worked at Xerox as a top salesman. Looking at the rows of photocopying equipments that line up in the west section of our wing, I remembered a topic I've been meaning to write about but never got to as it always slips my mind the moment I log in and browse at endless sites featuring women in various states of undress. "Photocopy" is at the core of it, but not necessarily the main topic of discussion.As a child I have heard my parents - my father most of all - use the term 'zerox' among other things that are commonly found in grown-up discussions most children couldn't care less about. I only realized the actual use for that term when I was in elementary school and saw the actual machine used for that simple process of replicating the prints on a piece of paper employing the principles of photography - and unknowingly becoming the first prototype of pirating techniques that eventually graduated to copying cds and dvds without proper permission. While I know about the popular term being a licensed brand from a big US corporation, I was not bothered about using it whenever I needed to have something xeroxed. I understood it, and the person I talked to understood it; so I was--and still am--comfortable with it.
Then came high school and the doors of enlightenment that goes with it. You step inside that void and you're thrust in a world where transition from child to adulthood often come in difficult and sometimes humiliating packages. Suddenly you catch yourself and fellow classmates ridiculing someone who had the temerity to use terms like 'Colgate
', 'Kodak', 'zerox' in place of the more sagely and politically correct words 'toothpaste', 'picture/photograph' and 'photocopy'. The rationale being "you are a scholar, then sound like one." Ok, no problem there. So this is high school.And high school being a science class with a very limited funding, teachers and students were compelled to make do with whatever limited resources they have at their disposal. So books were photocopied by the millions (one shop near the school that offered such service was owned by no less than the principal of the school herself). And here you'd hear the term 'photocopy' from your friends and classmates for the next four years (and four years more including college and four more years since working).
To be fair with the people I also participated in ridiculing when I was young, I have to say they are not to be faulted for saying, or much less using the so-called embarrassing terms we Pinoys like to associate with some uneducated person from the boondocks because we are not native English speakers in the first place. Note that toothpaste et. al. are English words. Just how in the world do you translate toothpaste and photocopy into Filipino anyway? Can you really fault a person for using the term recognized by most people? Although, yes, 'kodak' can be replaced with ' Kunan moko ng larawan' or 'Kunan mo ko ng picture' but I still believe 'Pa-kodak tayo!' sounds the clearest and least stilted among the three. If there's something to be said about language, is the fact that it's continuously evolving. What may seem laughable now may be the generic term that future generations may use. And up to now, I still use xerox, zeroks, pa-zeroks, xeroxed, and will xerox whenever I can. Not only is it more operational and easily recognizable by anyone from Brgy. Durung-an to Makati, but it's easier to say than PHOTOCOPY. That's 2 syllables less than the other. And there's somehow a contrived or artificial feel to "Ipa-photocopy mo..." than "Ipa-zerox mo..." With the former you have someone stiff and cares about what people say if he doesn't say the RIGHT term, and someone who knows you understand him very well in the latter.
There are limits to political correctness, especially when the environment doesn't even give a hoot about political correctness. Context is everything. Lest I be misunderstood with the way this thing is going, I'd like to make it clear that I'm all for clarity and using proper terms and the skillful use of semantics in all forms of communication. If you're writing something, probably a report or showing a business proposal, then it only follows that you use the clinical term. But, susmaryosep, when you're talking to somebody---and your only goal is to be understood---in an informal event, please do the people around you a favor and drop the Ivy League impression. Especially when you're in a shop in Jaro assisted by sweaty technicians. I'm sure they don't care about photocopying or xerox-ing. Just your P1 for that page in BIOLOGY TODAY that you smuggled out of your teacher's study.
