SLANGuage

Philippines is not just the home of great icons like Lea Salonga, Lani Misalucha, Arnel Pineda, Brillante Mendoza and many more. This country is also the home of different languages and dialects. I'm not only referring to the matatas na Tagalog or the kabalo it bisaya. I'm talking about the culture and language of jologs,  jejemons and bekimons. Just like the airy kapampangan and soft-spoken Ilonggo,  these slangs have idiosyncrasies.  Sociologists refer idiosyncrasies as individualizing qualities or characteristics of a person or group, and often used to express eccentricity or peculiarity. The importance of these idiosyncracies, coined languages in this case, is to bind and to identify the culture they share.

A good and a macro-scale example would be 'kanin'. 'Kanin' has many forms in the Philippines. It can be bigas, kanin, tutong, sinangag. Also, 'kain' which means to eat comes from 'kanin'. It is so very different in America because in English rice stands for both cooked and uncooked 'kanin', These languages are very important to these cultures. Filipinos giving importance to rice more than the Americans.

So let's take a quick look at these groups with their own Slanguanges..

So, what are jologs? According to the urbandictionary.com, jolog can be a substitute for ghetto, tacky, baduy, and any negative words you can think of. This word is prevalent during the 80's up to the 90's. The word jologs is not limited to just fashion sense. Mostly, being a  jolog also depends on socio-economic status. According to the writers from the tambayan.1.forumer.com, there are different types of jologs which stratifies them to socio-economic class, skwalogs (from the words skwater and jologs, the worst kind of jologs), squaconlog (from, squater, conyo and jologs, are the social climber jologs) and the coologs ( from the words cool and jologs, these are the rich people who have the qualities of a jolog). Also there are stratification of jologs according to gender: jologs ( are used generally for men),  chicklogs ( from chick and jologs, these are the female jologs) and baklogs (from bakla and jologs, are the gay jologs).

Also, according to a Jologs Dictionary from tambayan.1.forumer.com (again written by one of the writers), there are certain words created by the jologs which we are still using today like kwek-kwek (quail's eggs that are coated with flour and are color orange), Tigidig (pimples) and many more.

There is also a  movie entitled jologs. This movie has presented the different sides of being a jolog:

The movie had shown the adversities of the characters from being tacky and  baduy to their gender  being a  baklog, chicklog and up to their socio-economic status  being coolog or  squaconlog. The point of this movie is to show that there  are idiosyncrasies to which they (the jologs). These divide and unite them.

  -------Jologs are only allowed up to this line--------

Jejemon is another interesting culture. This jejemon craze has started more or less four years ago. Jejemons are the people who tYp3 l!kE thiz aNd wUd lAf wId j3Je dut'z wEr dey've gUt jeje.   Duh "mon" cAyM fr0m poke-"mon". fR. hir dey coined duh w0rd jejemon. 

According to this video, jejemon is a channel for the youth of this generation to find their selves and eventually, to be differentiated from others:

Actually, there are different levels of being a jejemon. PeOple who tExt likE this is n lvl 1. Jejemon hu sUvSkRiB N' diz stayl are in mild case. pfIf0lz hux teckz lAyK diz iz whutx u kcolled t3rM!naL cq4ze. 

jejemon is not only limited to the texting style because it also influence some fashion tastes. Also, people has made parody about jejemon's fashion for having Jeje caps, big buckled-belts, loose pants, neon colored clothes, etc. like in this picture.

Many has contested the existence of this culture. Many of these people would subscribe to facebook pages  like the jejebusters, gotta catch them all jejemon and many more. In these pages, people would usually bash jejemons that they are illiterate and uneducated.

We can see that there are  personal troubles of these people because they are trying to express themselves and to be different but the public issue arises when people start to contest their expressions and the eccentricity. With the help of Ma'am Lopez, I was able to come up that this phenomenon is an example of a culture war - conflicts between two or more cultures. As, I have mentioned, people who contest jejemons are branding them as illiterate. with the use of social conflict paradigm, this can be seen as the perception of jejemons  being uneducated because of their use of language. The bases for this conflict are economics and communication skills.

Economic because most jejemons  came from the lower class and usually the people who contest them came from the middle and upper class. Also, the communication skills because if you want to be taken more seriously, you should speak in straight English but the jejemons are more unlikely to be treated seriously because their language is perceived as a corrupt English - wrong spelling and gramming (jeje).

Also, some parents and teacher are threatened that their children and students' communication skills might deteriorate but according to Bishop Joel Baylon in one of his program in radio Veritas that jejemon craze is just a fad, expression and it will eventually be over. He has advised the parents and teachers to focus on more values formation and don't be threatened by this slang.

Apparently after these contestings against jejemons, people have gotten tired of of this craze. I think, it is around last year that the people have   lost interest about bashing  jejemons. Maybe because they are now being slowly accepted by the society but this can't deny the fact that jejemons up to this point has been a negative brand.

----------------------------bYe pfuowz---------------------------------

If it's about the colorful language, one shouldn't forget the bekimons. Bekimons has evolved from what was called gay lingo. Bekimon has started from the culture of the third sex, gays to be exact, that evolved to their language but these days, not all bekimons are gays because some are heterosexuals.
Bekimon uses coined words. The most prevalent would be echos, chuva and charot (click here to see more: https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=204350149575233). They would use mensung, nota, or hada pertain to men, their sex organs, and sex itself. This can be rooted from proprietor of this language which are the homosexual men who apparently like men also.

Masesey akech na tarush ang itechiwa na bekiness. Mausspluk ko na iba itech na lengwahe. Aber, unlike jologita at jejemonster na chipangga, chaka at nainenechos lang, kapag hustler ka sa beki wit kang eechusin dahil pasok ka na sa banga, sholbug sila sa iyo at may career ng miss congeniality.

I think, the idiosyncrasies of bekimons is their coined words, funny personalities and eccentric pronounciation. I haven't seen someone who has been bashed because of being a bekimon (disclaimer: bekimons not gay). Unlike jologs and jejemons, bekimons are the most socially accepted.

---------------------------------chanel na ako mga chakaness---------------------------------

The emergence of these slangs and cultures is a characteristic of very dynamic countries like the Philipiines. Also, what makes this language very Filipino is that it shows the creativity and innovation to stand out. I would say that this serves a function of convenient communication and a channel of creativity. However, it is also a dysfunction because it stratify people, isolating or differentiating from groups to groups.

I think, it is evident that jologs, jejemon and bekimon are very widespread and I won't be surprised if one day there would be a word chos in the dictionary or if Filipino is not 'the' national language anymore but 'a' national language together with jologs, jejemon and bekimon.