For a While

by Mathew Sutherland

Two countries divided by a common language -- George Bernard Shaw (on the US and the UK)

The very first thing the arriving tourist sees in Manila after the planedoor 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 to
watch just one generic step. It just sounds funny, that's all.

"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, thus
sound odd to visitors.

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."

My second favorite uniquely Filipino-English phrase is "I'll go ahead." Used when leaving a
place before the person addressed, it is a translation of the Tagalog "mauunanaako." "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 her.
("Just kidding!", as they say in the Philippines).

In the third place for me comes the phrase "I will be the one to do that." This is a translation
of the Tagalog "akonalanganggagawa." Frequently shortened to just "I will be the one"
("akonalang"), 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
the 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.

Another example of this type of seemingly unnecessarily 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?

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. The magic is that, instead, the nation invented its own English
idioms, and by so doing enriched the world of English.

I was so 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!

More confusion in the language of 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 pharses like "last October 26th" and "last 1994," which we would not use in England.
Instead, we would tend to say "on October 26th" and "in 1994," only using "last" in the context
of "last week" or "last year."

And lastly, English in the Philippines has spawned some unusual nouns connected with the
world of crime that commonly appear in the 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.

Hope you enjoyed your ocular inspection of this article. I'll go ahead.
The King's English and I
Carla Montemayor

Sheffield ---I have always had a love affair with English, and for that reason Iwrite
in this language. I've encountered Singlish (the okay lahs of Singapore), Deep
South English (brung and y'all), Japanese English(no R's), Ilocano English (all R's),
and I have never had majorsurprises until now with English English, the way they
speak it herein the UK.

It's not that I was ignorant of its peculiarities. I had readBritish authors, watched
British films, and spoken with Britishpeople long before I got here. All that,
however, still did notprepare me for the shock of the colloquial.

For starters, there's the verbose politesse. The British will not just say "thanks,"
they will invariably say, "Thank you very muchindeed," or "Thank you ever so
much." Ever so much na, indeed pa.How does one reply adequately to that? "You
are profoundly welcome from the deepest recesses of my heart"?

Sometimes I feel like bowing. Then there are the dramatic exclamations. Things are
never just "okay" or "nice" oreven "great"; they are "splendid," "fantastic," and
"brilliant."It's overwhelming and somewhat suspicious for someone whose own
language is restrained in the deployment of superlatives.

Maganda' (beautiful), 'magaling' (good), and 'anggaling-galing'(really good) are

about all we can bring ourselves to describe anything we're impressed with,
although we do make up for it with emphatic gestures and lively vocal tones. The
British, when pronouncing something as being "superb," will make the most
frugalof lip movements and the slightest of eyebrow lifts.

Requests are bound to be long-winded. "You don't suppose you could turn the light
on, do you, that is if you don't mind and if it's nottoo much trouble, of course?" I'm
tempted to reply with a similar treatise, but I just say, yes, I suppose the Filipino
CAN!

But CANS are not in vogue here. My housemate asked me for a TIN opener, not a
CAN opener. And we're all supposed to throw our trashin the trash BIN, not the
trash CAN. This must have confused the English when Bin Laden burst into the
political scene because, well, the bin is always laden and that is why one must
empty it regularly.

One evening, I decided I could speak fancy English as well as everyone, and so I
announced to my housemates that I would be buying a small SKILLET. That was
met with blank expressions. I am buying asmall skillet so that we won't have to fry
eggs in that big pan, I announced again. Oh, a FRYING PAN, they chorused. (Celtic
barbarians, I muttered under my breath.) But when they did fry poTAHtoes in that
pan, they weren't FRIES at all but had somehow been transformed into CHIPS.

Don't get me started with those poTAHtoes and toMAHtoes. I scoured the grocery
shelves and there wasn't any toMAHto SAUCE, just diced toMAHtoes in toMAHto
JUICE. But I don't want to drink it! I want to cook with it! I went on to the
vegetable section already stressed out. No one knows of EGGPLANTS around here,
just AUBERGINES. I couldnot positively identify the ZUCCHINIS because they were
hiding under the alias COURGETTES. I've lost all hope of finding 'mustasa'(mustrd
leaves) because I'm sure they're not called "moustache."I've seen menus featuring
"spotted dick," but I'm too embarrassed toorder it. I searched for BISCUITS,
ignoring large packages of DIGESTIVES, which I thought were for septuagenarians
who had to put all solid food through a blender.

And because this is the north of England, I've been invited to TEA in the evening in
which no tea was served it was actually DINNER. Then I was asked to DINNER,
which turned out to be LUNCH. So now when they ask what I'm having for "tea," I
say "rice". And when someone invites me to "dinner," I no longer plan to wear a
shiny dress.

I have also ceased to recoil upon hearing the various endearments with which total
strangers address me: "luv" (fairlycommon), "flower," "angel," and get this "duck."
Why the name of a domestic fowl is considered a fond nickname, I have no idea. If
someone called me "bibe" (duck) back home, I would surely be livid and yell back,
"Itik" (skinny Philippine fowl)!

I have had to LOAD credits onto a local SIM card given to me by a friend, but I
found out right away that there is no pre-paid "loading" here, only TOP-UP service.
You top-up your mobile phone, tuition, bank balance. All that topping up requires
money, of course, and I cannot help making mental computations to convert
pounds into pesos. (One pound is now almost a hundred pesos.) So when I get a
"concession" ticket (a discounted ticket for students)to watch a movie for "just" five
pounds, I have actually spent P500to see a film. Oh, bollocks! as the Brits would
exclaim, and to that I can certainly relate because it sounds like 'bulok' (rotten) and
in the plural, too. In other words, 'bulok na bulok' (very rotten).

Due to all the budgeting I have had to do, I have become better at MATHS yes, in
the plural, as well. But for the first time in my life, my spelling skills have to be, er,
topped up. It's labour, with a U. It's analyse and offence. All my written academic
work is riddled with words underlined in red. I am completely DISORIENTED,but
since this is England, I must be DISORIENTATED. Bloody strange,if you will excuse
my English.

Anyway, I don't understand why "bloody" or "bleeding" is considered a swear word

in this country. In Tagalog, if a meeting or a confrontation is particularly tense, it
will be described as 'madugo' (bloody). How is that filthy?

Probably for the same reason that here, "phlegmatic" is something ofa flattering
adjective. To be full of phlegm is to be quintessentially British: calm and
unflappable. Me, I'm from a population of weak lungs where the horror of
tuberculosis is still euphemized by the term "primary complex." I neither possess
nor desire any phlegm whatsoever.

To each language its own bodily fluid. lovely, isn't it? =) c u later, my ducks! =)