Verbal folklore
Title: Kung may tinanim, may aanihin
SR
Zoom
10/30/20
Informant Data: SR is a sophomore at Barnard University. She is 19 years old and was born and raised in the Philippines. Her family is an affluent Filipino family of Spanish descent.
Contextual Data: SR learned this proverb at a very young age from her grandmother. While visiting her family-owned farm, she was fascinated with the diverse array of crops that her family grew each year. After expressing interest, her grandmother told her about the proverb and how it is applicable to all she can do in life.
Social Context: SR’s family is one of the Philippine’s most affluent agriculturally dominant families. That being said, generations of her family have continued to grow the family business, providing new strands and a diverse set of crops to be harvested. SR would spend her summers on the farm, raising cattle, hanging out with friends, and interacting with the farmers. Here, she’s learned how to find her own peace of mind and strive for what she truly wants to do in life.
Cultural Context: One of the largest industries in the Philippines is agriculture. Many consider an agriculturally export-led country to be developing and inferior due to the lack of complexity of the goods they produce. Despite that, millions of rural farmers in the Philippines have shaped their livelihood from the income generated from agriculture. Thus, an agriculturally based proverb is a metaphor for the agriculturally centered Philippines. In line with the proverb, the proverb is passed on through many familial generations and has tapped into how families share values with one another. If a farmer works hard, he can put more food on the table for his/her family, and potentially expand what they can do in the agriculture sector. The rhyming consonance of “tinanim” and “aanihin” come from the evolution of the language and how groupings of similar categorized verbs sound similar – plant, harvest.
Item:
Kung may tinanim, may aanihin.
Literal Translation: If you plant something, you’ll harvest it
Meaning: Your future will be the result of the effort you put in today.
Informant’s Comments: “This proverb is something that I tend to think about on a daily basis. It’s sort of… not really about hard work but I think it reflects the outcomes of putting hard work into things that you want to do. The way I see it is that if I’m willing to put a lot of effort into perfecting a certain thing, that is like planting the seed for which will be harvested and can be a good grade or to perform well for what I was working towards … Because it’s really vague, I think it allows for different interpretations of it so that that all align with the fact that nothing of value can be achieved without dedicating time and effort to making it happen.
Collector’s Comments: This proverb has a similar structure throughout. The use of indirect rhyming and repetition of words help create fluidity in the saying. Furthermore, consonance is used in the key verbs as they are paired actions. This is a classic example of Tagalog sentence structure, pairing similar meaning verbs with the pronunciation. Because of this, it helps make phrases and sayings more and more memorable for individuals.
This proverb is very relevant to indigenous and rural Philippine culture as the agriculture industry is most dominant in those regions. There is a belief to be in touch with the crops you grow as that will represent your fortune and how well you are committed to taking care of life. The manual labor of planting and harvesting analogizes hard work and doing what needs to be done even in the hottest of conditions.
Collector: Jaime Chuidian