima Polotan Tuvera through the phonological clues but not everyone
would know the words etymology Kerima being the essayist figure unless he is
into literature. In the same way, the Cebuano gay word bayu for the well-heeled class
instantly becomes biochemistry or simply biochem. It is not surprising then that another
barangays gayspeak would turn out to be markedly different from the gayspeak one
uses with a close set of friends. (It would be interesting to check ones gayspeak with
the 115 key word entries in The Gay Dict (The Uncut Edition), which J. Neil C. Garcia
and Danton F. Remoto came up with in 1998).

So, why do gays use gayspeak at all?

Baytan offers that it is possible that the gays are turning the source of their oppression
their desires into the very source of their self-affirmation. The very
term bakla is pejorative in itself used by homophobes in insulting homosexuals in the
country, and not a few gays have winced at the word when it was first spat at them.
Baytan underlines that the utterance of the word alone brings to mind a series of
images related to oppression, trivialization, and marginalization. Hence the invention of
words that sound less painful to the ears: baklita, baklesh, bading, bakling, bahing,
badette, badush, badinger, Badinger Z all in an effort to neutralize the original word.
All these neverending creation of synonyms for bakla are seen further by Baytan as a
transgressive reinscription or use of the very words that demean him in order that he
may affirm himself.
And no, it is not because the gays in the country are primarily concerned with sex that
gay words practically cover the subject like ants. Admittedly, one new to Filipino
gayspeak may blush at the words for penis (nota, notrilya, notice), to have an erection
(telag), ejaculate (usba), suck (hada, kopas, kufing, koflage, kokak, halaya, hala), but
the gayspeak came about primarily because of a hopeful upending of the view that sex
is taboo and that it has become more taboo for the gay community because they desire
and are desiring the wrong sex. As Baytan so aptly put, every instance of gayspeak
unsettles the notion of that taboo that in the end, a true liberating space may be
opened in which the gay community could talk about their longings and experiences.
http://ncca.gov.ph/about-culture-and-arts/in-focus/the-filipino-gayspeakfilipino-gay-lingo/