Category Archives: Language

International, Language, LGBT

BIG CHANGES COMING TO MISS UNIVERSE PAGEANT NEXT YEAR

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Donald Trump with 2012 Miss Universe Olivia Carpo of the United States.
Donald Trump with 2012 Miss Universe Olivia Carpo of the United States.

DORAL, Florida (The Adobo Chronicles) – While the world is anticipating the final results of the 2014 Miss Universe Pageant now being held in Doral, Florida, Donald Trump has announced major changes in the international competition starting next year.

The business mogul and Miss Universe Pageant owner spoke with reporters tonight while he was busy assisting the 10 finalists put on their evening gowns in the dressing rooms.

Specifically, he announced three major changes:

1. The Miss Universe organization will now actively recruit transgender contestants to this international competition which originally only allowed contestants who were born women.

2. Because of the perennial outstanding performance in the pageant of contestans from Latin America (including Venezuela, Argentina, Colombia and Brazil), the pageant will adopt a new official language which will be used throughout the competition, from the preliminaries to the finals.  That language, of course, is Spanish.  Non-Spanish speaking contestants will still be allowed to engage the services of a language interpreter.

3. Trump will have to personally approve the final decision of the pageant’s panel of judges to ensure that his favorite contestants win the crown.  After all, he’s paying for it.

The LGBT community and Spanish-speaking countries immediately praised Trump’s new policies.  The government of the Philippines, meanwhile, has mandated the teaching of Spanish in schools and universities — from kindergarten through college, especially among women and girls to increase the country’s chances of winning more Miss Universe crowns.

 

Language, Science and Environment

NEW WORDS ADDED TO WEBSTER’S DICTIONARY, THANKS TO BAY AREA STORM

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weatherSan Francisco, California (The Adobo Chronicles) – Last month, The Adobo Chronicles  reported that  Oxford has added ‘selfitis’ to the English Dictionary after the word dominated social media for most of 2014. Selfitis is defined as “an inflammation of the ego” and refers to the obsessive compulsive desire to take photos of one’s self  and post them on social media as a way to make up for the lack of self-esteem and to fill a gap in intimacy.

Today, Webster’s announced that it is adding several new words to the 2015 edition of its dictionary for the American English language, thanks to the super storm that is currently pounding on most of the San Francisco Bay Area.

The new words:  Stormaggedon, Rainpocalypse and Floodgate.

Stormaggedon and Rainpocalypse both mean the impending doom and destruction caused by a storm, typhoon or heavy rains. Floodgate (think Watergate or Irangate), a word entry that is already included in Webster’s Dictionary, takes on a new second meaning, and that is “a weather anomaly resulting in flash flood warnings that people receive on their mobile phones.”

Congratulations to the Bay Area for its great contributions to modern language!

 

Language, Law Enforcement, Politics

PHILIPPINES: NEW WORD ADDED TO TAGALOG DICTIONARY

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downloadManila, Philippines (The Adobo Chronicles) – Previously, The Adobo Chronicles reported that ‘selfitis’ was officially added as a new word in the Oxford Dictionaries of English.

Today, a new word was added to the Tagalog (Pilipino) Dictionary, thanks to a new government fund scam uncovered by the country’s Commission on Audit (COA).  The new word is Malampaya.

Origin

Malampaya is a $4.5 Billion project started in 2002 off Palawan Island in the Philippines.  Operated by Shell Philippines Exploration BV and Chevron Malampaya LLC, it involves the extraction of natural gas off the waters of Palawan.

The service contract provides for a production-sharing scheme in which the government gets 60 percent of earnings from the operation.

Part of the government’s share — 900 Million pesos — was allotted for the rehabilitation of farms in 97 towns devastated by powerful storms. Instead, COA alleged that the amount was siphoned off and channeled to questionable non-governmental organizations, mostly associated with businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles, the incarcerated alleged mastermind of another fund scandal, a 10 Billion-peso pork barrel scam which benefited many top government officials.

In the Tagalog language, there is a word — Manampalataya — which means “to have faith.”

The Commission on the Filipino Language thought it appropriate to add the new word Malampaya to the Tagalog Dictionary because of this recent fund scam.  It will mean the exact opposite of Manampalataya.

The new word entry was indeed added to mean “to lose faith.”

Filipino language experts immediately hailed the new word addition, saying that “with the unending government fund scams and scandals that have preyed on taxpayer money, we urgently needed a new word to express our loss of faith in the government.”

Malampaya v., inf. lose faith; withdraw one’s faith in something, i.e., in a corrupt government