Philippine English
Philippine English (similar and related to American English) is any variety of English native to the Philippines, including those used by the media and the vast majority of educated Filipinos and English learners in the Philippines from adjacent Asian countries. English is taught in schools as one of the two official languages of the country, the other being Filipino (Tagalog). Due to the influx of Filipino English teachers overseas, Philippine English is also becoming the prevalent variety of English being learned in the Far East as taught by Filipino teachers in various Asian countries such as Korea, Japan  and Thailand, among others. Due to the highly multilingual nature of the Philippines, code-switching such as Taglish (Tagalog-infused English) and Bislish (English infused with any of the Bisayan languages) is prevalent across domains from casual settings to formal situations. History. Filipinos were first introduced to English when the British invaded Manila and Cavite in 1762, but this occupation had no lasting effect on English in the country. A national variety called Philippine English evolved eventually, as a result of the American colonization, and was arguably one of the fastest to develop in the postcolonial world. Its origins as  an English language spoken by a large segment of the Philippine population can be traced to the American introduction of public education, taught in the English medium of instruction. This was marked by the arrival of the Thomasites in 1901, immediately during re-colonization after the Philippine Revolution in the late 19th century up to the early 1900. After a tumultuous period of colonial transition, Filipino leaders and elites, and the American colonial government alike begun discussing the formation of a Philippine national language. The retained high ethnolinguistic diversity of the new colony was due to low penetration of Spanish  under Spain's rule. Spanish was limited to a medium of instruction for the landed elites and gentry. At the end of Spanish colonization, only 3-5% of the colonial population could speak Spanish. The lingering effects of Spanish amongst the general population nevertheless had notable effects on the lexical development of many Philippine languages, and even Philippine English, in the form of hispanisms. Tagalog was selected to be the basis for a national language in 1937, and has since remained so. It was re-labelled as "Pilipino" in 1959, and "Filipino" in 1987. With the successful establishment of American -style public education having English as a consequential medium, more than 20% of the Philippine population were reported to be able to understand and speak English just before the turn of mid-20th century. This meteoric growth was sustained post-World War II, much further through Philippine mass media (e.g. newsprint, radio, television) where English also became the dominant language, and by the ratification into the current Philippine Constitution in 1987, both Filipino and English were declared co-official languages. In 2020, the Philippines was ranked 27th worldwide (among 100 countries ranked) in the EF English Proficiency Index. In the same  report, it was ranked 2nd in Asia next only to Singapore. Today Philippine English, as formally called based on the World Englishes framework of linguist Braj Kachru, is a recognized variety of English with its distinct lexical, phonological, and grammatical features (with considerable variations across socioeconomic groups and level of education being predictors of English proficiency in the Philippines). As English language became highly embedded in Philippine society, it was only a matter of time before the language was indigenized to the point that it became differentiated from English varieties found in the United States, United Kingdom, or elsewhere. This , along with the formal introduction of the World Englishes (WE) framework to English language scholars in the Philippines opened the floodgates to research on this new emerging English, which has since been branded as such as Philippine English. Philippine English in the services sector. The abundant supply of English speakers and competitive labor costs enabled the Philippines to become a choice destination for foreign companies wishing to establish call centers and other outsourcing. English proficiency sustains a major call center industry and in 2005, America Online had 1,000 people in what used to be the US Air Force's Clark  Air Base in Angeles City answering ninety percent of their global e-mail inquiries. Citibank does its global ATM programming in the country, and Procter & Gamble has over 400 employees in Makati, a central Manila neighborhood, doing back office work for their Asian operations including finance, accounting, human resources and payments processing. An influx of foreign students, principally from South Korea, has also led to growth in the number of English language learning centers, especially in Metro Manila, Baguio, Metro Cebu and Metro Bacolod. Orthography and grammar. Orthography. Philippine laws and court decisions, with extremely rare exceptions, are written solely  in English. English is also used in higher education, religious affairs, print and broadcast media, and business. Most educated Filipinos are bilinguals and speak English as one of their languages. For highly technical subjects such as nursing, medicine, computing and calculus, English is the preferred medium for textbooks, communication, etc. Very few would prefer highly technical books in either Filipino or the regional language. Movies and TV shows in English are usually not dubbed in most cable channels except a few such as Tagalized Movie Channel. Because English is part of the curricula from primary to secondary education, many Filipinos  write and speak in fluent Philippine English, although there might be differences in pronunciation. Most schools in the Philippines, however, are staffed by teachers who are speakers of Philippine English and hence notable differences from the American English from which it was derived are observable. Vocabulary. As a historical colony of the United States, the Philippine English lexicon shares most of its vocabulary from American English, but also has loanwords from native languages and Spanish, as well as some usages, coinages, and slang peculiar to the Philippines. Due to the influence of the Spanish languages, Philippine English also contains Spanish -derived terms, including Anglicizations, some resulting in false friends, such as "salvage". Philippine English also borrowed words from Philippine languages, especially native plant and animal names (e.g. "ampalaya", balimbing"), and cultural concepts with no exact English equivalents (e.g. kilig); some borrowings from Philippine languages have entered mainstream English, such as abaca and ylang-ylang. For rail transport terminology, Philippine English uses both British and American parlance. Both the British rail"way" and the American rail"road" spellings are acceptable in formal discussion and official documents, the former being used in the context of the Philippine National Railways while the latter having more  genericized usage. British terms used in the country include "bogie" (US "truck"), "coach" (US "railcar"), and "train driver" (US "[railroad] engineer"). American terms used in the country include "boxcar" (UK "goods wagon"), "caboose" (UK "brake van"), and "consist" (UK "rake"). Spelling and style. Philippine spelling is significantly closer to American than British spelling, as it adopted the systematic reforms promulgated in Noah Webster's 1828 Dictionary. However, there are exceptions below. Style. The DD/MM/YYYY and MM/DD/YYYY date format are used in the Philippines for date notation and the 12-hour clock for time notation. Keyboard layout . There are two major English language keyboard layouts, the United States layout and the United Kingdom layout. Keyboards and keyboard software for the Philippine market universally use the US keyboard layout, which lacks the pound sterling, euro and negation symbols and uses a different layout for punctuation symbols than the UK keyboard layout. Phonology. Philippine English is a rhotic accent mainly due to the influence of Philippine languages, which are the first language of most of its speakers. Another influence is the rhotic characteristic of American English, which became the longstanding standard in the archipelago since Americans introduced the language  in public education. This is contrary to most Commonwealth English variants spoken in neighboring countries such as Malaysia or Singapore. The only exception to this rule is the word "Marlboro", which is frequently read as "Malboro". Therefore, phonemes are pronounced in all positions. However, some children of Overseas Filipinos who are educated in Commonwealth countries (such as Australia, New Zealand or the United Kingdom) may speak in a non-rhotic accent unless taught otherwise. Native and well-educated speakers (also called acrolectal speakers) may also feature flapping and vowel sounds resembling the California vowel shift due to the influence of  Hollywood movies and call center culture mostly pegged towards the American market. For non-native speakers, Philippine English phonological features are heavily dependent on the speaker's mother tongue, although foreign languages such as Spanish also influenced many Filipinos on the way of pronouncing English words. This is why approximations are very common and so are hypercorrections and hyperforeignisms. The most distinguishable feature is the lack of fricative consonants, particularly , and . Another feature is the general absence of the schwa , and therefore pronounced by its respective full equivalent vowel although the r-colored variant is increasingly popular in recent years . Consonants. The following consonant changes apply for most non-native speakers of the language: Vowels. Vowels in Philippine English are pronounced according to the letter representing each, so that are generally pronounced as , respectively. The schwa —although a phonological feature across numerous Philippine languages such as Kinaray-a, Meranao, or the "Abagatan" (Southern) dialect of Ilokano—is absent. Pronunciation. Many Filipinos often have distinct non-native English pronunciation, and many fall under different "lectal" variations (i.e. basilectal, mesolectal, acrolectal). Some Philippine languages (e.g. Ibanag, Itawis, Surigaonon, Tausug) feature certain unique phonemes such as , , , and , which are also present in English . However, Filipinos' first languages have generally different phonological repertoires (if not more simplified compared to English), and this leads to mis- or distinct pronunciations particularly among basilectal and to some extent mesolectal speakers. ! Word/phrase !! Philippine English pronunciation !! Notes