Sawikaan 2014 entries are words of the masses, says KWF’s Almario

"Selfie", "hashtag", and "peg" may be English words, but like the 11 other entries in this year's Salita ng Taon, they have been embraced wholeheartedly by Pinoys and used in everyday communication.

That is the reason these foreign words were selected for the word-of-the-year shortlist at the ongoing Sawikaan conference, said Komisyon Sa Wikang Filipino chair Virgilio Almario in a report on GMA's "24 Oras" on Thursday.

"Ang pinaka-mahalaga siyempre ay popularity. Ibig sabihin, talagang kahit anong gawin mo, ito ay sinasalita ng mayorya," he explained.

Read: My road to #Sawikaan2014

Masanao Que, a professor of Filipino language studies at Osaka University and a judge at Sawikaan 2014, added that Japan's own Word of the Year one year was adopted from another culture and transformed: "jejeje."

"[Ang ibig sabihin ay] ay 'aba, aba, aba'...Yung spontaneous na reaction ng mga tao pagka-nagulat sila. Jejeje," explained Que.

This year's Sawikaan 2014 entries are:

• PDAF
• bossing
• Filipinas
• whistle blower
• storm surge
• CCTV
• hashtag
• riding in tandem
• selfie
• peg
• endo
• kalakal
• imba

Sawikaan’s conference secretary Eilene Antoinette Narvaez said that the words picked for the biennial competition were popular words often used in social media and news.

In 2012, the grand prize was awarded to "wang-wang", with "pagpag" and "level-up" as runners-up. — Rie Takumi/BM, GMA News