sining

The Filipino word sining used to mean “to think.” Now, it means “art.”

Jacobo and Legaspi-Ramirez propose the term sining (“art” in Filipino & Tagalog) originally was synonymous with the word “thought”. This, they argue, “determines cognition/sentience as a premise in the founding of Philippine art in its incipient phase” (Chotpradit et al., 2018).

*Shifting senses of art in the Philippines are intimated in tensions transcribed in lexicons particularly between the late 19th and early 20th centuries.1 The Vocabulario de la Lengua Tagala [The Vocabulary of the Tagalog Language] (1860) cites a curious meaning for sining, “pensar ”, with its infinitive form pagsiningsiningin, “to think”. While the UP Diksyonaryong Filipino (2010) preserves this sense, the lexicon privileges contemporary notions of “sining” as “art”: as object, skill, method and mode of production. Lexicographers Juan de Noceda and Pedro de Sanlucar refer the reader to isip (“thought”) as a synonym. In the same lexicon, pensar indexes isip further with panimdim (“thinking”), anacala (“calculation”), alaala (“remembrance”), angang (“introspection”), andam (“a method of thought to aid memory”), dilidili (“doubt”) and haca (“imagination”).

In the same research report, many of the other languages discussed relate “art” more closely to skill and/or beauty than they do to conceptual or intellectual labour.

The reason I find this interesting is because art carries multiple meanings, and uncovering what old societies and different culture thought about when they thought of art provides a hint on the different ways to approach and apply it. What’s considered as art has always been debated, and studies like this provide wisdom on how to think about art in a non-Western framework.

Writing-in-progress!