Development of English in the Philippines

The Development of
English in the
Philippines
by Regean Ellorimo
A Presentation for
Introduction to Linguistics
Presented to: Mr. Christian Ray Licen

Where Did the English came
from?
 The English language is a result of the
invasions of the island of Britain over many
hundreds of years. The invaders lived along
the northern coast of Europe.
 The history of the English language continues
as Middle English becomes Modern English,
which is spoken today. That will be our story
next time.

Where Did the English…(cont.)
 English is the major foreign language taught
in most schools in South America and
Europe.
 School children in the Philippines and Japan
begin learning English at an early age.
 English is the official language of more than
seventy-five countries including Britain,
Canada, the United States, Australia, and
South Africa.

English in the Philippines
 The first significant exposure of Filipinos to
the English language occurred in 1762 when
the British invaded Manila, but this was a
brief episode that had no lasting influence.
 English later became more important and
widespread during the American
Occupation between 1898 and 1946, and
remains an official language of the
Philippines.

English in the
Philippines(cont.)
 The linguistic background and colonial history
of the Philippines provides an illuminating
example of the development of a new variety
of English. The Philippines is made up of a
population of some 72 million people who
together speak some 85 Malayo-Polynesian
languages and live on some 7,000 islands. . .
. [I]t was a colony of Spain from 1521 until it
came under American rule in 1895.“
(Andy Kirkpatrick, World Englishes. Cambridge University Press, 2007)

English in the Philippines..
(cont.)
 English-medium education began in the
Philippines in 1901 after the arrival of some 540
US teachers. English was made the language of
education and as its use extended it became
indigenized through the inclusion of vocabulary
from local languages, the adaptation of English
words to local needs, and modifications in
pronunciation and grammar. English was also
adopted for newspapers and magazines, the
media, and literary writing.
(Tom McArthur, The Oxford Guide to World English. Oxford University Press, 2002)

National and official languages in
the Philippines
 Spanish was the national and official language
of the country for more than three centuries
under Spanish colonial rule, and became
the lingua franca of the Philippines in the 19th
and early 20th centuries.
 Under the U.S. occupation and civil
regime, English began to be taught in schools.
By 1901, public education used English as the
medium of instruction.

the Philippines (cont.)
 The 1935 Constitution added English as an
official language alongside Spanish. A
provision in this constitution also called for
Congress to "take steps toward the
development and adoption of a common
national language based on one of the
existing native languages.“
 On November 12, 1937, the First National
Assembly created the National Language
Institute.

 President Manuel L. Quezón appointed
native Waray-Waray speaker Jaime C. De
Veyra to chair a committee of speakers of
other regional languages.
 Their aim was to select a national language
among the other regional languages.
 Ultimately, Tagalog was chosen as the base
language December 30, 1937.

 Over the decades, Philippine English
began to develop a “variety” of English in
its own right, associated with a distinct
accent, a localized vocabulary, and even a
body of creative writing by Philippine
writers in English.

The beginnings of the English
language in the Philippines (1898-
1920)
 Even during the Spanish Period, individual Philippine
scholars studied Englishon their own. Jose Rizal learned
English on his own and in his letters he urgedhis sister
Saturnina to learn English. Apolinario Mabini, initially the
brains of the emerging Philippine Republic, prescribed
the study of English in hissecond level academy (Majul,
1967)
 When the Military Chaplain of General
Elwell Otis, W. D. McKinnon (aCatholic priest from
California), took the initiative soon after 1898 to
teachEnglish to the locals, he and his team of soldiers
were welcomed.

The beginnings of the
English..(cont.)
 They taught English via the direct method
and found ready and willing pupils
(Churchill,2003). Later, when the elementary
schools were established and a more regular
system of teaching English was in place, the
method was initially the direct method
followed by the grammar analysis and
translation method as used inthe public
schools in the United States.

The second generation (1920–
1941)
 By 1921, at the end of the administration of the
Democrat Francis Burton Harrison as Governor General,
the civil service of the colony had become completely
Filipino except for the military leadership and its top
echelons, including the Department of Public Instruction.
 The Thomasites who had come to the Philippines in the
twenty years from 1901 to 1921 had returned to the
United States or had chosen to remain in the Philippines
as private employees marrying into local families
(Gonzalez, 2003a)

1941) cont.
 The people who spread the Philippine variety
of English among Filipinos were Filipino
teachers under the tutelageof their American
mentors.
 In this period, a total of 209 Filipinos were
sent as scholars to the United States as
pensionados (supported fellows) to pursue
their college degrees, including some
graduate studies in law, medicine, and
veterinary science.

1941) cont.
 This period was likewise the golden age of young writers
of English who had grown up and improved on the skills
of the first generation and saw young writers of the
College Folio develop further as English teachers and
mature in their craft as poets, essayists, and fiction
writers.
 The writers in English began to manifest an identity of
their own and began to constitute themselves into a
‘school’ that would be clearly identifiable once the
beginnings of a history of Philippine literature in English
began to be outlined in the post-war period.

Post-war developments (1946–
1980)
 The main characteristic of the period from the late 1940s to the
1960s was the introduction of the Teaching of English as a Second
Language approach, based on the technology learned by the
American structuralist linguists inteaching foreign languages to
Americans during World War II.
 The same techniques and approaches were adopted for the
teaching of English as a second language and were then
incorporated into a theory, a psychology, and a set of practices and
materials (a methodology) which were introduced in the Philippines
initially by Clifford Prator of UCLA and spread systemically as a
result of the establishment of the Philippine Center for Language
Study with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation at the Departm
ent of Education, later, at Philippine Normal College, the latter
institution supported by the Ford Foundation (Prator, 1950).

The linguistic repertoire of the
Filipino
 As far as prehistory is concerned, the inhabitants
of this archipelago have been multilingual,
speaking their local vernaculars but likewise
speaking a regional lingua franca which allowed
intertribal communication.
 With the coming of the Spaniards, the elites
especially of Manila and the main urban centers
began to add Spanish to their repertoire. With
the Americans, still another foreign language
was added, English.

Filipino (cont.)
 With the development of the national language
beginning in 1937, the use of Tagalog, renamed
Pilipino and later Filipino ,became widespread
so that the latest census (National Statistics
Office, 2000)indicates that more than 85% of
Filipinos now speak at least a colloquial
variety of this language or what we in
psycholinguistic terminology would call Basic
Interpersonal Communicative Skills (BICS

Filipino (cont.)
 The stable domains of English continue to be higher
education, business transactions in multinational and
internationally-oriented companies, diplomacy and
international relations, and as a global lingua franca for
relations with the world.
 The work of Chaplain McKinnon and his initial group of
soldier-teachers of English began a process which
eventually resulted in the creation of a
new variety of English which has by now become a per
manent feature of the communicative repertoire and
culture of the Filipino.

English-based creole languages
 An English-based creole language (often
shortened to English creole) is a creole
language derived from the English
language – i.e., for which English is
the lexifier. Most English creoles were formed
in British colonies, following the great
expansion of British naval military power and
trade in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

English-based creole languages
(cont.)
 It is disputed to what extent the various
English-based creoles of the world share a
common origin. The monogenesis
hypothesis (Hancock 1969, Gilman 1978)
posits that a single language, commonly
called proto–Pidgin English, spoken along the
West African coast in the early sixteenth
century, was ancestral to most or all of the
Atlantic creoles (the English creoles of both
West Africa and the Americas).

List
 Asian
 Southeast Asian
 Manglish: An English based creole spoken
in Malaysia.
 Singlish: A language spoken
in Singapore that includes elements of
various Chinese languages, Malay and a
host of others that are spoken on the island
nation.
 Taglish: An English based mesolect creole
spoken in the Philippines.

Filipino English
 The English language as used in the
Philippines, a state of South-East Asia
consisting of more than 7,000 islands. The
1980 census counted the number of Filipinos
with some competence in English as around
65%: some 35m people. Ability ranges from a
smattering of words and phrases through
passive comprehension to near-native
mastery.

Background….
 Filipino experience of Western colonialism
and its linguistic effects has been unique, in
that there have been two colonizers in
succession: Spain from the 16c and the US
from 1898, when English arrived in the
islands. It spread rapidly, to the detriment
of SPANISH, because it was the new
language of government, preferment, and
education.

Background….(cont.)
 In the Philippines there are some 85 mutually
unintelligible though genetically related
languages of the Malayo-Polynesian family,
such as TAGALOG, Cebuano, Ilocano,
Hiligaynon, Waray, and Bicol. These
languages of the home serve
as SUBSTRATES whose features have
variously influenced the development of
Philippine English.

Pronunciation
(1) Philippine English is RHOTIC, but the local
/r/ is an alveolar flap, not an AmE retroflex.
(2) It is syllabletimed, following the rhythm of
the local languages; full value is therefore
given to unstressed syllables and SCHWA is
usually realized as a full vowel.
(3) Certain polysyllables have distinctive stress
patterns, as withelígible, establísh, cerémony.

Pronunciation.. (cont.)
(4) Intonation is widely characterized as
‘singsong’.
(5) Educated Filipinos aim at an AmE
accent, but have varying success with the
vowel contrasts in sheep/ship, full/fool,
and boat/bought.
(6) Few Filipinos have the /æ/ in AmE mask;
instead, they use /ɑ/ as in AmE father.

Pronunciation.. (cont.)
(7) The distinction between /s, z/ and /ʃ, ʒ/ is
not made: azure is
‘ayshure’, pleasure ‘pleshure’, seize ‘sees’,
cars ‘karss’.
(8) Interdental /ɵ, ð/ are often rendered as /t,
d/, so that three of these is spoken as ‘tree
of dese’.

Grammar
 The following features occur at all social
levels:
(1) Loss of the singular inflection of verbs: The
family home rest on the bluff of a hill; One of
the boys give a report to the teacher every
morning.
(2) Use of present perfect for simple past (I
have seen her yesterday I saw her
yesterday) and past perfect for present
perfect (He had already gone home He has
already gone home).

Grammar.. (cont.)
(3) Use of the continuous tenses for habitual
aspect: He is going to school regularly He goes
to school regularly.
(4) Use of the present forms of auxiliary verbs in
subordinate noun clauses rather than past
forms, and vice versa: He said he has already
seen you He said he had already seen you; She
hoped that she can visit you tomorrow She
hoped that she could visit you tomorrow; He
says that he could visit you tomorrow He says
that he can visit you tomorrow.

Grammar.. (cont.)
5) An apparent reversal of the norms for the
use of the definite article: He is studying at
the Manuel Quezon University; I am going
to visit United States.
(6) Verbs that are generally transitive used
intransitively: Did you enjoy?; I cannot
afford; I don't like.

Vocabulary and idioms
(1) Loans from Spanish: asalto a surprise
party, bienvenida a welcome
party,despedida a farewell party, Don/Doña
title for a prominent man/woman, estafa a
fraud, scandal, merienda mid-afternoon
tea, plantilla faculty assignments and
deployment in an academic
department, querida a
mistress, viand (from viandaprovisions for a
journey) a dish served to accompany rice in a
Filipino meal.

Vocabulary and idioms (cont.)
(2) LOAN-WORDS from
Tagalog: boondock (from bundok) mountain
(compare the AmE extension: the
boondocks), carabao (from kalabaw) a water
buffalo,kundiman a love
song, sampaloc (from sampalok) the fruit of
the tamarind, tao man (as in the
common tao).

(3) LOAN TRANSLATIONS from local
usages:open the light/radio turn on the
light/radio (also found in IndE), since before
yetfor a long time, joke only I'm teasing
you, you don't only know you just don't
realize, he is playing and playing he keeps on
playing, making foolishness (of children)
misbehaving, I am ashamed to you I am
embarrassed because I have been asking
you so many favours.

(4) Local NEOLOGISMS: agrupation (from
Spanish agrupación) a group, captain-ball
team captain in basketball, carnap to
steal (kidnap) a car, cope up to keep up and
cope with (something), hold-uppersomeone
who engages in armed
holdups, jeepney (blending jeep and jitney,
AmE a small bus) a jeep converted into a
passenger vehicle.

Written models
 Because of the influence of reading and
writing and the academic context in which
English is learned, local speech tends to be
based on written models. Filipinos generally
speak the way they write, in a formal style
based on Victorian prose models.
 Because of this, spelling pronunciations are
common, such as ‘lee-o-pard’ for leopard,
‘subtill’ for subtle, and ‘worsester-shire
sauce’for Worcestershire sauce.

Written models.. (cont.)
 Style is not differentiated and the formal style
in general use has been called the classroom
compositional style. When style differentiation
is attempted there may be effects that are
comical from the point of view of a native
speaker of English: ‘The commissioners are
all horse owners, who at the same time will
appoint the racing stewards who will
adjudicate disputes involving horses. Neat
no?’ (from a newspaper column).

Code-switching
 A register has developed for rapport and
intimacy that depends on CODE-MIXING
AND CODE-SWITCHING between Filipino
and English. It is largely confined to Metro
Manila and other urban centres and used
extensively in motion pictures and on
television and radio as well as in certain
types of informal writing in daily newspapers
and weekly magazines

Examples:
(1) ‘Peks man,’ she swears, ‘Wala pang nangyayari sa
amin ni Marlon. We want to surprise each other on our
honeymoon.’ [‘Cross my heart,’ she swears. ‘Nothing
yet has happened between Marlon and me …’] (from a
movie gossip column).
(2) Donna reveals that since she turned producer in 1986,
her dream was to produce a movie for children:
‘Kaya, nang mabasa ko ang Tuklaw sa Aliwan
Komiks, sabi ko, this is it. And I had the festival in mind
when finally I decided to produce it. Pambata talaga
kasi ang Pasko,’ Donna says. [‘That is why when I read
the story “Snake-Bite” in the Aliwan Comic Book, I told
myself, this is it …. Because Christmas is really for
children’] (from a movie gossip column)

Social issues
 Philippine English is currently competing in
certain domains with the rapidly spreading
and developing Filipino, which is in a process
of register-building sometimes
called intellectualization.
 Filipino is not fully developed for academic
discourse, especially in the sciences, and
there is an ongoing debate on the use of
Filipino instead of English for school work
and official purposes.

Social issues..(cont.)
 There is also conflict between the learning of
Filipino for symbolic purposes and the learning
of English for utilitarian, largely economic,
purposes. The two official languages are
propagated through a bilingual education
scheme begun in 1974: mathematics and
science continue to be taught in English
although it is envisaged that when possible the
teaching of these subjects at certain grade levels
shall be in Filipino. The print media are
dominated by English, but television, radio, and
local movies are dominated by Filipino.

 Philippine English has developed a vigorous
literature. It is in the process of
standardization, with a variety no longer
marked by regional accents associated with
regional languages, but a converging variety
that originates in Manila. This form is
propagated largely through the school
system, the mass media, and tourism.
Because of code-switching, it seems unlikely
that a colloquial variety of English alone will
develop.

 On the one hand, code-switching may end up in
code-mixing, resulting in a local creole. On the
other hand, the need for international relations,
the dominance of the print media, and the
continued use of English in education may
exercise a standardizing role, making it possible
for the Philippine variety to be mutually
intelligible with other varieties of English. It is
also possible that the present system of
bilingual education will be converted into a
purely monolingual Filipino scheme in which
English is taught as a foreign language and
becomes available only to an élite.

English as a language of
power
 The power of English is of a worldly nature which is
termed the “vehicular load” of a language. English is
considered as the “primary medium for 20th century
science and technology.”
 Important Markers of English power: demographic
distribution, native & non-native users across all
cultures, use in world forums, and it’s rich literary
tradition.
 Power resides in: its uses, the roles users can play,
its perceived importance in that English exceeds
other languages on all counts.

English as a language of
power (continued)
 The English language is a tool of power, dominance, communication
and elitist identity across the world.
 More than this, English is the language of power and progress. In
the Philippines, it is highly valued not only because it is functional
and practical and washes over us constantly, but more importantly,
because it is an affordable item, a skill that can be used to increase
one's position, respectability and marketability.
 In most cases, the better one's ability to understand and use
English, the better one's chances of career advancement. This is
true for both extremes of the socio-economic ladder. English is as
important to the Harvard-educated Filipino working in Manila's
cosmopolitan business district as it is to the overseas contract
worker working as a domestic helper in Saudi Arabia.

English as a colonial language
 Due to the political power of the British in the India and the
Americans in the Philippines and Puerto Rico, the colonists had
to adopt a pose fitting their new status. English became a
marker of power.
 Because English was clearly a powerful language the Natives
tried to adopt the language and pose the same status as the
colonists. This made the colonists uncomfortable.
 Thus the term “non-native” English is coined. It is the
transplanted varieties of English that are acquired as a second
language.
 English is used as a tool of power to connect those with similar
cultures and norms as the politically elite.

(continued)
 In 1898 America’s power spread to the Philippines and
President McKinley considered it the American’s duty to
educate, civilize, and Christianize the Filipinos so that
they would be fitting of citizenship.
 Throughout South Asia the same was true, many English
speakers were trying to Christianize and change the
“natives.”
 English has become a tool of civilization and light. Use
of said tool is considered to the colonists contribution
and duty.
 English also became the medium for understanding
technology and scientific developments.

(continued)
 Eventually the Indians (as well as Filipinos or Africans) who did
become skilled in professional roles were called “Westernized” or
to be more neutral “modernized.”
 English acquired a strong non-native base and local languages
lost their prestige and power.
 In time the elite language was used against the Englishmen and
their roles and intentions; it became the language of a resurging
nationalism and political awakening.
 The linguistic and cultural pluralism in Africa and South Asia
aided with the spread of English and thus fostered staying power
for the language.
 By the 1920’s English had become the language of politics,
intranational administration, law, and was associated with liberal
thinking. Even after the colonial period ended English maintained
its power over local language.

The Philippine English System
 English is very unique in
the Philippines because we use it as the
language of instruction, but not the language of
home. (O’Connor, 1955) Not only that, we also
use English in the government during political
sessions or meetings, and in law firms and
during prosecution hearings and documentation,
English is always the common language. This
shows that English is part of our culture and
rivals the importance of the other languages in
the Philippines.

The Philippine
English System(cont.)
 We became an English-speaking nation through
the help of our teachers whom themselves had
learned English as a second language. The
Thomasites arrived in the Philippines on August
21, 1901 to set up a new public school system to
teach basic education, and to train Filipino
teachers with English as the medium of
instruction. Our Filipino teachers, during that
time, were exposed and immersed with native
speaking pronunciations and comprehension.
(Wikipedia)

The Philippine
 The destruction caused by the war has been
great. O’Connor cites that most of the native
English teachers and non-native English
teachers died during the war. Some of them lost
their professions because they did not return to
their classrooms when the war came to an end.
Since the spoken language is learned by
imitation of native speakers of the language, the
lack of native speaker models has effected
certain English sounds as enunciated by
English-speaking Filipinos today.

The Philippine
 The English language in the Philippines is often used
along with Tagalog. As a result you will find that people
mix English with Tagalog. This is commonly called
Taglish.
 In the Philippine islands different languages are spoken,
therefore, Filipinos who travel to another region of the
country where a different dialect or language is spoken
will find that they can communicate with fellow Filipinos
using either the Filipino language (Tagalog) or the
English language. That is if they do not speak the local
language.

 Some words used in Filipino were borrowed from
English. Some borrowed words cannot be directly
translated into Filipino so they are used as is but may be
spelled in Filipino according to their pronunciation. Some
of the English words that are used in Filipino include
words such as: printer, fax, bar, and cell phone. Other
commonly used English words in Tagalog include: hello,
hi, escalator, and so on..
 In the Tagalog language, there are also English words
that are spelled according to their pronunciation when
used in Filipino. Examples of these words are telebisyon
(television), oben (oven), and kamera (camera). There
are countless others but here are a few more: traysikel
(tricycle), dyip (jeep), and miting (meeting).

References:
 Philippine English Linguistic and Literary
Perspective by Bautista, Ma. Lourdes
 http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O29-
PHILIPPINEENGLISH.html
 http://gilesig.org/26Phil.htm
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_English
 http://grammar.about.com/b/2013/11/14/notes-on-
english-in-the-philippines.htm
 http://EzineArticles.com/4546965

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