hanikami
08-24-2007, 06:58 AM
from the PINOY KASI column of Michael Tan (http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?art icle_id=84403)
Finglishes
By Michael Tan
Inquirer
Last updated 02:43am (Mla time) 08/24/2007
MANILA, Philippines -- When I read that “miskol” was chosen as “Salita ng Taon” [Word of the Year], with “roro” and “Friendster” as the closest runners-up, I thought, Filipino-English is here to stay, as a major lingua franca. “Miskol” is, after all, derived from the cell phones’ “missed call,” “roro” from the inter-island “roll-on, roll-off” transport system, and “Friendster” is the Internet system.
Let me give a quick explanation about the Salita ng Taon to make sure you know what I’m talking about. The Filipinas Institute of Translation, with support from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts and the Blas Ople Foundation, has been holding annual Sawikaan conferences, during which they review entries that nominate words that play important roles in contemporary Filipino life.
I was struck by the number of entries that are derived from English. Yet, after reflecting some more about “miskol,” “roro” and “Friendster,” I’m inclined to take back my original hypothesis about the emergence of Filipino-English as a major shared language in the Philippines. Instead, I’m going to suggest that Filipino, as a national language, is assimilating many English words at a faster rate, but once the words enter Filipino, they “become” Filipino. Filipino-English itself continues to develop -- but parallel to Filipino, with English words.
World Englishes
The Encarta World English Dictionary has several entries on global variations of English, for example, Singapore English, Malaysia English, Caribbean English. There is an entry for Philippine English, with the synonym Filipino English. Encarta is quite drastic in saying that this Filipino English “has some co-official status with Filipino,” based on the observation that English is used “in varying degrees by over half of the population.” Encarta goes on to describe some characteristics of Filipino English, for example a “rhotic r,” where the “r” is rolled with the tip of the tongue curled back and raised, full vowels (thus the number “sehven” rather than “sevn”), a preference for the perfect tenses (“We are doing this” rather than “We do this,” “We have done this” rather than “We did this”) and, finally, “distinctive” vocabularies borrowed or adapted mainly from Spanish and English.
I remember that back in the 1970s, people referred to Filipino English mainly as Taglish, and associated this with the “burgis” [the bourgeoisie or the upper classes]. It was an era of turbulent political activism, a mix of anti-dictatorship and nationalist sentiments, so it’s not surprising that when people talked about Taglish, it was often in jest, a way of putting down the upper classes for not being able to speak Filipino. Often, Taglish was called “colegiala English” [convent schoolgirl English] because it was associated with the more exclusive Catholic schools for girls.
Imagine now one of these "colegialas," still in uniform, exclaiming: “Ay, how baboy the pig.” Many of my colegiala friends at that time hated that example, claiming they never actually said that about pigs, but admitting, sheepishly that, yes, they sometimes did think their brothers were quite "baboy."
“How baboy the pig” was illustrative of the social context of Filipino-English, a way of poking fun at the chattering classes who were unable to express themselves in Filipino (or other local languages), and, more importantly, did not see anything wrong with this. Many upper-class Filipinos actually took pride in not being able to converse in the “dialect” with their helpers at home or workers in the office. (A dialect is a variation of a language, like Filipino-English can be called an English dialect. But Tagalog, Ilokano, Hiligaynon, Tausug -- all of these are languages, not dialects.)
‘Mekhehthih?’
That snobbery still exists today; in fact, I can’t help wondering at times if the calls to improve English in the Philippines are actually ways for the upper classes to say, “Hoy, muchachos and muchachas, it’s so mahirap for me to learn Filipino, so will you please naman improve your English so I can understand you?”
Filipino-English -- call it “colegiala English” or “conyo English” -- lives on, thriving on the class divide. Sure, with time, our upper classes have learned to say, “How kadiri the baboy,” but the Filipino-English vocabulary remains predominantly English, more up to date with the latest slang terms from the United States than local ones.
Yet if Filipino-English is the product of class divisions, it is itself mutating because of differences even among the upper classes. You can tell, for example, with the phonetics, the old rich usually sticking to a more Hispanicized English, like the one described in Encarta (rolling r’s, full vowels), while the new rich and middle classes tend toward a more Americanized (or trying to be Americanized) English, exemplified for example by the aspirated “t” and “k” and less full vowels (thus “Mekhehthih” rather than “Makati”). “Call center English,” some of my old rich friends huff about this new dialect.
Filipino-English has variations based, too, on where it is spoken in the Philippines, so we can actually speak of Tagalog-English, Cebuano-English, Ilocano-English. Again, English forms the core of the vocabulary, but words from Tagalog, or Cebuano, or Ilocano, crop up occasionally, used as garnishes.
To confuse you even more, I’d say that Filipino-English is being modified as well by new accents, new tones, new words from the diaspora, sometimes with the most unsettling outcomes. Once, listening to a speaker at a local conference, it took me a few minutes to realize he was using a new variation of Filipino-English, an amalgam of Australian English, with expressions like “mate,” pronounced the Australian way, and Bisaya (actually Waray, I found out afterwards by interviewing him) with all its short vowels.
Next week, I’ll write a bit more about Filipino-English but also look into the possibilities that we might be seeing an anglicized Filipino, an Inglipino or Engalog, emerging. I do have a take-away for you to reflect on. Try to translate this sentence I picked up from a Filipino newspaper: “learningin ang lenguang dingerszie” and tell me if it’s Filipino-English, Inglipino or some other new linguistic species.
Finglishes
By Michael Tan
Inquirer
Last updated 02:43am (Mla time) 08/24/2007
MANILA, Philippines -- When I read that “miskol” was chosen as “Salita ng Taon” [Word of the Year], with “roro” and “Friendster” as the closest runners-up, I thought, Filipino-English is here to stay, as a major lingua franca. “Miskol” is, after all, derived from the cell phones’ “missed call,” “roro” from the inter-island “roll-on, roll-off” transport system, and “Friendster” is the Internet system.
Let me give a quick explanation about the Salita ng Taon to make sure you know what I’m talking about. The Filipinas Institute of Translation, with support from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts and the Blas Ople Foundation, has been holding annual Sawikaan conferences, during which they review entries that nominate words that play important roles in contemporary Filipino life.
I was struck by the number of entries that are derived from English. Yet, after reflecting some more about “miskol,” “roro” and “Friendster,” I’m inclined to take back my original hypothesis about the emergence of Filipino-English as a major shared language in the Philippines. Instead, I’m going to suggest that Filipino, as a national language, is assimilating many English words at a faster rate, but once the words enter Filipino, they “become” Filipino. Filipino-English itself continues to develop -- but parallel to Filipino, with English words.
World Englishes
The Encarta World English Dictionary has several entries on global variations of English, for example, Singapore English, Malaysia English, Caribbean English. There is an entry for Philippine English, with the synonym Filipino English. Encarta is quite drastic in saying that this Filipino English “has some co-official status with Filipino,” based on the observation that English is used “in varying degrees by over half of the population.” Encarta goes on to describe some characteristics of Filipino English, for example a “rhotic r,” where the “r” is rolled with the tip of the tongue curled back and raised, full vowels (thus the number “sehven” rather than “sevn”), a preference for the perfect tenses (“We are doing this” rather than “We do this,” “We have done this” rather than “We did this”) and, finally, “distinctive” vocabularies borrowed or adapted mainly from Spanish and English.
I remember that back in the 1970s, people referred to Filipino English mainly as Taglish, and associated this with the “burgis” [the bourgeoisie or the upper classes]. It was an era of turbulent political activism, a mix of anti-dictatorship and nationalist sentiments, so it’s not surprising that when people talked about Taglish, it was often in jest, a way of putting down the upper classes for not being able to speak Filipino. Often, Taglish was called “colegiala English” [convent schoolgirl English] because it was associated with the more exclusive Catholic schools for girls.
Imagine now one of these "colegialas," still in uniform, exclaiming: “Ay, how baboy the pig.” Many of my colegiala friends at that time hated that example, claiming they never actually said that about pigs, but admitting, sheepishly that, yes, they sometimes did think their brothers were quite "baboy."
“How baboy the pig” was illustrative of the social context of Filipino-English, a way of poking fun at the chattering classes who were unable to express themselves in Filipino (or other local languages), and, more importantly, did not see anything wrong with this. Many upper-class Filipinos actually took pride in not being able to converse in the “dialect” with their helpers at home or workers in the office. (A dialect is a variation of a language, like Filipino-English can be called an English dialect. But Tagalog, Ilokano, Hiligaynon, Tausug -- all of these are languages, not dialects.)
‘Mekhehthih?’
That snobbery still exists today; in fact, I can’t help wondering at times if the calls to improve English in the Philippines are actually ways for the upper classes to say, “Hoy, muchachos and muchachas, it’s so mahirap for me to learn Filipino, so will you please naman improve your English so I can understand you?”
Filipino-English -- call it “colegiala English” or “conyo English” -- lives on, thriving on the class divide. Sure, with time, our upper classes have learned to say, “How kadiri the baboy,” but the Filipino-English vocabulary remains predominantly English, more up to date with the latest slang terms from the United States than local ones.
Yet if Filipino-English is the product of class divisions, it is itself mutating because of differences even among the upper classes. You can tell, for example, with the phonetics, the old rich usually sticking to a more Hispanicized English, like the one described in Encarta (rolling r’s, full vowels), while the new rich and middle classes tend toward a more Americanized (or trying to be Americanized) English, exemplified for example by the aspirated “t” and “k” and less full vowels (thus “Mekhehthih” rather than “Makati”). “Call center English,” some of my old rich friends huff about this new dialect.
Filipino-English has variations based, too, on where it is spoken in the Philippines, so we can actually speak of Tagalog-English, Cebuano-English, Ilocano-English. Again, English forms the core of the vocabulary, but words from Tagalog, or Cebuano, or Ilocano, crop up occasionally, used as garnishes.
To confuse you even more, I’d say that Filipino-English is being modified as well by new accents, new tones, new words from the diaspora, sometimes with the most unsettling outcomes. Once, listening to a speaker at a local conference, it took me a few minutes to realize he was using a new variation of Filipino-English, an amalgam of Australian English, with expressions like “mate,” pronounced the Australian way, and Bisaya (actually Waray, I found out afterwards by interviewing him) with all its short vowels.
Next week, I’ll write a bit more about Filipino-English but also look into the possibilities that we might be seeing an anglicized Filipino, an Inglipino or Engalog, emerging. I do have a take-away for you to reflect on. Try to translate this sentence I picked up from a Filipino newspaper: “learningin ang lenguang dingerszie” and tell me if it’s Filipino-English, Inglipino or some other new linguistic species.