So you want to live in Pampanga, or room with a Kapampangan, or even marry a Kapampangan? Prepare for a bumpy ride! Here are tips to help you survive the company of this much-admired, much-reviled, and much-misunderstood people:
1. Kapampangans talk loud when they’re together. They enjoy listening to themselves and to the sound of their language. They love their language with a child’s love for his mother, calling it amanung sisuan (“suckled word”). They’d navigate across a crowded room to find anyone speaking in Kapampangan, and when they do, they’d gush like long-lost friends. They sound like they’re arguing, but they’re actually just tracing their six degrees of separation in search of a blood relation or a common acquaintance. You can’t blame them for savoring each other’s company. There are only 2 million of them left on earth, compared to 22 million Tagalogs, 20 million Cebuanos and 8 million Ilocanos.
