JAMORABON IS MY NAME – Written By Ligaya Bijaksana Jamorabon
So what is JAMORABON?
Where did it come from? We all know its from the Philippines, but don’t you want more than that? We can’t possibly just stop here and only assume we have rised from the dirt and now we are JAMORABON. No! I’m not satisfied with only that.
LETS FIRST BREAK IT DOWN
We all know Philippines is multicultural with Malay, Chinese, Indian, Morrocan and more. Definitely Jamorabon does not sound Chinese, Indian, Morrocan and others. It is definitely part of the Malayo-Polynesian Family Group.
SO WHERE DID ILOCANO, TAGALOG, CEBUANO and ALL LANGUAGES IN THE PHILIPPINES COME FROM?
If we have to be scientific, lets say in the means of LINGUISTICS, it’s in the family of Austronesian languages. As you can see from the map above, Philippines is part of the Austronesian Language Family. Does the surname Jamorabon sound Chinese? Definitely not. Does it sound Spanish? Definitely not.
The closest that the name can relate to are part of the Western Austronesian Languages. You can see reference here: http://aboutworldlanguages.com/austronesian-language-family
HOW TO SAY JAMORABON
Because we know that Jamorabon is not a European last name, it’s suppose to sound like:
JAH – MO – RAH – BOHN (or)
JAH – MOH – RAH – BONE
Make sure you make the sound of the “J”. JAH JAH JAH JAH JAH as in JACK
Practice the vowels that are used in the Austronesian Languages.
A – AH as in UNHAPPY
E – EH as in APPLE
I – EEH as in EAGLE
O – OH as in BOY
U – OO as in PUT
In Spanish, they would pronounce it HA-MO-RAH-BOHN. We don’t really care how you pronounce it, but if you want to say it correctly. It’s the Austronesian way of course. You can be fancy pantsy with your Spanish if you want. Just know at least where that name originated.
My proof is not only from the Austronesian language family group. You would have to look at the last names from the Indonesian or Malaysian native surnames. They have a lot of surnames that start with the letter “J”.
Can you honestly say that it could be a Spanish last name? No.
Among the prominent Malay patronymics may be cited Jāyah, Jaldin, Jumat, Jaimon, Jūnus, Jungkīr, Jamalon, Jumadin, and Jurangpati. So it looks very close to the Malay and Indonesian language. What other languages has similar pronounciation? (Source: http://www.sailanmuslim.com/news/wp-content/uploads/names-and-surnames-among-the-malays.pdf)
I’ve also done research to see if JAMORABON is closely related to the Arabic, Iranian or Turkish language. It does not either.
So the closest we are going to get to Jamorabon’s origins are Indonesian and Malay.
FILIPINO LANGUAGE
You are probably saying, “Why are you talking about Indonesians and Malaysians?” Well you must know that all the other Filipino languages: Cebuano, Tagalog, Pangasinan, Ilocano and more…..are all dialects.
What are dialects?
Patois
- a rural or provincial form of speech.
-
a particular form of a language that is peculiar to a specific region or social group.
As you can see you can literally just trace all the Filipino languages to their Mother based language – Bahasa-Melayu or Bahasa Indonesia.
HUH? WHAT YOU TALKING ABOUT?
Simple breakdown. If you look at the English language, we would say English is from the British Isles and American English is from the United States. We cannot say that American English is an original language. We will have to say that American English came from their mother language from Britain. You can also say Latin and then you get a breakdown of the other languages like Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. A patois or dialect are just specific to the region, but there is a power language or mother language. Even in Hawaii they speak a dialect or patois called Pidgin English….but it is still english. Pidgin English has a mixture of Japanese, Hawaiian, Portuguese, Spanish, Filipino, Chinese and more. But we don’t say Pidgin English is Pidgin Mix or Pidgin Hawaiian. Why? Because the majority of words that make up Pidgin English…….is “ENGLISH” Therefore the power base language of that patois is English. Mother language for Pidgin English is “ENGLISH.”
HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT WHEN “FILIPINO” HAS OTHER INFLUENCED WORDS?
In the Science of Linguistics, they define a group of people by their language. So if your country has a majority of FRENCH words, you are of course mostly French people. The majority of Filipino people speak their own dialects. Majority of these dialects speak predominantly of Malay based words. Therefore the people are of Malay. You may say that Tagalog is now TAGLISH and some dialects have SPANISH words. I beg to differ….because if you have to calculate every person that speaks their dialect in the Philippines, you will see that majority of the words are Malay based. CALCULATE IT. So its definitely Malay. Taglish is a new dialect too and so as the ones that have mix Spanish major words. But if you calculate the POPULATION of the entire Philippines with their dialects…you will see it is Malay. Measuring the background of the people based on linguistic dissections in the language…..we can safely say it is Malay based.
LESSON LEARNED
We can say JAMORABON however we want. No one will force you, tie your hands behind your back and say, “SAY IT RIGHT!” You can do whatever you want. But now that you’ve educated yourself a little about the JAMORABON surname, are you going to be educated and say it correctly or continue to sound blissfully blinded. You know it’s origins…..its power/mother language and where it is from. Now that you know……can you pretend you dont know? It’s your choice. Blissfully blind sounds nice too. If that is the case, KNOWLEDGE is not power in your definition.
REFERENCES
Jamorabon - The Family Network 