My Ethnographic Apologies.

[Bill M]

I want to apologize to my friends in the Filipino community. I have inadverdently used a bad word in my emails.

I recently found out that "Hiya" is an ugly term, meaning "shame" among other bad things. In Southern American it is a contraction of "How are you?"

But in Tagalog . . . . .

So for those of you to whom I have emailed beginning "Hiya (name)," I apologize. I don't use that term anymore, at all.


And to the Javanese woman to whom I closed and email "Warmest regards," I did not mean to indicate that I was trying to come between you and your husband!

This is a polyglot community with many languages represented here. I hope that we can gently correct, with understanding and a little humor, others who may accidently and unintentionally misuse languages.

Like the guy who told me he would like to "look through my drawers," (in American, "drawers" can mean "underwear.") We had a good laugh about that one!