Who's Afraid of Philippine English?By Ma. Lourdes S. Bautista
Professor Emeritus
De La Salle University, Manila
One thing is certain: We shouldn't be afraid of it. Philippine English is a legitimate variety of English, just like the other new varieties of English or "new Englishes:" Singapore English, Malaysian English, Indian English,Hong Kong English in this part of the world, and Nigerian English, South African English, Jamaican English, Fijian English, Kenyan English further afield. These new Englishes are usually juxtaposed against the "older Englishes," the English varieties that we have long recognized as "English" such as British English, American English, and Australian English. But the English spoken in Thailand or in Japan or in China is not part of the group called new Englishes.
Another way of looking at these varieties is to group countries into those countries where English is spoken as a first language (UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand), those countries where English is spoken as a second or official language (e.g., Singapore, Malaysia, India, Hong Kong, the Philippines), and those countries where English is spoken as a foreign language (e.g., Japan, Thailand, Korea, China). We need to mention here that these distinctions are becoming blurred because in countries like India, Singapore and even the Philippines, children are beginning to speak English as a first language. However, the old categorization is still generally helpful.
If the English in Thailand, Japan, and China does not fall under varieties of English, the question then becomes: What makes a variety of English? Susan Butler, publisher of the Macquarie Dictionary (the national dictionary of Australia), proposed five criteria which can be summarized in five words/phrases, and I give them below together with comments on how we fulfill the criteria:
1. Accent - We have a recognizable pattern of English pronunciation handed down across generations.
2. Vocabulary - We have developed and are developing English words and phrases which are unique to our variety to describe features of our social and cultural life.
3. History - Our colonial history under the Americans, including the educational system they introduced, has produced and influenced the English variety that we speak.
4. Creative writing - We are proud of our creative writers whose fiction, poetry, essays, dramas, and literary criticism in English rank among the best in the world.
5. Reference works - Our linguists and language educators are in the process of producing dictionaries, grammars, and style manuals of Philippine English.
What are some of the phonological features of Philippine English (henceforth, PE)? Perhaps here we can distinguish between the highly-educated and not-so-highly- educated PE speakers. First, even our best speakers typically do not produce a puff of air when pronouncing the initial sound in pet, take, cab; in the linguist jargon, we do not aspirate our initial p, t, k. To do so would sound too Americanized, too affected. Second, even our best speakers do not reduce unaccented vowels but give each syllable the full value; thus, e-co-no-my, not e-conmy, pa-ral-lel, not parl-lel. Because we give each syllable its full value (as we do in our Philippine languages), PE is said to have syllable-timed rhythm rather than the stress-timed rhythm of American English or British English. Asian Englishes in general have syllable-timed rhythm, and this may be the reason why several studies have shown that Asians understand each other English much better than they understand the English of native speakers.
In the not-so-highly- educated PE pronunciation, the consonants t and th, d and dh, p and f, b and v, have the same pronunciation; thus, tree andthree, fate and faith, day and they, pour and four, bat and vat are pronounced the same way. As for the vowels, sometimes there is no lengthening or tensing of certain vowels so that i and y, and o and oware pronounced the same way, resulting in the same pronunciation for ship and sheep, bought and boat. And of course we know the way many Filipinos pronounce the first vowel of apple.
In this borderless world, we have gotten used to different accents, if only because of our exposure to CNN there we see and hear the internationalizatio n of the pronunciation of English. What should our attitude be to our distinct way of pronouncing English? If only we could be so proud of our Filipino-ness that we could adopt the attitude of a foreign affairs minister of Singapore who said, "When I'm abroad and someone should hear me talking to another person on a train, I hope they say, he is a Singaporean."
What are the words that constitute the PE lexicon? One set would consist of borrowings from Spanish, Tagalog and other languages, words like merienda, bienvenida, despedida, pakikisama, barkada, pasalubong, japayuki, taipan. Another set would be abbreviations like CR, DI, TY, GRO, MRT, KKB. And then there are the clippings: Ballpen(where Americans would say ballpoint), aircon, kinder, promo, sem. PE is also enriched through analogical constructions, words like awardee, honoree, mentee (on the analogy of employee, examinee), rallyist (on the analogy of soloist), bedspacer, carnapper, holdupper (on the analogy of homeowner), masteral degree (on the analogy of doctoral degree).
In addition, there are coinages, some of which may use analogy and clipping: Imeldific (exaggeratedly ostentatious), Taglish (Tagalog-English mixed utterances), trapo (from traditional politician), eat-and-run (going to a party, eating, leaving immediately, with hardly any socializing) . There is the process called compounding, one of the biggest contributors to the PE lexicon: Bar girl, dirty ice cream (ice cream produced by small ice cream makers and sold on the street), dirty kitchen (in rich homes, the kitchen where the messy or real cooking is done), Filipino time, green joke (risque or obscene joke),macho dancer, phone pal, balikbayan box, colegiala English, turo-turorestaurant. The compounding forms "mate" and "boy" have added new items to our vocabulary: Batchmate, dormmate, officemate, provincemate, seatmate, textmate; houseboy, gasoline boy, room boy, watch-your-car boy.
Maybe the PE words that will cause the greatest trouble to foreigners are those words that have undergone a semantic shift, words likesalvage, motel, gimmick, prep school. Salvage in contemporary PE sometimes means to summarily execute; in other Englishes it means to save. Motel in PE means a hotel for premarital or extramarital ***; in other Englishes, it is a roadside hotel with parking for cars. Gimmick in PE is a night out with friends; in other Englishes it is something done to attract notice or publicity. Prep school in PE is preparatory to Grade 1; in American English, preparatory to college.
Just last week, an American friend called my attention to the word we use when we take pictures in the Philippines; American English would ask people to "move closer;" here we ask people to "compress." And we can simply list some words for food, flora and fauna, national identity/culture that are part of PE: Adobo, lechon, pan de sal, sinigang; calamansi, lanzones, lapu-lapu, macapuno, ube; bayanihan, balagtasan, harana, tinikling.
There is no space here to present some features of the grammar of PE that will be the subject matter for a future article. In short, this new approach to English, called the World Englishes perspective, debunks the old paradigm which claims that "native speakers own the language" and therefore that indigenized Englishes somehow manifest the deterioration of standards.
Instead, this new paradigm advances the notion that indigenized Englishes demonstrate the adaptation of English to varied contexts. Thus, we shouldn't be afraid of Philippine English and we can end this article on an almost triumphalistic note. In the famous and often-quoted words of Filipino poet Gemino Abad, "English is now ours. We have colonized it too."
________________________________________________________________________
"Our task now is not to fix the blame for the past, but to fix the course for the future." JFK
Add to del.icio.us
