"Mabuhay" is a Pilipino verb in the form of a command: "Live!"
It is also a wish: "May you live!"
Whosoever says it wishes upon you the great gift of a long and full life.
It is both a blessing and a lusty cheer.
"Mabuhay" (ma-boo-high) is such a large word that it lends itself to a wide number of secondary uses:
welcome, congratulations, thanks, godspeed, hello, good luck, cheers, prosit, sante, viva, kambei, aloha, and many other expressions of goodwill.
All these are a part of life; but it is the gift of life that makes them possible.
"Mabuhay", in other words, is an invocation and a celebration of life itself.
"Mabuhay!" sa lahat po ng aming kababayan na napapasyal po dito sa aming blog :)
"Mabuhay!" to all our blog visitors :)
1 comment:
this piece about mabuhay was taken from a magazine aboard a philippine airlines flight my parents took a few a years ago when they visited the philippines.
i posted it years ago on a filipino association of montreal web page hosted for free by tripod.com, still in circulation, but not up-to-date. that's how i happened to come across it again when i found the page while doing a search through google.
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