A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF PHILIPPINE ENGLISH

A brief description of Philippine English Nguyen Thanh Binh
A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF PHILIPPINE ENGLISH
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BY NGUYEN THANH BINH
MA COURSE - SEMAO RETRAC
Nowadays, English has been dramatically developing throughout the world. It has now become
a lingua franca among different countries, which means that every country should teach their
people English. In Asia, the diffusion of English is inevitable. Some countries speak English as
the first language such as India while others use it as a second language or a foreign language.
English is not only spoken inside a country but it is also a language for communications among
member countries in a union. ASEAN (The Association of Southeast Asian Nations) is a typical
example. As a result, English is a compulsory subject in schools, especially in primary and
secondary schools and children in such countries as Philippines and Singapore have to learn
English from Primary 1. Kirkpatrick (2011, p.9) studies that “in these countries, Brunei,
Malaysia and the Philippines, English is also a medium of instruction”. However, when English
spreads out to different places it is always adapted to the regions in which it is used. This
process creates different varieties of English around the world. In this paper, I would like to
discuss some features of English in the Philippines in terms of phonology, lexis and grammar. I
would also analyze an authentic text in Philippine English and show how some features are
different from British English and American English. In the final part, I am going to mention
some arguments related to the necessity of this variety in the Philippines.
Firstly, I would like to give a short description of the Philippines and its languages. With the
population of over 70 000 000, the Philippines has proudly become one of the largest English
speaking countries (Thompson, 2003). Meanwhile, there are about 170 languages spoken
everywhere in the Philippines. Most of the Filipinos speak Tagalog which is the dominant
native language, while English is an official language there. However, nowadays there has been
so strong a mixture of Tagalog and English that it forms a very popular language spoken in the
Philippines, Taglish. As it is also one variety of English, Philippine English has some features
which are different from other standard Englishes such as American English and British English
in terms of phonology, lexis and grammar.
PHONOLOGY

A brief description of Philippine English Nguyen Thanh Binh
In general, the Philippine English phonology is not different from that of American English.
However, there are still some acceptable differences in allophones. Philippine English is rhotic,
meaning that the Filipinos always pronounce the sound “r” after a vowel similar to Scottish or
American English since it is based on the American phonology. Some consonants such as /d, t,
l, n/ have a dental articulation rather than an alveolar one (Millward and Hayes, 2011).
Moreover, there are some sounds which never exist in Philippine phonological system such as
interdental /ð/ and /θ/. These two sounds are often pronounced /d/ and /t/ so than and thanks are
spoken as /dæn/ and /tænks/. Like /ð/ and /θ/, /v/ and /f/ is not existent in most of the native
languages, so they are often replaced with /b/ and /p/ like vase pronounced as /bɑː z/ and fence
pronounced as /pens/ though some native minorities that have little contact with Spanish will
have more correction that the others. Interestingly, some people even have a hypercorrection
that they pronounce all words beginning with /b/ and /p/ as /v/ and /f/. Due to great influence
from Spanish, the pronunciation of some sounds is just like Spanish. For example, stream,
stress and strong with the paired consonants /st/ at the beginning are usually spoken as
istream/estream, istress/estress, istrong/estrong. In addition, some similar vowels are usually
treated with the same pronunciation. For example, it will be very difficult for a person to
distinguish between these minimal pairs: feel / fill, full / fool, top / tap. The diphthong /əʊ / is
also spoken as /o:/ so phone will be spoken as /fo:n/ rather than /fəʊ n/. Philippine English is
also considered syllable-timed rather than stress-timed. Therefore, instead of pronouncing the
unstressed syllables as a schwa, the Filipinos tend to pronounce them with even beats just like
stressed syllables. This reflects “the fact that Filipinos typically learn English from books rather
than from native speakers of the language” and “through reading or dictionary work than from
conversation with Americans” (Thompson, 2003, p.52-53). The typical examples are the
pronunciations of these sounds establísh, diplomatícally, cemetéry, and necessáry. Gonzalez
(1997, p.32-33) suggests the tables of the vowel and consonant sounds of cultivated Philippine
English as follows:
The vowel and consonant sounds of cultivated Philippine English
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A brief description of Philippine English Nguyen Thanh Binh
LEXIS
“The vocabulary of Philippine English derives from a range of phenomena including semantic
and part-of-speech shift, loan translations, coinages and creative innovations, compounds and
hybrids” Kirkpatrick (2007, p.31). For example, the use of colgate, meaning “toothpaste”
proves the sematic conversion from a name to a general word. Also, grandfather can be
understood as “an uncle of one's father or mother” while bold means “nude”. Part-of-speech
shift can also be seen by the change of the function of some words in a sentence or an utterance.
For example traffic can be used as an adjective as in the sentence “the street is so traffic!” Due
to Spanish colonization of over three centuries, it is easy to find borrowed words from Spanish.
For instance, merienda means “a light meal or snack especially in the afternoon, similar to the
concept of afternoon tea” and encargado means “person in charge of a property”. Besides,
Tagalog is mostly spoken in the Philippines so there are a great number of borrowed words
from this native language such as carabao meaning “water buffalo” and boondock meaning
“mountain”. The loan translation can be easily seen by the examples taken from Thompson
(2003, p.53-54). Eggs means „testicles‟ because in Spanish the slang huevos means “eggs,
testicles” and open the radio means “turn on the radio” because in Tagalog, the verb buksan
means “open/turn on an electrical appliance”. Coinages and creative innovations are proven in
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A brief description of Philippine English Nguyen Thanh Binh
such examples as carnap meaning “steal a car” and Gets? meaning “Understand?”. Compounds
consists of comfort room (toilet, restroom), hold-upper (someone engaged in armed robbery)
and hand carry (carry-on luggage when flying commercial aircraft). The compounds of words
from different languages known as hybrids are also very common such as colegiala English
(college English), balikbayan box (a ubiquitous corrugated box containing any number of small
items and sent by an overseas Filipino known as a “balikbayan”) and buko juice (the juice of a
young coconut).
GRAMMAR
One of the noted grammatical features in Philippine English is the missing of subject-verb
agreement in present tenses as in the sentences “He go to school. His mother give him money to
buy a book.” In some cases, they sometimes use present perfect instead of past simple as in the
sentence Yesterday I have met him and past perfect instead of present perfect or past simple as
in the sentences “Have some pupils tell they class what they had observed” (Pena, 1997, p.92)
and “… Sen. Francis Pangilinan had already started sponsoring the proposed … Act”
(Pankratz, 2004, p.80). Besides, there is also overuse of present continuous tense to refer to
habits and routines as in the sentence He is going to school by bus every morning. Some
transitive verbs are also treated as intransitive verbs as in the sentences I don’t like. I can’t bear.
Do you enjoy? In addition, Filipinos prefer to use auxiliary verbs in present tense to those in
past tense. For example, instead of saying “He said he had finished the test.”, they would prefer
to say “He said he has finished the test.” Determiners are also be used in a very different way.
They usually prefer “the Manuel Quezon University” to “Quezon University” and “the food” to
“food” while they often say “United States” rather than “the United States”. It is concluded that
these features does not match standard British or American English. Also, demonstratives rarely
match with their nouns such as “this pens”. Some non-count nouns are treated as count nouns
as in “You have a beautiful hair!” or “a research”. Kirkpatrick (2007) also looks at one
investigation into distinctive features of Philippine English from Bautista (2005) and mentions
three special features from her research. First, Bautista (2005) discovers that Filipinos favor to
use the structure “one of the SINGULAR NOUN” as in “That’s one of the related problem we
will be discussing”. Second, Filipinos do not also use an article before the word majority as in
“But a survey done by Pulse Asia shows majority of their respondents want President Estrada
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A brief description of Philippine English Nguyen Thanh Binh
to keep his post”. Third, in spoken English, the usage of “wherein” is frequent as in “This
practice is still being done in several universities in the US ok wherein they have a quota for
different racial groups”.
McKaughan (1993, p.52) commented that “Philippine English has emerged as an autonomous
variety of English with its own self-contained system.” It proves that Philippine English has
really become a distinctive variety of English with no deficiencies of phonology, lexis and
grammar.
In the second part of this paper, I would like to give an analysis on some authentic extracts to
illustrate some important features in Philippine English. First, I will analyze one extract from
Philippine dailies taken by Bolton and Butler (2008, p.182–3):
Politicians are found guilty of economic plunder or challenged by the press in
ambush interviews; corrupt cops are accused of coddling criminals, or
mulcting motorists. Hapless citizens borrow money from five-six money
lenders. Meanwhile, motorists stuck in traffic get high blood, and the affairs
of various topnotchers fill the gossip columns.
In this extract, the words economic plunder are used to mean “large-scale embezzlement of
public funds” while the word plunder itself refer to “things that has been stolen during a violent
attack especially during a war” in American English; ambush interviews means “surprise
interview” while ambush refer to “a sudden attack on someone by people who have been hiding
and waiting for them or the place where it happens” in American English ; coddling in this case
means “treating leniently”; mulcting means “extorting money from” . In Philippine English,
these words are laced with different meanings from Standard American English though some
people always believe Philippine English is American English. These changes reflect semantic
shift mentioned above in the lexis section. The extract also includes such phenomena as
compounds and coinages and creative innovations. The phrase five-six money lenders would
make American people confused but it is meaningful in the Philippines. It refers to people who
lend money to someone borrowing at high rates of interest‟, i.e. borrowing five thousand and
returning six. Another example of creative innovations is the phrase high blood, which means
“enraged”. Topnotchers is an example of coinages in Philippine English. In American English,
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notch up means “achieve something especially a victory”. Therefore, the word topnotchers
means “high achievers”.
The second extract is taken from a person named Armand Ines. He shared an experience on the
website http://alohaworld.com when he was working in Long's Drugs in the Philippines:
One day this old Filipino lady came up to me and said, "Excuse me boy, whea
is dee SOOS?" I thought she said SAUCE so I said, "Oh, wat kine SAUCE?"
She replied, "Dee CLEANER." I got all confused and said, "Da CLEANER?"
She replies, "Yeah!" So she then takes me to where she usually gets this
SOOS. When we got there, we ended up in the aisle with the mops, sponges,
and scrubbers. She then pointed to an empty shelf. When I realized what item
belonged there I tried not to buss out laughing. I then said, "Ohhhhhhh, you
mean da S.O.S.!!" She said, "Yeah dee SOOS."
Another incident was when this other Filipino lady came up to me and asked,
"Hoy, whea is your KAKAROATS?" Then I said, "COCKROACH?" She
replied,"Yeah." So I then take her to the Raid and roach sprays. Then she got
small kine piss off and said, "NO, dee CEREAL!" So I'm thinking, "WHAT?"
and I asked, "COCKROACH CEREAL?" She says, "Yeah, da one on sale!" All
confused, I looked at the ad for a CEREAL. Then again I tried not to laugh
and said, "Ohhhhh, the QUAKER OATS!" She replies, "Yeah, da
KAKAROATS!"
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(Ines, 2001)
For the two situations, the misunderstanding roots from the mispronunciation of some words in
English, which has become so popular among Filipinos that they tend to accept it naturally. As
mentioned above in the phonology section, the sound /ð/ is non-existent in native languages so
the word “the” is pronounced as “dee‟ or “da”. Also, in Philippine English, the Filipinos do not
often pay much attention to the final sounds since it is syllable-timed while American English
and British English are stress-timed. In the question “wat kine SAUCE?”, kine meaning kind of
or kinda is spoken without the final sound /d/. However, there is a hypercorrection of linking
sounds that the abbreviation S.O.S is pronounced as a word SOOS. The pronunciation of paired
consonants like /kw/ is also uncommon in Philippine English. Instead, /w/ is used to replace

A brief description of Philippine English Nguyen Thanh Binh
/kw/ in pronunciation. Therefore, in the second situation, the woman said KAKAROATS
(QUAKER OATS) which caused great confusion to the man. In terms of grammar, in
Philippine English, they usually use the very short form of utterances when talking to each
other. In the two situations, “yeah” is more used than “yes” or “yup” and “what” is more
common than “what are you talking about?” Also, utterances without verbs or subjects are
considered appropriate.
In the third part of the paper, I would like to discuss some arguments and evidence why
Philippine English is advantageous and disadvantageous in schools, in the media and in the
society in the Philippines compared to the promotion of British English or American English. In
the Philippines, today, English and Tagalog together are compulsorily taught in school. That‟s
why one finds it easy to hear a student speaking English then switching to Tagalog. This
process seems automatic with all students and teachers in schools. Most of the TV programs are
also shown in English and Tagalog. A show with a Tagalog name is sometimes in English or
vice versa. Also, in informal situations apart from schools and TV, English is used together with
their native languages, which created a mixed code, Taglish. In this case, Taglish is considered
as their “street English”. Despite the popularity of English in the Philippines, Thompson (2003,
p.124) states that “a Filipino who uses nothing but English today among Filipinos is rare.” This
means “any look at English in the media must look at codeswitching with its underlying social
messages” (Thompson, 2003, p.124).Regarding the dominance of English usage in Philippines,
it is very easy to say that Philippine English is really advantageous. Compared to American
English from which Philippine English originated from, Philippine English should be
maintained as the Filipino orientation should be the basis for teaching English (Rañosa-
Madrunio, 2009). Since the post-independence era after 1946, Philippine English has become a
variety of World Englishes, “associated with distinct accent, a localized vocabulary, and even a
body of creative writing by Philippine writers in English.” (Lourdes, Bautista and Bolton, 2008,
p.4.) Deciding English as an official language by the government is a very good step into
making English as their own language rather than that of the Americans. It has been proposed
that Filipino English should be standardized and regarded as a norm in Philippine English
teaching instead of Standard American English (Llamzon, 1969). As a result, the spread of
English in schools makes it appear on media officially as a language for all citizens. In addition,
70 percent of the commercials are in Philippine English (Thompson, 2003). Another reason why
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Philippine English is preferable to American English is that there are arguments of the
continued use of English in education which is a part of the ongoing American colonization to
make Filipinos think in a way that the Americans want them to think, not in ways that are good
for Filipinos (Lourdes, Bautista and Bolton, 2008). In this case, Philippine English can be seen
as a good alternative to American English. The nationalist scholar Renato Constantino (1982)
argued that American English led Filipinos into a strange, new world where they started
learning languages and new way of life and became alien to their own traditions. Therefore,
English should be nativized so that it becomes a part of the Filipino culture, not a separate
borrowed variety from the Americans. Furthermore, the development of the mixed code of
English and Tagalog known as Taglish causes Philippine English to be a popular variety of
English among Filipinos and “Taglish will eventually become the Filipino version of English.”
(Thompson, 2003, p. 57). These factors make Philippine English gain advantages over other
varieties of English, even American English. Nonetheless, there are still oppositions to the
promotion of Philippine English rather than that of American English in the Philippines.
Bautista (2000) stated that American English was seen as a basis for English instruction in
classrooms and it was an exonormative model in structure and target phonology. As mentioned
above in the section of phonology, Philippine English has produced a new system of English
phonology which is only used in this country. The consequence is that some Filipinos will find
it difficult to communicate with others who speak a different variety of English. Even though
English can be heard in every part of Filipinos‟ life, politicians, media practitioners and officials
in Department of Education always show their negative concerns about the current state of
English teaching and students‟ English proficiency in the country (Friginal, 2009). A report
from a US based think tank, John F. Kennedy Center Foundation – Philippines also stated that
the English proficiency of graduate students are declining. Thomson (2003, p.41) also claims
that the “falling language proficiency” will be real “concerns to all classes of Filipinos”. As a
result, most young Filipinos think that high school degree is much more important than English
language ability and that English ability should not be the criteria for university admission.
These raise a question for Filipinos whether they should switch to American English or continue
with their nativized English. Another consequence of the low level of English language is that
people who are trained at universities will have no confidence in business communication,
especially with other countries (Thomson, 2003). The choice of American English rather than
Philippine English is also shown in the trend of English use all over the world since American
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English has its own power over others in business, education and politics. In general, Filipino
English, Taglish or American English is still a mysterious choice for Filipinos at least until now.
However, there have been proceedings of making Taglish as an only official language among
students, businessmen and other people in the Philippines. While most Filipinos of lower
classes consider speaking English as a “sign of affectation” (Thompson, 2003, p.55), the middle
classes think it was a key to better life. Hence, the trend of rejecting both Philippine English and
American English is possible. Instead, Taglish will be a safer and better alternative.
In conclusion, despite its advantages and disadvantages, Philippine English has now become a
popular language in this country. It is somehow believed that Philippine English will gain its
success in the Philippines while Sibayan and Gonzalez (1996) did not have optimistic view on
this trend when they thought that there would be “little possibility” of English dominance on
Philippine life. It seems that the future of English in the Philippines is unpredictable. Nowadays,
it is no longer a really useful tool for social and economic improvements except from overseas
work whereas the rise of Taglish as a dominant language gives several solutions to these
socioeconomic problems. Besides, this version of English, Taglish, itself tells people a very
interesting story how English has enter Filipinos‟ life and its popularity also contributes the
dominance of English over other languages all over the world. It will be wrong to say that
American English is non-existent in the Philippines any more while it is preferable to say that it
is being blended into a culture in order to be a part of that culture. Anyway, this process is
unavoidable since it is occurring everywhere in the world especially in Asia.
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References:
Bautista, M.L. (2000a). Defining Standard Philippine English: Its status and grammatical
features. Manila: De La Salle University Press.
Bautista, M.L. (2005). Investigating the putative features of Philippine English, with cross
reference to other Englishes. (Paper given at the 15 th conference of international Association of
World Englishes (IAWE). In Kirkpatrick, A, (ed) (2007) World Englishes: implications for
international communication and English Language Teaching. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
university press.
Bolton, K. and Butler, S. (2008). Lexicography and the description of Philippine English
vocabulary. In M.L. Bautista and K. Bolton (eds). Philippine English: Linguistic and Literary
Perspective. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Friginal, E. (2009). The language of outsourced call centers: a corpus-based study of cross-
cultural interaction. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins
Gonzalez, A. B. (1997). The history of English in the Philippines. In Bautista, M.L (ed.),
English is an Asian Language: The Philippine Context (Proceedings of the Conference Held in Manila
on 2-3 August 1996). Sydney: Macquarie Library.
Ines, A. (2001). Filipino Accents. Retrieved from http://alohaworld.com/hanabuddah/article/42-
hanabuddah-days-stories/2289-filipino-accents.
In Kirkpatrick, A.(2007). World Englishes: implications for international communication and
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Llamzon, T. A. (1969). Standard Filipino English. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University.
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Constantino, L. R. (1982). The miseducation of the Filipino. Quezon City, Philippines :
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Lourdes, Ma., Bautista, M. L., & Bolton, K. (2008). Philippine English: Linguistic and literacy
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McKaughan, Howard P., (1993). Towards a standard Philippine English. Philippine Journal of
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Millward, C. M. & Hayes, M. (2011). A Biography Of English Language. Boston: Wadsworth
Publishing.
Pena, P.S. (1997). Philippine English in the classroom. In Bautista, M.L (ed) (1997a) English is
an Asian Language: The Philippine Context (Proceedings of the Conference Held in Manila on 2-3
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Pankratz, K. (2004). Philippine English vs the TOEFL. Asian Englishes, 7(2),80.
Rañosa-Madrunio, M. B. (2001). Philippine English in the classroom. Retrieved from
http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/225267/philippine-english-classroom .
Sibayan, B. P. and Gonzalez, A. (1996). Post-imperial English in the Philippines.” In Joshua A.
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Thompson, R. M. (2003). Filipino English and Taglish. Language Switching from Multiple
Perspectives. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins.
This paper belongs to one of the assignments conducted for Master of Arts Course in
SEAMEO RETRAC. The score is 40 per 50.
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Copyright by Nguyễn Thanh Bình - 2011