The Chabacano Bubot

One of the poems found in Sombra y Luz is Sid Floreta's "Un Sueño". I liked this poem's usage of bubud amor to express the English phrase "puppy love". I assumed that the word bubud or bubut as we would pronounce it in Chabacano came from Cebuano or Hiligaynon and usually when you have native words in Chabacano composed of two syllables ending in a U, the second U is usually spelled as an O in the originating language. If the word ends in a T in Chabacano pronunciation, it's usually spelled with a D in the originating language. A good example is the word gulod which we pronounce as gulut in Chabacano.

UN SUEÑO (Para mi nieta Sabina Mariz) 

Ta roga el hora ay corre 

Pata

Para ay puede yo esta junto

Contigo 

Hasta edad solterita 

Año 

Llorando tu porcausa del bubud 

Amor

I decided to spell this word as bubud in Voces del Alma because I thought that it would be more recognizable compared to bubod, which I thought was the etymologically correct spelling.

Today, I decided to research the origins of this word and I was surprised that it does not seem to be in Cebuano or Hiligaynon. The word bubod exists in those languages but with a totally different meaning. However, it turns out that the word bubot does exist in Tagalog and with exactly the same meaning as the Chabacano bubut!

I often heard this word from my grandmother when she picked guavas from the tree. I would hear her say that a guava fruit was bubot and the fruit would usually be too small.

I found this word in Santos' Chabacano dictionary spelled as bubut and defined as 'immature fruit that will not ripen because it was prematurely dropped or detached from a tree'.

Do you see how bubud amor sounds very poetic?

According to Santos' dictionary, bubud also exists apart from bubut and it means 'to plant seeds by hand directly on the ground'.

I checked the latest Chabacano dictionary published by the city hall and neither the word bubut or bubot can be found, most probably because it does not have an English equivalent and the dictionary is English to Chabacano.

The word pata is another curiosity. The author informed me that it meant slow but I couldn't find this word in my dictionaries. The closest word I could find was patay-patay. Perhaps pata is a shortened form of the word patay-patay.

Initially, the author suggested adding H at the end because this is usually how we indicate a glottal stop in Chabacano. But because this rule or way of spelling was not incorporated in Lexicography, the dictionary published by the city government, I decided against doing it.

Here is a screenshot from a Facebook group where the author asks for the meaning of this word.