WHAT IS GAY LINGO Swardspeak (also known as "Bekimon" and "gay lingo") is an argot or cant slang derived from

Taglish (Tagalog-English code-switching) and used by a number of homosexuals in the Philippines Swardspeak uses elements from Tagalog, English, Spanish, and some from Japanese, as well as celebrities' names and trademark brands, giving them new meanings in different contexts. It is largely localized within gay communities, making use of words derived from the local languages or dialects, including Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Waray, and Bicolano The term bekimon (beki is a colloquial word for "gay") took off from the growing popularity of the jejemon subculture, which refers to those who deliberately exaggerate ordinary words by adding or subtracting letters, or by using a mixture of upper-case and lower-case letters, in written communication. Consciously or unconsciously, even straights or heterosexuals have peppered their vocabulary with words traceable to gayspeak. Mention the word anech (from ano or what in English with anesh, anik, anikla as varieties) to anyone in the metropolitan area and in all likelihood, the person being spoken to will reply as casually. There are also the familiar words chika, chuva, and charot.

ORIGIN HISTORY It is known as swardspeak, a word coinage in the 1970s attributed by Jose Javier Reyes to columnist and movie critic Nestor Torre. Reyes himself devoted a book on the subject titled Swardspeak: A Preliminary Study. "Sward" is slang for 'gay male' in the Philippines. No other term has replaced swardspeak in local usage since the 70s but Ronald Baytan (in his essay Language, Sex, and Insults: Notes on Garcia and Remotos The Gay Dict) opines that the term sward these days has become anachronistic, making it improper to call the language of the gay people as swardspeak preferring instead to term it gayspeak. The origin of the individual words and phrases, however, has existed longer and come from a variety of sources. Now it is popularly called gay lingo, salitang bakla, gay slang and bekimon. Thanks or no thanks to media, gayspeak has come into public usage. In 2004, the first gay show on TV history, GMA-7s Out, devoted a section of its show to gayspeak, threshing out a word like purita (meaning poor) and explaining its context to the largely entertained and enlightened audience. Such a section, of course, had its predecessor in Giovanni Calvos 80s show Katok Mga Misis where he taught the viewers one gay word after another. It was Calvo who also coined badaf (babae dafat or woman supposedly) and ma at pa (for the contracted malay ko at pakialam ko).

USAGE Swardspeak immediately identifies the speaker as homosexual, making it easy for people of that orientation to recognize each other. This creates an exclusive group among its speakers and helps them resist cultural assimilation. More recently, though, even nonmembers of the gay community use this way of speaking, particularly heterosexual members of industries dominated by gays, such as the fashion and film industries. The language is constantly changing, with old phrases becoming obsolete and new phrases frequently entering everyday usage, reflecting changes in their culture and also maintaining exclusivity. The dynamic nature of the language refuses to cement itself in a single culture and allows for more freedom of expression among its speakers. Words and phrases can be created to react to popular trends. By these characteristics, swardspeak creates a dissident group without any ties to geographical, linguistic, or cultural restrictions, thus allowing its speakers to shape the language as appropriate to the times. Swardspeak is also spoken by babaeng bakla, women who associate exclusively or mostly with gay men (literally 'gay women', though they are actually heterosexual) But how are gay words formed in the first place? Murphy Red, in his essay Gayspeak in the Nineties (Ladlad 2), said that gayspeak observes no rules as far as its structure is concerned but its evolution is rapid. He cited the word chaka (meaning cheap) and how it evolved from chapter, champaka, chapacola, or chararat to champorado, chapluk, chapa, chop suey and champola. Lets take the word ahas (snake), a word which symbolically has become synonymous with someone who took away ones jowa (boy/girlfriend or lover) covertly. With a gift for words, gays have turned to another word and found anaconda, visually appropriating the hierarchal size of the acts severity. Eventually, the word has been shortened to plain ana. Interestingly, there is also the evolvement of Cebuano gayspeak involving a different but rather quite amusing process akin to the repapip (from the loosely used pare). But unlike the repapip, Cebuano gayspeak requires that the word is read in complete reverse. Examples of this would be dili or no reversed as ilid (but in true Cebuano gayspeak, has becomed ilij), lain or bad reversed as nial, and uyab or lover reversed as bayu. The way most gay words end in a flourish for most Tagalog gays certainly mirror the importance as well placed by the bayot in the delivery and enunciation of his gay words. This is how presently a single word can have various permutations. The word sight (verb meaning to see) becomes German-sounding (sightzung), Japanese-sounding (sightsuraka), Spanish-sounding (sightchilla), Chinese-sounding (sightching) or even French-sounding (sightcois)

An example of a literary allusion is Kerima Polotan Tuvera, the name also of a highlyrespected essayist, which a group of gays have used to lengthen the already much-used "keri". Now, this is where the issue of class comes up, as pointed out by Baytan. Most gays may get the meaning of Kerima Polotan Tuvera through the phonological clues but not everyone would know the words etymology (Kerima being the essayist figure) unless he is into literature. In the same way, the Cebuano gay word bayu for the well-heeled class instantly becomes biochemistry or simply biochem. It is not surprising then that another barangays gayspeak would turn out to be markedly different from the gayspeak one uses with a close set of friends. (It would be interesting to check ones gayspeak with the 115 key word entries in The Gay Dict (The Uncut Edition), which J. Neil C. Garcia and Danton F. Remoto came up with in 1998). WHY? Baytan offers that it is possible that the gays are turning the source of their oppression into the very source of their self-affirmation. The very term bakla is pejorative in itself used by homophobes in insulting homosexuals in the country, and not a few gays have winced at the word when it was first spat at them. Baytan underlines that the utterance of the word alone brings to mind a series of images related to oppression, trivialization, and marginalization. Hence the invention of words that sound less painful to the ears: baklita, baklesh, bading, bakling, bahing, badette, badush, badinger, Badinger Z, all in an effort to neutralize the original word. Admittedly, one new to Filipino gayspeak may blush at the words for penis (nota, notrilya, notice), to have an erection (telag), ejaculate (usba), suck (hada, kopas, kufing, koflage, kokak, halaya, hada, hala), but the gayspeak came about primarily because of a hopeful upending of the view that sex is taboo and that it has become more taboo for the gay community because they desire and are desiring the wrong sex. As Baytan so aptly put, every instance of gayspeak unsettles the notion of that taboo that in the end, a true liberating space may be opened in which the gay community could talk about their longings and experiences.

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REFERENCES Alba, R. A. (2006) The Filipino gayspeak (filipino gay lingo). Retrieved June 19 2013 from http://www.ncca.gov.ph/about-culture-and-arts/articles-on-c-n-a/article.php? i=289&subcat=13 http://www.slideshare.net/mikeelico/understanding-filipino-gay-lingo + Swardspeak in wikipedia, or yung references na nakalagay sa wikipedia