The Filipina And English

[Americano]

My wife's brother and sister whom both completed the 3rd grade in high school in April of this year just went back home in Mindanao after spending 56 days with us. Their ability to understanding and speak English was very limited. I asked both of them several times, how could you learn a language in school for 9 years and not be able to understand or speak it?  They never answer me or my wife but we know the answer, they are not interested to learn English so they only memorized what was necessary to pass an exam and to graduate to another grade.

 

Both of them are planning to attending College immediately after high school so before they left I told them that English is the language of professions in the Philippines so you have one more year to learn English. And, many College courses are taught in English. For example all doctors, lawyers, judges, politicians, dentists, etc. are very fluent in English. If a foreigner who is an English speaker goes to a doctor, lawyer or dentist he or she will not need a translator. Even if you go to court the court session is held in English. If you cannot speak English then your words or testimony will be translated into English for the Court and for everyone in attendance to hear and for the official record. I make this statement after sitting in court through several court cases. If anyone has a different experience please state your experience here.

[Thomas]

 

Are you saying here, that you believe the Philippines, should be an English Speaking Country?? :unsure:

I'm not sure what you mean. The Philippines is an English speaking country.

Well. There are more Filipins than Thai, who can speak English, but they don't need to be many to be more than the Thai   :)

 

I know several Filipins, who have no problem to express themselves in English (when it isn't a special subject, which need special words, then they are very few.)

But out in the provinces it's NOT much more than "Hi. How are you?"   as others have said above.

Examples:

/The family of my ex. They are from a Bohol province, but 5 of them work in Manila. Them in Manila can speak RATHER understandable, while of the 7 grown ups (= parents + sibblings) at home only the father can have any conversation at all in English and it at a simple level.

/A family from south part of Cebu island. A rather big parts of them have academic exams. THEY can speak English understandable. The rest of the family can speak very litle/nothing.

[crad]

 

 

 

 

 

If a foreigner who is an English speaker goes to a doctor, lawyer or dentist he or she will not need a translator. Eve if you go to court the court session is held in English. If you cannot speak English then your words or testimony will be translated into English for the Court and for everyone in attendance to hear and for the official record. I make this statement after sitting in court through several court cases. If anyone has a different experience please state your experience here.

your experience shows that even though English is supposed to be the language of the law in the Philippines, it obviously isn't if a foreigner needs his testimony translated in court. May I ask if a foreigner was involved in the cases you mention. Because I have a friend who is a prosecutor in Manila and she says she has never been at any court where whether Tagalog was not spoken in court at some point in the session. Witnesses almost never give evidence in English, but in Manila, they give evidence in Tagalog. How could anybody expect a Filipino taxi driver to give evidence in English, if they are required to give evidence in a trial. Just sometimes, she told me, they have a witness whose Tagalog is so bad, that they give evidence in their native dialect, whatever it is, and a translator is provided.

[JJReyes]

Not out in the province they aren't!  They learn it in school and never use it again. It is like the US kids taking High School Spanish... and never using again.  I know a lot of Filipinos that can barely put 2 words together in English.  

 

Because of nationalistic sentiments to preserve native languages, public elementary schools start English at the 3rd grade. That's too late. Private schools start at kindergarten. Practice at home is through English language conversation with parents, siblings, friends and other relatives.

[crad]

the linguistic thing is quite a hot topic in the Phlippines and what language you speak is right at the forefront of Filipino identity. it is old, but is also very contemporary. The English language is not at the height of the debate, English is a lesser language, of the Philippines than the others, it is just not a language Filipinos do not ordinairly like or use but they can press it into service when required,

[Tukaram (Tim)]

I was talking to locals about what language I should learn.  Tagalog is on TV, Ilongo is the local language (officially it is something else but all locals call it Ilongo), and the family speaks Kinray-a.  Everyone said to learn a little Ilongo and a little Kinray-a. ALL of them say they would rather speak English than Tagalog.  Tagalog is a foreign language over here ha ha. I have watched at the ATM and when given the Taglish/English option everyone I have seen picks English ha ha.   And they can barely speak it - but they won't touch Tagalog.   :tiphat:

[Jack Peterson]

I'm not sure what you mean. The Philippines is an English speaking country.

 

Having read posts made after, this Statement from our Friend. I think, it Is time to say.

" Being an English Speaking Country, is very far removed, from a Country, where some of it's  Indigenous Inhabitants, have learned English"

 

:tiphat:

[crad]

I was talking to locals about what language I should learn.  Tagalog is on TV, Ilongo is the local language (officially it is something else but all locals call it Ilongo), and the family speaks Kinray-a.  Everyone said to learn a little Ilongo and a little Kinray-a. ALL of them say they would rather speak English than Tagalog.  T :tiphat:

they likely said that, only because you are a kano and that is what they possibly thought you wanted to hear. You should also always be on your guard about asking leading questions, to Filipinos. Tagalog is without doubt the lingua franca of the Philippines and it is a long way ahead, of English. Which should not be a surprise to anybody, as Tagalog, unlike English and the other European or Indo-European languages, is part of the same language family as the other Filipino languages and dialects (although Filipino languages and dialects are much more diverse than the languages and dialects of Malaysia). Choosing a lingua franca was one of the things the revolutionary 'founding fathers' of the Philippines realised that they had to do, if they were ever going to make a go of governing their country, and by choosing Tagalog I am totally 100% sure, that they made the right call. It could not have been anything else. They had little or no choice but to choose Tagalog. But then after the Filipino version of July 4, 1776, their Declaration of Independence, the United States came along and decided to invade the Philippines, which had the effect of altering the linguistical mix over the longer term. Prior to that, nobody had ever considered the English language to have any special role in the Philippines' languages set up.  In those days English was no different to French and both of them were a long way behind Spanish. Had McKinley and the USA decided not to bother invading the Philippines, Spanish, not English, would have been by far the most important 'foreign' or European language or at least it would have been for a long time, after the Filipino declaration of independence in on June 12,1898. And in some ways, Spanish language and custom is still important in the Philippines. Almost everybody in the Philippines goes under Spanish personal names, and nearly all the placenames are Spanish even though, even more than English, almost nobody in the Philippines speaks the Spanish language at home.

[Tukaram (Tim)]

they likely said that, only because you are a kano and that is what they possibly thought you wanted to hear. You should also always be on your guard about asking leading questions, to Filipinos

 

Except I did not ask... many of them just told me not to bother learning Tagalog because they don't like to speak it.  They said if I am not going to speak to them in their own language, Ilongo, then English was preferable to Tagalog. I don't about the Cebuanos but here in Western Visaya. they don't like Tagalog.

[crad]

sounds rather odd to me. Why would anybody VOLUNTEER to say to you, in English of course (assuming you were speaking with them in English and not Ilongo), that they do not like to speak Tagalog unless the subject matter came up.

 

fact is the massive majority of Filipinos can speak Tagalog to a much better standard than they can English, which should not be a surprise as they are exposed to it far more and it is much easier for them to speak it than English is, English being from a totally different Indo-European language family than Filipino languages are.

 

there is such a thing as linguistic nationalism in the Philippines however with provincial Filipinos that have moved to and are living in Manila and the NCR (and there are many millions of them) my experience is that they could not really care less that after having moved there, they are now speaking Tagalog 95% of the time, their dialect maybe 3% of the time, and English maybe 2% of the time. Whereas before they moved to Manila, in their province they maybe spoke their dialect 95% of the time, Tagalog 4% of the time and English maybe 1% of the time. Filipinos are used to multi lingualism, it is just a part of their lives and they accept it.  They just get on with it. Although it is always nice for provincial Filipinos living in Manila and who thus speak Tagalog almost all the time, to get the chance to converse in their first or mother tongue. Just like it is for somebody from Wales, whose first language is Welsh but living in London, to get the chance to speak Welsh occasionally, which they will from time to time in London (but not very often unless they seek out clubs and associations of Welsh language speakers).