Talk:tatay

Tagalog Etymology

@Mlgc1998 Can I ask, where'd you get the idea that it's from Spanish tata? I see several sources saying either from Nahuatl or from Chinese, but not yet from Spanish. --Mar vin kaiser (talk) 13:19, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

@Mar vin kaiser Is it recorded from Nahuatl? If it's from Nahuatl, those usually passed through Spanish speakers from over the Pacific, like with how Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, Tamil, or Javanese, or etc usually passed through Malay speakers, but I haven't confirmed before if it ultimately came from Nahuatl or whichever preceding language, but what was at least evident at the time was the existence of the term in Spanish whether or not if it was also derived from an old loanword into it, since I think I remember around the time I edited that before, I recently saw Spanish-speaking commenters from maybe Mexico or somewhere in Central America commenting at can't remember if either a Youtube video or Facebook post where they heard mention of Tagalog tatay, then commented as if they recognized it the same as Spanish tata and were going all nostalgic about their dads all teaching them well or something, then I think I went here in wiktionary to check then checked the Diccionario de la lengua española at their further reading for both Spanish tata & nana, which it's recorded there especially for Guatemala for nana, but the entry for tata was more ambiguous, which I decided to confirm via looking into some books in Google Books from Guatemala where I found a book called "Kinship and Incestuous Crime in Colonial Guatemala" by Sarah N. Saffa (2020), where the book used tata to mean "Dad or Daddy", quote, "She told him, "Tata ['Dad' or 'Daddy'], I'll tell Nana ['Mom' or 'Mommy']," and called her mother several times. But her mother did not hear her, and she ceased calling her because she feared her father would hit her." at this page.

There are words like this and I guess affixes like maybe -oy and -ay where the idea I can at least gather is that it looks more of a word that must've crossed from over the Pacific, since the words look like they popped up consistent with the Spanish era and are gendered, or wherever it really comes from there in the Americas if not ending solely with Spanish, which is something I would not be able to definitively confirm about.

Now that I think about it, the family terms in Tagalog and other ph languages that have a hispanic feel but not quite exactly the same as the Spanish words these days seem like they came from a child's playful or confused behavior of endearingly calling their family members, like the way to call parents like "Mom and Dad" in Tagalog is sometimes just "Nanay, Tatay, ..." or "Tatay, Nanay, ..." like in some children's songs, rather than the supposed more proper "Nanay at Tatay"/"Tatay at Nanay", but if seen from a Spanish-speaking perspective, it does seem to make sense if it was actually a Spanish phrase of "Nana y Tata"/"Tata y Nana" that got read as only two words. And then, the family terms for relatives like lolo, lola, ninong, ninang, tito, tita, manang, manong, etc. also all seem to have a sort of pattern. Well, tito, tita does seem to be a case of tío +‎ -ito and tía +‎ -ita to make endearing diminutive forms, which the same idea could've been applied for ninong, ninang for the -ng / -ing diminutive suffix, but the root has this behavior as well of focusing only on the last syllables of the gendered Spanish etymons or maybe doing some reduplications as well of them, consistent with general behavior of preferring to shorten and keep last syllables with Tagalog and likely other Austronesian languages and also other neighboring potentially likely related language families, like perhaps Kra-Dai. It's like lolo could've been basically an endearing shortened nickname form from the last syllable of Spanish abuelo, but reduplicated as if a behavior of frequently calling out that shortened form got cemented, and then lola seems to be the feminine form they got from that since there was Spanish abuela. For the non -ng parts of ninong, ninang, it could've been as well for the former behavior but with Spanish padrino and Spanish madrina, but perhaps some phonological changes for convenience made it so ⟨-dr-⟩ just turned into ⟨n-⟩ after lots of times of saying that. With manong and manang, that seems to be the case for Spanish hermano + -ng and Spanish hermana + -ng, minus the consonant shift. Mlgc1998 (talk) 18:57, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

@Mlgc1998: Thanks for the reply. Yup, I get how it's derived, and it makes intuitive sense, I admit. I just wanted to know if you saw it explicitly stated in any source. Looks like you derived it on your own. Nothing wrong with that, if it makes intuitive sense, but better if we have sources. The thing is if we look at the the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database, aside from Philippine languages, the languages in Vanuatu and neighboring areas also have the words "tata" or "tate" for "father", indicated in the website as a "cognate" of the word "tatay" in Philippine languages. The distance makes the connection less possible, but it's also possible that it's from a more ancient Malayo-Polynesian root. No conclusive etymology, so we just have to put everything in. If you find any sources that explicitly give a Spanish origin, please reference it. Thanks! --Mar vin kaiser (talk) 14:31, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

@Mar vin kaiser yeah, for this word, I somewhat did remember reading about a "tahtli" but I wasn't able to find a specific source before from where again I read that. After seeing the etymology for Spanish tata being from Latin tata daw, I started doubting myself if, was it not from that tahtli I read before? like some other words from old books saying this and that Nahuatl word but oddly I did not see again in some Spanish entries here again, so I just put Spanish to be safe since I saw a definite record there. Mlgc1998 (talk) 07:19, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

@Mlgc1998: This is an issue actually among world languages in tracing the etymologies of words for "father" and "mother". Because words for "father" tend to be "pa" or "ta", and "mother" tends to be "ma" or "na", an innate word for babies. So it's hard to trace the etymology. --Mar vin kaiser (talk) 13:26, 13 May 2022 (UTC)