Kindly translate:
Hipon naman ang mga model ng Bench e! (
Bench models are shrimps!). When I first saw this in an online forum, I was quite lost guessing what the poster really wanted to say. Well,
hipon (
shrimp), just like any other seafood, is
malansa (
fishy) and I think that adjective is associated with being gay. So maybe the poster was insinuating that Bench models are gay. It was not until a classmate presented a monologue in theater class that I found out what it really meant. The character she played said something like, “
Hipon siya (
He is a shrimp), (referring to invisible boyfriend)
delicious ang katawan pero patapon ang ulo (
the body is delicious but you get rid of the head)” Eureka!
Apparently when someone is referred to as
hipon (
shrimp) in modern Tagalog slang, that person has a hot body but face value is zero. So again when I encountered a post in another online forum saying, “
Hindi dolphin si Michael Phelps, isa siyang dambuhalang sugpo (
Michael Phelps is not a dolphin, but rather a giant shrimp)” I was not lost in translation anymore, unless they were insinuating that a quartet of shrimps could outmaneuver four dolphins in a 4x100 meter relay.
