Talk:kopong

"Zero" definition

The instances I see where "kopong" is used as a stand-alone word, it means something like "old-fashioned". So I'm wondering where you got the meaning of "zero". Mar vin kaiser (talk) 10:47, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

@Mar vin kaiser Im more wondering where tou got the old fashioned for stand-alone kopong. Because isn't that the full nineteen kopong kopong? 1900s? Ysrael214 (talk) 11:13, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

@Mar vin kaiser And have you seen nineteen kopong kopong spelled as nayntin kopong kopong? I was thinking it's okay to retain nineteen as is, since it's slang so the orthography doesnt matter too much? Ysrael214 (talk) 11:16, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

@Ysrael214: I got it from the quote I included. --Mar vin kaiser (talk) 11:33, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

@Mar vin kaiser To answer the question, you can look around FB to see a lot of people claiming kopong is "Old Tagalog" for zero, just to make sense of the 19 kopong kopong expression, so much that it's almost fake news like them Maugnayin words claiming to be old Tagalog or uncommon words. These posts stretch back to 2011. Ysrael214 (talk) 11:36, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

@Ysrael214: It sounds sketchy to me. I think this requires more research. I'll try to dig deeper into this. --Mar vin kaiser (talk) 11:37, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

@Mar vin kaiser Even celebrities claim it:

https://twitter.com/kuyakim_atienza/status/486019984045256704 Ysrael214 (talk) 11:38, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

@Ysrael214: If it's not in Vocabulario, then it's fake lol. Earliest attestation of "kopong" (in kopong-kopong) I find in Google books is 1983. --Mar vin kaiser (talk) 11:46, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

@Mar vin kaiser Yea, it's fake. I can't find it in SB 1613 either. But people got convinced that we actually have a word for zero. Hence, I put neologism. Ysrael214 (talk) 11:48, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

@Ysrael214: I don't think it can be called a "neologism" the reason that people think "kopong" is an old Tagalog word for "zero" as an etymology. Therefore, their notion of "kopong" being "zero" is stuck as an etymology, and not as a word to be used. Isn't that the case? --Mar vin kaiser (talk) 13:02, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

@Ysrael214: Also where'd you get the etymology of from Indonesian "kosong"? --Mar vin kaiser (talk) 13:04, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

@Mar vin kaiser Where did I put Indonesian kosong? I put Indonesian kopong.

It is used as zero in kilometro kupong. Not just etymology. Ysrael214 (talk) 13:07, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

@Ysrael214: Sorry I meant "kopong". I don't think there's a word "kopong" in the Indonesian language. --Mar vin kaiser (talk) 13:08, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

@Mar vin kaiser https://kbbi.kemdikbud.go.id/entri/kopong

@ Ysrael214 (talk) 13:12, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

@Ysrael214: Interesting. Quite odd. Seems there to be no reason for us to borrow from Indonesian. If really from Indonesian, only an academic would borrow it and somehow it got popularized through the "kopong-kopong". Or it could be a folk etymology. --Mar vin kaiser (talk) 13:15, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

@Mar vin kaiser But it is Indonesian, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zScAHzpVVQ Ysrael214 (talk) 13:21, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

@Ysrael214: Let me explain. Yes, based on your website, "kopong" is found in the Indonesian dictionary. But like all etymologies, we have to think how Indonesian would come into contact into Tagalog. Since we have no instance of "kopong" as "zero" from before the 20th century (and since Indonesian did not exist prior to the 20th century), it must have come to the Philippines after World War II, most likely (assuming it's true). The question is how. It's not like we got an influx of Indonesian immigrants. So the only conceivable way, if ever, would be a scholar saw it as a possible "native" word for "zero", borrowed it, make it an expression, and somehow the expression popularized.

However, I'm skeptical, I find it super weird that an Indonesian word would get to Tagalog. In my opinion, I think it's more likely that "kopong" is a locally invented word, as in just in the 20th century, and I think it originally didn't mean "zero". Maybe it originally meant something like "something-something", as in "nineteen something-something", then the phrase "kopong-kopong" became associated with something old-fashioned, like in the expression "panahon ng kopong-kopong", then someone found out the word "kopong" in Indonesian meant "zero", spread it online, and it became a folk etymology, which lots of people online spread, and News5 took the online information as fact. --Mar vin kaiser (talk) 13:31, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

@Ysrael214: It seems like the first time the Tagalog term "kopong" was connected to "zero" was in this blog post here. The post even said "kopong" meant "zero" or "double" in Old Tagalog. If this is the invention of this blogger Julius Tirazona (maybe he saw it in an Indonesian dictionary and thought hmmm..it must also have existed long ago in Old Tagalog with the same meaning!), then probably someone else after him tried looking it up and rediscovered it in Indonesian dictionaries and assumed we borrowed it from Indonesian. --Mar vin kaiser (talk) 01:22, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

@Ysrael214: If you look at Google Books, it seems that the earliest attestation of "kopong" is in 1983, and the five publications all have the form "panahon ng kopong-kopong" or "taong kopong-kopong". It doesn't seem that "nineteen kopong-kopong", earliest I find was from 1990, was the original iteration of this word. --Mar vin kaiser (talk) 01:39, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

@Mar vin kaiser So what's the original meaning of kopong-kopong if not zero? Is it some comics character? movie character? But right now it is considered as zero due to the Indonesian link. Did this blog post trend in Facebook? But so far, okay we can theorize that maybe the kopong-kopong is the original, someone said 19... kopong-kopong then speculated that kopong meant zero, then found out that kopong is zero in Indonesian coincidentally to make sense of 19-0-0. But since other people has been linking it to zero as well, we can still keep the neologism part maybe? Ysrael214 (talk) 01:52, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

@Ysrael214: If the word is currently associated with the definition of "zero", then it makes sense to keep it within the entry in one form or another. For the blog post, the reason why I think that's the source of this etymology, aside from it being the earliest I can find where "kopong" is said to be "zero", is its usage in this publication where the blog post is referenced for this info. --Mar vin kaiser (talk) 08:25, 30 October 2023 (UTC)