Talk:把拉

Etymology

@Mar vin kaiser Do you know the etymology of this term? Is it a borrowing from Tagalog pala or does this exist in other hokkien dialects too?--Mlgc1998 (talk) 10:45, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

@Mlgc1998: To explain to you what Vocabulario de la lengua tagala says about "pala", it's not "payment" and it's not of Spanish origin. "Palà" is a native Tagalog word, you can see it in the Tagalog prayer of the Hail Mary, "bukod kang pinagpala sa babaeng lahat". The word "palà", even in this old source, refers to the benefit one derives from something. Not payment. If you look at all the sentences, nothing there is about monetary payment. --Mar vin kaiser (talk) 10:54, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Mar vin kaiser the page for that one has that listed as a different entry. Many years ago, that "pala" is the one I was thinking about but the Vocabulario de la lengua tagala was not talking about that one since it's in a different entry. I was referring to the 4th "PALA" entry in the page. The 1st "PALA" is the one you're referring to. Mlgc1998 (talk) 10:57, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Mlgc1998: I don't know what you mean by 1st and 4th "PALA". I'm referring to the "Mejora, aprovechamiento ó paga que se saca de algo." By the way, this isn't an obsolete word. This is a common word in modern Tagalog. It's quite common to say, "Sana pagpalain ka ng Panginoon" or "Iyan ang napapala mo sa mga ginagawa mong masama". --Mar vin kaiser (talk) 10:59, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Mlgc1998: To illustrate to you how "pala" in Tagalog doesn't mean payment, look at it this way. If "pala" is "payment", "magpala" must mean "to pay", but it doesn't. Even in this old source. "Magpala" means to receive a benefit, or to receive a reward, at least for the 4th definition in this source you're citing. --Mar vin kaiser (talk) 11:07, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Mar vin kaiser Where does it say there "magpala" and that it does not mean "to pay"? Where does it say there that "Magpala" means to receive a benefit, or to receive a reward, on the 4th definition? Mlgc1998 (talk) 11:15, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Mar vin kaiser The other vocabulario books from around the 1800s as well, list "PAGA" as entries used for Tagalog during those times as well, but that 1860 book list it as "PALA" and indeed says "Mejora, aprovechamiento ó paga que se saca de algo.", where it even says it exactly there "paga que se saca de algo.". The KWF Diksiyonaryo also has "paga" listed as "[Esp] halagang ibinabayad sa anuman — pnr pa·gá·do". The "pagpalain" usage is also listed in that 1860 book at the 3rd "PALA" there, not on the 4th "PALA", that exhibits "Nagpapala", "palaan", "Ipala", "mapala". Mlgc1998 (talk) 11:12, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Mar vin kaiser I've found where the issue lies. It's not that this "pala" is from the "pala" that's in "pagpalain" that means like a blessing, but it indeed seems like the the type of word that at least is not the type to have come from Spanish paga, especially with the unusual sound change from /ɣ/ [g] that is supposed to turn into more like an [h] in Tagalog, like in kolehiyo and pahina. What's more likely evident is that the "PALA" they mean in the 4th entry is the "pala" that's in what you mentioned "napapala", which is not the same as the "pala" that means blessing, because this "pala" is more like recompense or consequence. The KWF Diksiyonaryo lists this definition under "pa·lâ" with the definition: "parusa o gantimpala na natamo kapalit ng anumang bagay na ginawa : HITÂ — pnd ma·ka·pa·lâ, ma·pa·lâ.", so in a way, "recompense" as a form of payment as described by the 1860 Vocabulario as "paga que se saca de algo." (Payment taken from someone) matches for that sense, so this Tagalog pala and Spanish paga are just two possibilities for where this term comes from, since they're both semantically and phonetically the closest and have the existing attestation from the eras where the term could've entered the lexicon. Mlgc1998 (talk) 12:32, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Mlgc1998: Yes, you are right, the definitions are split even in modern Tagalog, "palà" is blessing, and "palâ" is recompense received, benefit received, etc. But if you notice, the meanings are actually opposite. "Paga" as in the Spanish word where the actor is the giver (the person giving the payment), while "palâ" is where the actor is the receiver (the person with the recompense received). You can see this in the example sentence of the 4th definition, "Nagpapala siya ngay-on sa kaniyang karunungan." The subject here is not paying, the subject here is receiving the recompense, the reward, for his wisdom.

However, one example sentence does make me re-think though, the sentence is "Ipala mo sa mey bangca itong isda", and "Sa caniyang bahay, palaan mo itong aquing bangca". These usages do not exist in modern Tagalog anymore, "ipala" and "palaan". I'm not sure how to understand these sentence, but the idea of recompense is there. However, there is one thing that I could say is against your point, it's the glottal stop. Glottal stops borrowed from Tagalog to Hokkien don't disappear, since glottal stops exist in Hokkien as well. So if our Hokkien word came indeed from "palâ", it would sound like pa-lah. However, if our Hokkien word come from the Spanish word "paga", there's a super logical reason why the /g/ became an /l/. It's simply because the syllable "ga" does not exist in Hokkien. "Gua" exists, "ge" exists, but not "ga". And that's why it would morph into a syllable that exists in Hokkien, so "ga" became "la". --Mar vin kaiser (talk) 13:14, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Mar vin kaiser Those "ipala", "palaan" usages are probably archaic or going obsolete by now, but who knows maybe some super conservative community from some part of southern tagalog provinces preserved things like that, but anyways, before discovering the term for "palâ", I was thinking more about the term where Tagalog would say it more in the way that Spanish paga was to say it, but from the looks of the multiple Spanish-Tagalog Vocabulario dictionaries back then around the 1800s, they all more or less have entries that retain "paga" listed for Tagalog as is like that, since Spanish during that time was still actively using the word even in the definitions of those books themselves, so this situation looks to have prevented it from changing that much for Tagalog. The Tagalog-Spanish Vocabularios after that 1860 one still lists "PAGA", so all throughout, the form was preserved in Tagalog, enough that KWF has it listed still in the Diksiyonaryo, but probably in actual mainstream usage, did not catch on anymore today, in favor of bayad instead. I see the idea you mean with Hokkien's sound inventory. Some months ago, I manually checked every possible hokkien syllable before to ensure the licit syllable tables in the POJ/TL wiki pages were accurate, so I made myself a copy of those tables corrected with all the possible hokkien syllables I managed to find in wikt and so far, "ga" is currently a possible usable syllable in Hokkien, but looks like most seem like foreign loanwords or some strange dialectal sound changes that probably were not there before. For example, we now have 西班牙 (Se-pan-gâ), 瓦斯 (gá-suh), 知迓 (ti-gā), 敗牙／败牙 (pāi-gâ), where all of them are either loanwords or some dialectal thing [?], so looking back to the time period where "ga" would not have been used, we have those older terms that did not retain the [g], especially coming from /ɣ/ sound, like with 三貂角 (Sam-tiau-kak, “Cape Santiago”), where it seems "Santiago" lost the [g]/ɣ/ there to form the first two characters, but for "pá-lâ", perhaps it would have seemed weird to have it turn into "pá-â", so in an effort to retain the 2 syllable distinction more clearly, the same behavior logic with how 矣 (--a / --ah) and 啦 (--la / --lah) is chosen for exclamation perfective particles was used, where 啦 (--la / --lah) is used if the previous term ended with vowel sounds, and 矣 (--a / --ah) for consonant sounds, just to keep clear syllable distinctions. Mlgc1998 (talk) 14:30, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Mlgc1998: Oh, I totally forgot about 牙, lol. I kept thinking of words with "ga". Thanks for that! --Mar vin kaiser (talk) 14:31, 20 December 2021 (UTC)