TEFL Summit South Dakota

Common Linguistic Problems (11) I've been here in the philippines now for a little under two years. In that time, I have been observing “Filipino english” quite a bit. The Philippine government recognizes two “official” languages, Filipino and english. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the philippines were under colonial rule of spain. The spanish government dictated that spanish be the official language of the philippines. (There was no national native language spoken, as each region has its own unique language – not just an unique dialect.) After the 1940's, under US territorial rule, english began to be taught in 1901 and spanish was phased out. In 1937, the national native language, Filipino, was created by executive order, and was based on the Tagalog language. As Tagalog was the regional language of the “river people” along the rivers that are in the National Capitol Region, the NCR is the most populated area, and the seat of the national government is in the area, I suppose that had something to do with the selection of Tagalog over any other regional language to be the basis of Filipino. Although only my opinion, I suspect that this strong spanish language history has a lot to do with the fact that, when speaking either language phonically, vowel pronunciations are more akin to the way they are said in spanish than the way they are spoken in english. Even when I ask local children to name the vowels, they say, “a, e, I, o, u” in the spanish form, “Ah, Ay, Ee, Oh, and Oo.” (Sorry, I don't have the phonic character set available here!) This leads to mispronunciation of most english words right from the start, as spanish sounding vowels are used. For example, “Alabama” sounds something like “AH-lah-bah-mah,” not the (Alabama) native “Al-uh-BAM-uh.” In addition, the spanish influence causes Filipinos to use rolling Rs, which are never used by American english speakers. Other consonants that are prominently mispronounced are V and F, as these sounds are not present in any of the native languages of the philippines. (An interesting dilemma for a country named after King Philip!) Consequently, V's are regularly mispronounced as B's, and F's are regularly mispronounced as P's. As a point of fact, the people of the philippines are called “Filipinos” in english, and “Pilipinos” in Filipino! Even though Filipino numbers are totally different than spanish and english, Filipinos often use english words for numbers, but with a Filipino pronunciation: “One,” “Two,” “Tree,” “Pour,” “Pibe,” “Six,” “Seben,” “Eight,” “Nine,” “Ten,” “Eleben,” “Twelbe,” etc. To combat these types of errors, I have used cajoling: “I need Tirty-Pibe Pesos.” “What? I didn't understand that.” “I need Thirty-Five Pesos.” And I have used a tongue twister: “Fifty-Five Fifty.” And drilling on the names of states and cities. Even with repeated attempts, it seems some Filipinos simply can't tell the difference between “Stebe” and “Steve.” Although I haven't yet had the opportunity, I am looking forward to see if using a record/playback approach might help those few that simply can't handle the switch from B to V. Normally, getting by in the philippines with only english at my disposal is not a problem. Almost everyone can speak some rudimentary english. Even most of the traffic signs are in english! However, it is interesting that there are at times communication difficulties. A couple of weeks ago, I went to a shopping mall to buy printer supplies. Out front was a sign for Octagon, an office supply store. After walking through three floors of the mall and not seeing the store, I asked a security guard where the store is. He said there wasn't an Octagon store in that mall. Undeterred, I asked at the Information Desk on the first floor. She could not understand me, so she asked me to write down the name of the store on a piece of paper. She then said, “Oh, Octagon! It's on the fourth floor.” Honestly, I could not hear any difference in her pronunciation of “Octagon.”