If it happens in Pinamungajan–or Timbuktu, or Ittoqqortoormiit, Greenland–it happens everywhere.

The task force should be handled not by policemen or NBI agents but by musicians, particularly lyricists. You call the police or the NBI when it’s about drugs, or alcohol, or guns, or Joavan Fernandez. But when it’s about videoke violence, call the songwriter. Unless our law enforcement institutions include “Lyrics as Cause of Violence” in their training, drug raids and checkpoints will never solve videoke killings.

This is Google Research I’m talking about, the most reliable source of information for very serious researchers, like college freshmen and humor columnists. My comprehensive Google research told me video killings are intimately linked to the lyrics of the song that caused the fight. Take “My Way” for example.

A dozen articles dissecting the lyrics of “My Way” crop up when you google “videoke killings.” If you think I’m making this up, here’s an excerpt: “The number of killings connected to singing of the song (My Way) may simply reflect its popularity in a violent environment…The song’s ‘triumphalist’ theme might also be a factor.”

“The lyrics of ‘My Way’ increase the violence,” the study continues. “The lyrics evoke feelings of pride and arrogance in the singer, as if you’re somebody when you’re really nobody…It covers up your failures. That’s why it leads to fights.” The typical Filipino irritates.

It makes sense. Remember the last time you went videoke-ing with your friends, and there’s this guy in the next table singing “Making Love Out of Nothing at All” with all the braggadocio he could muster and you were so damn annoyed by it? Of course you don’t blame the lyrics. “I know just how to whisper/ And I know just how to cry/ I know just where to find the answers/ And I know just how to lie” is down pat annoying but only because you hate Air Supply to begin with.

You want to blow Hitchcock and Russell and their legion of fans to smithereens, not that drunk in the next table. And we’re not talking about the Bee Gees yet.

Now, imagine that same guy screaming, “For what is a man? What has he got? If not himself–Then he has naught…The record shows I took the blows. And did it my way.” Man, that guy’s annoying!

In fairness to Sinatra, he didn’t write “My Way.” It was Paul Anka, who re-wrote it from the original French, which he described as “a bad record, but there was something in it.” That “something” is murdering videoke singers all over the country. Creepy.

The Pinamungajan incident offers an additional twist to the videoke rage phenomenon. The song is not “My Way,” thank God, but Fred Berame’s Cebuano classic “Samtang May Kinabuhi.” In the context of the videoke rage in the country, the song sounds equally creepy.

No, we won’t dissect Berame’s lyrics right now. We’re running out of space. Besides, I hear somebody singing “My Way” at the videoke bar outside, and I have a mission to fulfill. Give me that gun now.

By Insoy Niñal
Sun.Star Cebu, July 20, 2010

( You need to be familiar with the nuances of the Cebuano language to appreciate what I’m talking about here. In any case, I have a friend, a priest, who once insisted that the Cebuano term for “to urinate” should be “manghingutin.”  To use it in a sentence: Excuse kadiyot bay ha, manghingutin sa ko.)

LAST WEEK, a strange word made it to the front pages of local newspapers and would have stayed there for weeks if not for the arrival of other equally exciting words like Sulpa and Japanese pornography. “Sulpa” sounds a lot sexier, and “pornography” is more sinfully attractive.

“Mamlantiray” looks ugly on paper. It looks scandalous beside newsworthy English words like “policewoman” and “lawyer.” It is unfriendly to the tongue, which has other uses for calisthenics. The Cebuano tongue has distaste for words that have an M and another M and an L close to each other. I know a friend who hates the word “mamlantsahay.” She prefers doing the laundry.

Its place of origin will make the word even more repugnant to the morally upright reader: the underground world of drug lords and gangsters. Though the person it refers to is feared and loathed in slum areas and dark street corners, the word finds home in the mouths of those who coined it in the first place and kept it alive.

“Mamlantiray” becomes lovely only when you strip it of its dirty-cop connotation and look at it as it is – a Cebuano word, a lively derivation from the English “plant” and born of Cebuano ingenuity. Viewed from this angle, “mamlantiray,” to the lover of the Cebuano language, was the freshest word that saw print last week.

The word mocks Cebuano writers who sneer at how some of us “Cebuanize” foreign words using local affixes. How else do we treat words whose concepts are alien to our native consciousness? These writers want us to use “tangkilipono” (tangkil + telepono) when “silpon” is the one used and understood by everybody. I don’t actually mind if someone sends me a text message saying, “Teksi lang unya ko bay.” My reply: “Sige bay, teksan lang tika.”

A language is alive only when it is imperfect. The Latin language was so perfect that it left no room for new concepts coming in from an ever-expanding world outside. While the world’s other languages fed on it and grew, Latin died a slow death. And now the Catholic Church wants it resurrected. But that’s another story.

The Cebuano language is an imperfect language. It assimilates words whose concepts are basically alien to Cebuanos. As foreign words take on distinctly Cebuano sound and meaning, and find a place in popular usage, some Cebuano words have to die. If it were a military campaign, these words are called collateral damage. The damage is unintended, even tragic. We mourn the loss, but we have to move on.

The analogy is stretched, but you got my point.

There’s this joke about a Cebuano writer who suggested coining a Cebuano term for every English word. The writer, who seemed to have an issue with underwear, suggested “pantapwas” (panapton tapot sa lawas) for undershirt, and “pantaptoy” (panapton tapot sa totoy) for bra.

I can only imagine a friend – who keeps losing her favorite pair of panties to a pervert next door – shouting: “Hoy George, iuli akong pantaplat!”

(sun.star, 2007)