Adjectives Using Sipat

          Bismillah. This is the second part of Lesson 10 in “Tausūg 101: Learning Bahasa Sūg” by Anak Iluh. For more lessons, please check out the page on “List of Lessons”.

          Last time we have introduced the common Tausūg Sipat (Adjectives), their usual structures and some of their irregular forms. Today we will talk about how a sipat is used in a sentence (At least just the easy ones, for now). Let’s begin the lesson by observing the following examples first:

Bahasa Sūg	English
bāy (our favorite example haha)	House
(1) Bāy malaggu’	Big house
(2) Malaggu’ bāy	Big house
(3) In bāy malaggu’	The house is big.
(4) Malaggu’ in bāy	The house is big.

          The first two examples are the usual way of directly describing an object (bāy, “house”) using a sipat (malaggu’, “big”). The last two examples are the ‘complete’ form of sentences as we added the noun marker in, which is the equivalent of the English article “the” (remember that noun-markers must always be placed before the noun it identifies). There are times that interchanging the orders of the two (object and sipat) does not affect the construction of the sentence whatsoever. But there are also times that one form (say examples 1 and 3, wherein the object comes before the sipat) is more preferred than the other form (examples 2 and 4, which is the opposite).

          Again, there are no grammar rules yet as how to call these forms; so for the sake of this lesson and for us to have something to use in this site only, we will make our own ‘names’ to call them. [A friendly reminder, these are not official names or rules of grammars in Bahasa Sūg. We just want to make things easier for our readers in this site. If you happen to find any mistakes here, please do inform us that we may correct them immediately. Magsukul]

          The first form is shown in examples (1) and (3) wherein the object (bāy) comes before the sipat (malaggu’). We will call this form the Object-Sipat Form or O-S Form (weird huh?). Examples (2) and (4) will be the other forms: the Sipat-Object Form or S-O Form, wherein the object comes after the sipat thus the name. We will be using the two names throughout the lesson, in sha Allah.  

Bahasa Sūg		English
O-S Form	S-O Form
badju’ malummi’	malummi’ badju	dirty shirt
sapi’ matambuk	matambuk sapi’	Fat cow
babai malingkat	malingkat babai	beautiful girl
tinapay mapasu’	mapasu’ tinapay	hot bread

Using sipat with possessive pronouns

          So, how do we say “My big house” or “His dirty shirt” in Bahasa Sūg? Again, (as we always do) let us learn from these examples:

Bahasa Sūg		English
O-S Form	S-O Form
bāy ku malaggu’	malaggu’ báy ku	my big house
badju’ niya malummi’	malummi’ badju niya	his dirty shirt
sapi’nila matambuk	matambuk sapi’nila	their fat cow

          Remember that we have learned in lessons 6 about dependent possessive pronouns (genitive form). These pronouns cannot stand alone and thus they must always come after an object. In OS Form, we observe that the pronouns ku, niya, and nila are placed after their respective objects, and before the sipats. In the SO Form, because the object already comes in the end, the pronouns are simply attached to the phrases.

Note: For all of these examples we have, the OS Form is more preferably used in conversations and is more accepted. Although they basically mean the same, the O-S Form is more, uhm, clear and easily understood. As for the reasons why… We unfortunately don’t know. Hehe. The S-O Form simply feels awkward to say or hear; there’s this “something’s missing here” feeling, so avoid using the S-O form alone with pronouns in conversing, if possible.

Sipat: Common Adjectives

           Bismillah. This is Lesson number 10 and the last lesson for Part II: Words and Phrases for “Tausug 101: Learning Bahasa Sug” by Anak Iluh. For complete lists of lessons (and to check where we are now), please go to: Lists of Lessons.

           Before we begin, let me first apologize to all of our readers for the delay of lessons for the past few weeks. Blame my Final Exams who had literally put me (and all of my classmates as well) in full battle-gear. Of course, I have to prepare for them in able to survive and make it for the next sem. Alhamdulillah, everything went well naman, and now we’re back to our tracks (yeay! *clap clap*). 

           For today’s lesson, we are going to talk about the most-sensible, most-intriguing, most-beautiful, most-awaited, and most-adjectively-described part of the sentence: the Commonly used Tausug Sipat (Adjectives).

           Tausug Sipat (from the Arabic “sifat”) are used to describe a particular object. It is basically used to give us more idea on how the object looks like; how big or small; how tall or short; how far or near; on how it smells, what color it has, etc., etc. I believe we already got the idea about a sipat, so we should move on to our next question: “How do we identify a sipat?” Here’s a short (a very short, indeed) guideline we made in identifying sipats.

Identifying Sipat.

1. Know what the sipat means.

           Of course, it goes without further explanations that the best way to identify a sipat is to know what it means; or what is its translation to English or Tagalog. At the end of this post, we have provided a download link on “Manga Kasipat-sipatan (Common Tausug Adjectives)”. Please be sure to download and print a copy later =)

      2. Know the origin of the sipat.

           Most sipats have a common similarity. They have a common denominator that distinguishes them from the other parts of the speech: Most sipat (not all) starts with the prefix “Ma-” and then followed by a noun it represents. This is also observed in Tagalog, but not in English. Let us study the examples below:

  

	Tausug	Tagalog	English
Example 1
Noun	Lingkat	Ganda	Beauty
Adjective	Malingkat	Maganda	Beautiful
Example 2
Noun	Lanab	Lása	Taste
Adjective	Malanab	Malása	Tasteful

           It can be observed that adding the prefix “Ma-” to a noun in Tausug and Tagalog languages is just like adding the suffix “-ful” to a noun in English language to turn it into an adjective. That is just how easy it is!