Lert jayson p.

Alisoso HUMSS 12-A

“English in the Philippines is more fun than you think!”

We, Filipinos love to speak English but I’m not sure if “love” is the right term for
that because personally, I would prefer to speak in my native language tagalog. English is the
second language here in the Philippines and many Filipinos are very good at it. That is why we
have many call center agencies here in the Philippines to answer any call from any different
countries in the world and also Filipinos are often hired as a private tutor for English also in
different many countries. But “Why Filipinos speak English so well?” . Even though not all
Filipinos can communicate with each other using their own national language, the wide majority
of the population speaks great English. If you listen to Filipinos when they are talking to each
other, they would use at least 20-30% English words and the rest is a mix of Filipino and their
own dialect. According from what I search in the internet there are 4 Main Reasons Why
Filipinos Speak English So Well. First is The American influence on the education system.
They’ve fought and won 3 wars against the Filipino independence. Second is Filipinos are
confronted with English media in their everyday lives. Well, it becomes quite obvious when you
just turn on the TV. There are many English Channels and they even got CNN Philippines and
ABS-CBN Philippines that are in (American) English and way more popular than the channels in
Filipino (Tagalog). The next reason why Filipinos speak English so well is because of the fact
that all signages are in English. Even the construction signs on the road that say “Caution
Construction in Progress”. So again Filipinos are exposed to the English language in their
everyday lives all the time and while the media benefits their listening skills all the signage
benefit their reading skills. And then finally there is also the fact that the Philippines are in a very
unfortunate position both in terms of economy and geography. For the Philippines it is a little
different as their tourism industry they have no real economic power and so the consequence is
that a lot of Filipinos desperately want to find work abroad to improve their standard of living and
also many Filipino businesses aim to attract international clients – and that’s only possible with
decent English skills. So these are the four main reasons why Filipinos speak such good
English.

But most of the Filipinos especially millennials and students has many errors in
speaking English mostly in grammatization. And that is the common problem of our teachers on
how are they going to educate their student. Recently we are given a task regarding from the
common mistakes we do in speaking English in writing academic paper. So I interview my
classmate with the question of “What do you think are some problems that you /and your
classmates encounter when you write academic papers?”..And he answered that his common
problems in writing an academic paper is “everything” but not that literally and also as I have
said that our common mistakes is in grammatization. And he also stated that the lack of
knowledge about a certain topic and valid evidence and of course in making a conclusion is also
his problem. He is not the only one facing this problem. Well I must say that most of us including
me are facing this kind of problem in writing any academic papers and speaking English I
guess. In writing academic papers you must have the knowledge and many data or evidences
on your topic to support ideas but if you’re not knowledgeable to it well it is difficult to write a
academic paper. And the other question I asked is “What language do they use at home?”. And
he answered “Tagalog” their mother tongue. Well of course it is expected that we use our
mother tongue in our home the language that we grew up with. If we speak that way we can
easily understand each other in our homes. And the third question is “Do you think they find it
difficult to express their ideas in English, if they dont speak English language at home? How
does this affect their language and style?”. And he answered “Yes” because its hard for him to
translate his ideas in English so he difficulty to create or build a sentence that the grammar is
correct. And in style he said he often change his sentences if he doesn’t know to translate his
ideas so it gives different meanings. Well this is also a common problem for us student we cant
freely express our ideas if we translate it to English because sometimes I mean often it will
change the meaning of our ideas.

But sometimes there are people who are speak fluently in English I mean we are
Filipinos we excelled in English compared to any other countries around us. Some of us can
speak English fluently and some of us don’t but still we can learn it fast. And as for the last
question of the interview “Can you identify some words that the direct translation from Filipino
which may affect the meaning of the sentences”. He give me his specific answer and his
example is "Suntok sa buwan" - "punch in the moon” well when it comes to converting filipino
laguage into English language, there are some Filipino words that when you translate it into
english may affect the meaning of words and sentences. And my another example for that is
“pakibuksan nga yung TV” and when we translate it to English it will become “can you open the
TV’ well the correct sentences to it is “can you turn on the TV” that happens when we translate
it word by word.

Many of us has the talent of speaking English fluently and some of us is still
learning. And that’s the best thing of being Filipino even if we’re not that good in something we
create a way for us to learn and sometimes create amazing ideas. Maybe that’s why we
invented ‘Taglish” as a part of our language here in the Philippines because well we can’t
translate some of tagalog words to English so we combined it. And also we, Filipinos often
shortcut our words example of it the word “okay” it becomes “OK” and the famous for all the
millennials the word “SKL” means “share ko lang”. Well that is why I said that here in the
phillippines is more fun than you think. And as we can see how clever Filipino is.