A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF PHILIPPINE ENGLISH

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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