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For A While: Matthew Sutherland "Two Countries Divided by A Common Language."

This document discusses unique aspects of Philippine English compared to other varieties of English. It provides examples of common Filipino phrases that sound odd to foreign English speakers, such as "Watch your steps" and "For a while." The author explains that while these phrases make sense as translations from Tagalog, they differ from equivalents used in places like the UK. The document also discusses differences in uses of terms like "the other day" and "last" when referring to times or dates. Overall it examines how Philippine English has developed its own idioms and terms through translation from Tagalog.

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David Del Mundo
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269 views

For A While: Matthew Sutherland "Two Countries Divided by A Common Language."

This document discusses unique aspects of Philippine English compared to other varieties of English. It provides examples of common Filipino phrases that sound odd to foreign English speakers, such as "Watch your steps" and "For a while." The author explains that while these phrases make sense as translations from Tagalog, they differ from equivalents used in places like the UK. The document also discusses differences in uses of terms like "the other day" and "last" when referring to times or dates. Overall it examines how Philippine English has developed its own idioms and terms through translation from Tagalog.

Uploaded by

David Del Mundo
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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For a While 1 Matthew Sutherland

"Two countries divided by a common language."

-- George Bernard Shaw (on the US and the UK)

There are varieties of Englishes, besides American or British English. One of them is Philippine
English .

1 The very first thing the arriving tourist sees in Manila after the plane door opens is a sign in the
walkway that reads "Watch Your Steps." This may not sound funny to you, but it sounds funny to
me, an English speaker from England. This is because, in the UK, the expression is "Watch Your
Step," singular, not "steps," plural. There's nothing wrong with "Watch Your Steps"; in fact, it
actually makes more sense to watch all your forthcoming steps than watch just one generic step. It
just sounds funny, that's all.

2 "Watch Your Steps" is the first reminder for English speakers from outside the Philippines that
English usage here is idiosyncratic, even unique. Of course, every English-speaking nation has its
own unique set of English phrases and idioms; English is equally idiosyncratic in say, India,
Jamaica, Zimbabwe, or Singapore. There is no right or wrong way to speak English. The many
versions of English spoken around the globe merely serve to make English an even richer tongue.
However, the purpose of this column is to shed light on Philippine culture from a foreign
perspective, and many Filipinos may be surprised to find out that some of the phrases they use daily
are unique to this country, and thus sound odd to visitors.

3 If you ask most English-speakers from abroad to pick just one idiom unique to the Philippines, I
reckon 75 percent would select that stalwart phrase, "for a while." This is the English translation of
the Tagalog, "sandali lang." Whilst the component words of the phrase "for a while" are clearly
English, this expression as a whole does not exist in the rest of the English-speaking world. In the
UK, where I come from, the idiomatic equivalent would be something like "just a second" or "just a
moment." On the telephone, where "for a while" is frequently used in the Philippines, in England
we might use "hold on," "hold the line," or, informally, "hang on."

4 My second favorite uniquely Filipino-English phrase is "I'll go ahead." Used when leaving a place
before the person being addressed, it is a translation of the Tagalog "mauuna na ako." "I'll go ahead
sounds funny to me, because it seems to imply that the listener should follow. If someone's going
ahead, then someone must be following behind, right? When I first heard my secretary say "I'll go
ahead," I thought she was expecting me to follow her to some secret assignation! Sadly, this turned
out not to be the case: she's now suing me for stalking here. ("Just kidding!" as the say in the
Philippines).

5 In the third place for me comes the phrase "I will be the one to do that." This is a translation of the
Tagalog "ako na lang ang gagawa." Frequently shortened to just "I will be the one" ("ako na lang")
, this is a Filipino-English way of saying "I'll do it" or "let me do it." These shorter versions would
be the idioms I would use more commonly in the UK. I was always taught by my English
professors that the shorter the words used, and the simpler grammatical construction, the better the
resultant English. Perhaps that's why the four extra words "be the one to," inserted into the already
perfectly adequate phrase "I will do that," sound odd to anyone taught English in England.

1 Sutherland, Michael. “For a While.” Sunday Inquirer Magazine. 9 January 2000.


3
6 Another example of this type of seemingly unnecessary weighty construction is the marvelous
phrase "make an ocular inspection," which I caught my girlfriend Kitty saying in the back of the car
last weekend. Ocular inspection?!? Per-lease! What's wrong with "go and have a look," I'd like to
know?

7 From an intellectual point of view, one of the fascinations in all of this is how these phrases
evolved. At some point in history, it must have been deemed necessary to have an English
equivalent for Tagalog phrases such as "sandali lang." At that moment, what you might imagine
would happen is that the nation would borrow an existing equivalent idiom from an existing
English-speaking nation. That magic is that, instead, the nation invented its own English idioms,
and by so doing enriched the world of English.

8 I was also massively confused for at least my first two years over a couple of time-related

phrases. The one that really gave me problems was the phrase "the other day." In the UK, it merely
means "recently,"

i.e. a few days ago, whereas in the Philippines it means quite specifically, the day before yesterday.
I used to get furious when I would read in the paper that the Philippine peso closed at a

certain rate against the dollar "the other day." This seemed to me to be a terribly imprecise piece of

information, until I realized that the phrase was far more specific here than in England!

9 More confusion in the language of the time arises from different usage of the word "last."
Filipinos tend to use the English word "last" wherever they would use the Tagalog word "noon."
This results in phrases like "last October 26" and "last 1994," which we would not use in England.
Instead, we would tend to say "on October 26" and "in 1994" only using "last" in the context of
"last week" or "last year."

10 And lastly, English in the Philippines has spawned some unusual nouns connected with the world
of crime that commonly appear in newspaper headlines, but which are unusual to me. Where I come
from, "graft" means hard work; "salvage" means rescuing things that have sunk; and I had to look
up "mulcting" in the dictionary. It sounds like it ought to be something to do with fertilizing
flowerbeds but it turns out to be more about enriching policemen than the soil.

11 Hope you enjoyed your ocular inspection of this article. I'll go ahead.

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