Tip of My Tongue
It’s early morning as I begin this, not my usual writing time. Touch of insomnia. I’d intended to gripe today about the crap the Bushies continue to shovel on the rule of law, but frankly, I don’t want to start the day that way, so I’m going to talk about a Filipino oddity instead.
Eileene often fails to finish her sentences. When a sentence ends in a noun or an adjective, she’s likely to slow down and hunt around for the word she wants. (It’s reinforced my bad habit of finishing others’ sentences, too, which is a bit worrisome, although my Mom seems to appreciate it as her aging recall begins to fail.) The oddest thing about this behavior is that the word almost always lies comfortably within her working vocabulary: if she were to use the same word in a different sentence, one where the word in question doesn’t come at the end, she won’t have the slightest trouble with it. She might say, “Could you get me that blue…whaddyacallit,” when asking for a coffee cup, but will also say, “My coffee cup is full of…uh, thingie.”
Often, the missing word is replaced by a gesture, or occasionally onomatopoeia. She might point, or lift her chin and point with her lips, Filipino style, or gesture the general size and shape of an object, or mime its use. But the word itself is gone.
It’s not just Eileene, either. Her mom does it too, only she says “Could you get me that blue…ano,” ano being Tagalog for “whaddyacallit,” literally “I don’t know [what].” Gestures, too. And she’s got it far worse than Eileene does, despite a perfectly respectable command of English—probably better than Eileene. Her uncles do it, too, although they have the excuse of poorer English.
I figured it simply ran in the family: either Eileene inherited some rare genetic kink in her grey matter, or she learned to speak by listening to her parents, and her infant mind grew into the notion that dropping the object off of sentences is normal speech, and by the time she learned otherwise, it was too late. But I was wrong. We visited a Filipino buffet recently—having married Eileene, I’ve learned they’re squirreled away in more strip malls and similar rent-affordable locations than I would ever have imagined otherwise—and the woman behind the counter asked if we wanted our water in individual glasses or in a… [two-handed gesture outline of a pitcher].
I had to grin. It’s hard to imagine so idiosyncratic a habit belonging to an entire nation, but there you are.