By Mar-Vic Cagurangan
Variety News Staff

OUR photographer Paul Blas uses “Kuxika”as his display name on his MySpace page. “It means crazy, outgoing, or fool,” Paul said.
Speaker Mark Forbes, during a session break one lazy afternoon this week, engaged in a linguistic discussion, offering his own theory about how certain words came about and how they evolved into their present meanings.
“Kuxika,” the speaker said, may not be a local term. It could be an English slang that might have been misheard by locals from the Marines. The word that the speaker suspects to be the origin of the word is unprintable, however. It starts with a “c” and ends with an “r.” Use your imagination.
For the most part, this piece is an innocuous attempt to find out how certain words and their meanings change or get distorted, and how certain English words are used in certain places.
When I was in Melbourne a couple of years ago, I found myself giving off a dumb face while talking to some Australians. One guy asked for my “mobile.” My what? My mobile? Where I come from, “mobile” refers to “car.” Why would he be asking for my “car?” The sign language helped and I eventually understood that he was asking for my “cell phone number.”
While I was in Manila last month, I realized that my guest from Guam was going through the same linguistic confusion. Filipinos say “soft drink” instead of “soda.” We say “comfort room” instead of “rest room.” The word “john” is alien to us.
We almost got into an accident while he was driving in Manila because our navigator kept telling him to not take the route toward the “flyover.” “Don’t drive on the flyover! Skip the flyover!” My confused and frustrated guest blurted out, “What on earth is a flyover?!” He was about to reach the “flyover” when he realized that the navigator was referring to what he said Americans call “overpass.” But I’ve always known “overpass” as the pedestrians’ loft.
My guest has learned, too, that what we call “prepaid minutes” here is called “load” in the Philippines.
I guess English is the most idiosyncratic of all languages. It has none of the rigidity of form that is the hallmark of German, French or Tagalog. And in all of its creative exuberance, unlike French, there’s been no need for official word police.
Language is the tool of my livelihood and its idiosyncrasy is something that always fascinates me. If you’re paying attention, you’d realize that there is something new to learn everyday.
(Send feedback to marvic@mvguam.com)