Kapampangan/Greeting

Part A: Description

In this lesson you will learn to greet anyone with the appropriate level of formality.

The level formality for many sentences, including greetings, is more complex than in English. But we will see here that it is quite easy to show respect or sound formal.

The first word to know is mayáp, good. Then you need the word describing the time of day: ábak morning, ugtú noon, gatpanápun afternoon, béngi night,

If you want to be formal and respectful to elderly, you need the word pu and the following construction then applies:

Mayáp a gatpanápun pu Good afternoon, sir or Good afternoon, madam showing respect for an older person.

The a simply links good with afternoon and is a compulsory link word. But an interesting phenomenon is that Kapampangan does not allow a glottal stop between two consecutive vowels and so words starting with a vowel have a y added at the beginning if they are after the compulsory preposition a:

Mayáp a yábak pu Good morning, sir or Good morning, madam showing respect for an older person.

Another frequently used phrase is Kumustá which means both Hello, and How are you?. It is borrowed from the Spanish Como esta? which means exactly How are you?

Part B: Application

Given the rules here above, we can generate the following set of phrases:

Hello, how are you?	Kumustá? (Span.)
Good noon (literally)	Mayáp a yugtú
Good night (or evening)	Mayáp a béngi

You noted that in Kapampangan one can say "good noon". Although it might sound unusual to you, this is simply used when you meet someone at noon or around lunch time.

Part C: Exercises

Translate the following English sentences into Kapampangan:

Good afternoon
Hello madam, how are you?

Translate the following Kapampangan into English:

Mayáp a béngi pu
Mayáp a yábak

Solutions

Part D: Summary

You can now correctly greet anyone you meet in Pampanga, and not be perceived to be rude. Here is the list of words and greeting phrases that you have learned:

mayáp	good
ábak	morning
ugtú	noon
gatpanápun	afternoon
béngi	night
pu	word indicating respect for the person that you talk to
a	link word between an adjective and a noun
Kumustá	Hello, how are you?
mayáp a yábak	Good morning
mayáp a yugtú	Good noon
mayáp a gatpanápun	Good afternoon
mayáp a béngi	Good night

Continue to Introducing Yourself