Talk:yasuwi

Tagalog etymology

Potet's derivation from Japanese 暑い (atsui, “hot”) is a strange contention. Why would initial ya- become just a-? Why would medial -ts- become just -s-? If from Japanese, 易い (yasui, “easy; easygoing”) would seem to be a better fit phonologically, while still in the right ballpark semantically. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 19:25, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

For this word, I just put what the two western authors decided to put in their publications for the sake of showing that it's an actual slang word recorded in the past decades that multiple authors have been discussing about if any Tagalog-literate person might not recognize the word (since it's a bit rarely heard of these days when speaking Tagalog or in Tagalog literature or Filipino media), but I doubt that the Tagalog slang word comes from Japanese as claimed by those two authors, because afaik, in the mainstream Philippine context at least around the capital, Metro Manila, I've never heard of Japanese 易(やす)い (yasui, “easy”) and 暑(あつ​)い (atsu​i, “hot”) spoken by any Tagalog-speaking Filipino, let alone immediately know what they mean if they have ever heard of it, except perhaps some 21st century millennial and Gen Z frequent anime viewers, fans, and enthusiasts. I know a few Japanese Filipinos also exist sprinkled around the country, but I know as much the ones living in Tagalog-speaking regions, they typically speak Tagalog and English in public too and only ever use Japanese within their own families, schools, or Japanese-speaking friends. What I have personally heard spoken in the Philippines tho is Hokkien 野媠 (iá súi, literally “very pretty”), usually among some elderly silent-gen or boomer or middle-aged gen X Hokkien-speaking Chinese Filipinos living amongst typically Tagalog and English-speaking Gen X, Y, Z Chinese Filipinos and other Filipinos overhearing their family conversations, particularly around Binondo (Manila Chinatown). From what I've read of Zorc (1993)'s and Potet (2016)'s content in their books, they seem to not have had any Chinese Filipino contacts consulted in their books and have only been filling in data for their Hokkien loanwords indirectly from secondary sources like Chan-Yap (1980) and their Tagalog-speaking non-Chinoy contacts, since the propositions they have for Hokkien loanwords do not always seem particularly informed unless they were taking it from Chan-Yap (1980)'s old paper, which itself has a few mistakes and incomplete data. Anyways, the connotation of the Hokkien expression here though is very innocent and can refer to objects and places as well, but this street slang term in Tagalog seems to particularly refer to women in a lewd way ("hot"; "sexy"), which I presume is the work of Swardspeak (Tagalog street gay lingo), which is fond of inventing new words or changing up words and borrowing from whichever cool word or affix it encounters. Mlgc1998 (talk) 13:12, 1 September 2022 (UTC)