UNIT1

ENGLISH

IN THE PHILIPPINES

Learning Outcomes
At the end of this chapter, you shall have:
a. pointed out features of English as used in
the Philippines;
b. showed understanding of issues on code-
switching; and
c. appraised how Philippine English is used in
literature.
 CORE READING
The use of English in the
Philippines started even during the
Spanish period when Filipino
scholars learned the language on
their own. Dr. Jose Rizal (our
national hero) and Apolinario
Mabini (the brain of Katipunan) saw
the importance of the English
language. In fact, Rizal urged his
sister Saturnina to study the
language, while Mabini prescribed https://filipinoscribbles.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/the-thomasites-before-and-after/

English in his second level academy The earliest English teachers in the Philippine are the
(Gonzales, 2009). Thomasites who came after the Americans colonized the
country. Does this old picture remind us that English is the
language of our colonizer? Or does it remind us how they

But it was after 1898 when brought English, the language that opens up vast opportunities?

Military Chaplain of General Elwell

Otis, W.D. McKinnon, who took the initiative of teaching English to the Filipinos
through the teachers who were recruited from American schools. These teachers
were called Thomasites because the first batch of about 500 of them arrived aboard a
US Army Transport Thomas around 1901 (Bautista and Bolton, 2009).

Since then English in the Philippines has continued to thrive as an important

language alongside our national language Filipino. In fact, this importance is
reflected in our constitution in Article XIV Section 7 that says ―for purposes of
communication and instruction, the official languages of the Philippines are Filipino,
and until otherwise provided by law, English‖ (De Leon, 2008).

Having two official languages in a multilingual country like ours may both
have advantages and disadvantages. One of the advantages is that Filipinos get to
learn both languages which means using English to connect with the world and stay
globally competitive at the same time using Filipino and our regional languages (in
our case Hiligaynon or Kiniray-a) for cultural identity and nationalism.

2
 But what about the
disadvantages? Can you name at
least one? Do you find it difficult
having to study both English and
Filipino in school? Do you feel like
you have not mastered any of
them? Have you mixed them at
some point? Do you feel like losing
Hiligaynon or Kiniray-a (whatever
your first language may be) Are you used to having two or three languages in school and at
because you need to study both home? How do you shift from one language to another? Is it easy
English and Filipino in school? We to mix or switch languages in conversations?

can‘t help but say yes to some of

these questions, right?

Most of us have Hiligaynon, Kiniray-a, Aklanon, or Cebuano as our first

language. Our second languages may have been both Filipino and English. Before
formally learning these two languages in school, we might have heard of them in the
radio or television. In fact, our alphabet song and a variety of rhymes are in English,
and our family might be watching Encantadia or Ang Probinsyano on TV in Filipino.
Having at least three languages (1 first language, and 2 second languages) seem
easy for most of us, but how do we speak each of these languages? How do we
speak English in particular?

According to Gonzales (2009), Filipinos speak and write English in a different

way—different from American English or British English. How? Filipinos speak English
using syllable-timed rather than stress timed rhythm. In short, we speak English word
for word. In a sentence such as ―Are you comfortable?‖, we usually read the sentence
per syllable. In contrast, Americans would usually stress certain words or syllables. In
the example, most Americans may not highlight (unstress) some syllables and may
give higher pitch and longer duration (stress) to ―com‖ in comfortable such that the
sentence may sound like ―Are you COMfortable?‖ Further, Ilonggos speak English
using the intonation of their first language. When we say ―Thank you‖, we usually
prolong each syllable so that the sentence may sound like ―Saaalaaamaaat‖. This is
also accompanied by our sweet melodic Hiligaynon accent.

It could also be noticed that English has more vowels and consonant sounds
than Philippine languages; hence, we usually substitute these sounds into what is
available in our language. For example, Filipinos will most likely pronounce ―apple‖,
as /apul/ not /æpəl/, ―fan‖ as /pan/ not /fæn/.

In terms of vocabulary, there is a noticeable use of local names and terms and
translation of local idioms such as ―Kill the light‖ from ―Patya ang suga‖. There is also

3
a different way of using prepositions not found in American
or British English such as ―cope up‖ instead of ―cope with‖,
―result to‖ instead of ―result in‖.

In writing, most of the Filipinos use the American

rhetorical structure. Though advantageous in terms of
business writing, most Filipinos usually just imitate the
American rhetorical structure which leaves very little
room for creativity in literary writing except for mature
writers (Gonzales, 2009).

This unique way of using the English language

may pose several issues: Are Philippine languages an
obstacle in learning English? Is English the reason why
we lose our sense of cultural identity and nationalism?
Should we go back to Filipino and our local languages
and abandon English? Could we still study and use
English and not lose our cultural identity? Pause for a
moment, and think what could be answers to these
questions.

English was initially taught to us by the Americans

as part of their colonization. After their colonization

https://www.wheninmanila.com/only-in-the-philippines-funny-filipino-advertisements/
(postcolonization), do we still view English as the
language of our colonizer? Or is it the language that
opens up unbelievable wealth of information coming
from books and the internet? Or is it a language that we
already own?

Before you answer any of these questions, let us

take a look at how several authors described English as
used in the Philippines. Bolton and Butler (2009) focused
on English as used in the Philippines in terms of
vocabulary. They found out that Philippine English (this
is what they call English as used in the Philippines) has
distinctive localized vocabulary which finds expression in
a range of settings, including government, education, Do you laugh at, make fun of,
or frown upon the way
media, and personal domain. Some of these include Filipinos use English? Do you
ambush interview, five-six, high-blood, and topnotcher. still understand the meaning
of the message though?

4
 Some of the examples given by Bolton and Butler (2009) are found below:

In an ambush interview, the President cautioned his critics against pursuing moves
to ―incite‖ a ―revolution‖ to protest his possible acquittal. (Philippine Daily Inquirer, January 17,
2002).

―Today my family has a total debt of Php 70, 000 from three usurers or the so-called
five-six money lenders to be able to maintain our grocery and fresh coconut business,‖
Benigno lamented. (Philippine Daily Inquirer, January 1, 2002).

Who knows? You may even avoid getting high blood from a city snarled to standstill
by traffic. (Philippine Inquirer, February 9, 2002).

Ms. Macapagal recalled that at that occasion how it was her father, President
Diosdado Macapagal, who had convinced the young topnotcher-lawyer from Harvard-Yale to
enter politics. (Philippine Inquirer, March 6, 2002).

Of course, there are other examples. Bautista (1997) in Bolton and Butler
(2009) classified these vocabulary items under four categories:

Categories Examples
Items derived from ―normal‖ motel -- In American English, a motorist‘s hotel
expansion of reference -- In Philippine English, the meaning has extended
to a hotel used by those who have illicit affairs

topnotcher – In American English, topnotch is used as an

adjective, but in Philippine English, a suffix –er
was added to make it a noun.

The preservation of items‘
lost or infrequent in other
varieties of English
Coinage (neologisms,
clippings, abbreviations,
viand These words are no longer used often in
solon other varieties of English
city folk
Masteral, Studentry, aircon, promo, supermart, DH, TY, Taglish,
trapo, promdi, dirty kitchen, macho dancer

and innovations)
Borrowings (items Pasalubong, lapu-lapu, Pinoy
borrowed from Philippine
Despedida
languages, Spanish or
other languages) Feng shui

In the examples given above, the use of English is almost similar to the ones
used by Americans or British except that sometimes in an utterance, Filipinos insert
lexical items (words) unique only to the Filipinos. This means that lexical items such
as topnotcher, masteral, and high blood are ―Filipinized‖ English as these are not used
in the US, UK, Australia, or New Zealand where people use English as a first language.

5
 In other cases, Filipinos do not just insert a word or words with English origin;
they insert Filipino phrases. In fact, in many conversations, Filipino and English are
used at almost similar length. This use of both languages is known as code-
switching. As defined by Bullock and Toribio (2009), code switching is a
phenomenon used by bilinguals who use two languages alternatively in an
unchanged setting, often within the same utterance. Below is an example of code-
switching taken from Lesada (2017).

Umakyat siya ng puno to pick up mangoes and collect them, collect them, store them in
baskets. Then, while he was doing so, may dumaan na bata. I’m not sure if that’s his son or any way
connected to him—pero a boy passed by riding a bicycle, then collected one basket worth of
mangoes. So, while he was biking, nakita niyang, may nakita siyang girl about his age, and he
seemed to be distracted, a bit.

Reasons for doing this may include filling linguistic gaps, expressing ethnic
identity, and achieving particular discursive aims (Bullock and Toribio, 2009) Code
switching is often differentiated to code-mixing, a related term in the use of two
languages. The difference is that code-mixing is often at the word (morphological) or
sentence level while code-switching is often observed at intersentential level
(between and among sentences).

In Philippine literature in English, there are cases of code-switching and a lot

of insertions of lexical items unique only to English used in the Philippines. There
may be many reasons for doing this. One, there might be no direct translation of the
word in English, or if there is, the English word does not capture the cultural meaning
of the Filipino word. Second, the writer may use it to establish local color, a
technique used when a local culture (e.g. Philippine culture) is featured in English
literature. Third, it could be the writer‘s artistic way of capturing how Filipinos use
English. This reason is very controversial because a lot of linguists argue that the way
Filipinos use English is not ―standard‖ and should have no place in academic or
literary English. Do you agree with this?

Whether we agree or not, a number of writers have already used this type of
English in literature. One of the writers who used both English and Filipino is Rolando
Tinio who wrote the poem Valediction sa Hillcrest. Take a look at how he code
switched and why this raised certain issues in the literary world.

Pagkacollect ng Railway Express sa aking things

(Deretso na iyon sa barko while I take the plane.)
Inakyat kong muli ang N-311, at dahil dead of winter,
Nakatopcoat at galoshes akong
Nagright-turn sa N wing ng mahabang dilim
(Tunnel yatang aabot hanggang Tundo.)
Kinapa ko ang switch sa hall.
Sa isang pitik, nagshrink ang imaginary tunnel,
Nagparang ataol.

6
 Or catacomb,
Strangely absolute ang impression
Ng hilera ng mga pintong nagpuprusisyon:
Individual identification, parang mummy cases,
De-nameplate, de-numero, de-hometown address.
Antiseptic ang atmosphere, streamlined yet
Kung hindi catacomb, at least
E filing cabinet.

According to Tope (2004), Tinio‘s experiments with code-switching did not

fare well in the literary world during his time (1958). It was a time when most Filipino
writers adhered well to the American style of literary writing. It seems though that
Tinio disturbed English during that time when code-switching was a serious
grammatical mistake. To many writers and critics though, Tinio is a writer way ahead
of his time. He used English, dismantled, explored, and exploited its properties to
―absorb and express the sound and spirit of the local cultures‖. For Tope (2004),
writers like Tinio echo the concepts of abrogation and appropriation of English.

Abrogation as defined by Ashcroft, et al. (1989) is ―a refusal of the categories

of the imperial culture, its aesthetic, its illusory standard of normative or ‗correct‘
usage, and its assumption of a traditional and fixed meaning ‗inscribed‘ in the
words‖. In short it is the denial of the privilege of English. It ―locates language
difference or variance as the site of the margin‘s challenge to the center‖ (Tope,
2004). This means that writers like Tinio used the differences between Filipino (the
language of those in the margin) and English as a venue to challenge the standards
of the center (countries where English is spoken as a first language). By using
neologisms, imaginative usage, code-switching, etc., writers like Tinio used English as
a tool with which a ―world‖ can be textually constructed.

Appropriation, on the other hand, is ―the process by which the language is

taken and made to ‗bear the burden‘ of one‘s own cultural experience‖ (Ashcroft, et
al., 1989). English, which is not our language, is used as a way to express our local
culture and experiences. Because of this, there is a tendency for writers not to write
like American or British writers. This is not because Filipino writers in English have low
proficiency in English or that they failed to reach the standard. This is because they
have the capacity to evolve from the standard. Hence, they have ―created a language
enriched by cultural experiences outside the standard language‘s norm‖ (Tope, 2004).

Methods of appropriation include glossing, use of untranslated words,

creation of an interlanguage, syntactic fusion, and code-switching (Ashcroft, et al.
1989).

7
 Method of Definition Example from Philippine
Appropriation Literature in English

1. Glossing Translation or explanation of …the rotting floor of the batalan,

non-English words the roofless shed over the low
ladder (Arguilla, 1998)

2. Untranslated Words or lexical items used
words in the literary piece that are
not translated into English;
usually understood through
context
―How are you, Ramon? Kumusta,
Tong-tong? You should stop
drinking tuba, Bugoy, your
tummy is embarassing…‖
(Deriada, 1994)

3. Creation of an An approximate system I‘m not ashame to be pinoy;

interlanguage which is cohesive and My contract‘s not expire, so pity
distinct from both source But I want a little to enjoy.
(Filipino) and target (Mooney, 2001)
language (English)

4. Syntactic fusion Marriage of the syntax of Who will decipher Philippine

Filipino and the lexical items hieroglyph?
of English Who, unravel the intricate
formula?
(Zulueta da Costa, 1940)

5. Code-switching Code-switching is a Antiseptic ang atmosphere,

phenomenon used by streamlined yet
bilinguals who use two Kung hindi catacomb, at least
languages alternatively in an E filing cabinet.
unchanged setting, often (Tinio, 1958)
within the same utterance

As one of the future writers of Philippine literature in English (some of you

may have been writers already), you may decide on using English based on American
or British style of literary writing or use methods of appropriation where you deem
necessary. By choosing one side, your written output will definitely echo your choice.
Will you write like JK Rowling, Edgar Allan Poe, or Kate Chopin? Or will you write like
Rolando Tinio, Manuel Arguilla, or Leoncio Deriada?