PADIWAN, ADONIS September 24, 2019

BS MATH 2
PHONOLOGY OF PHILIPPINE ENGLISH
MS. NORVELIE PANG-ODEN

PHONOLOGY OF
PHILIPPINE ENGLISH
Terminologies:

 Rhotic
 Commonwealth English/ Countries
Definition of Phonology
 Flapping
 Approximations
 The science of speech
 Hypercorrections
sounds including
 Fricative especially the history
 Schwa and theory of sound
 alveolar changes in a language
or in two or more
related languages

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 characteristics of General American English, which became the

longstanding standard in the archipelago since Americans introduced the language in

public education.

However, some children of Overseas Filipinos who are educated in Commonwealth countries (such
as Australia, New Zealand or 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 California vowel shift due to the influence of Hollywood movies and call
center culture.

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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.

The most distinguishable feature is the lack of fricative consonants, particularly /f/, /v/, and /z/.

Another feature is the general absence of the schwa /baliktad na letter e/, 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:

 The fricatives /f/ and /v/ are approximated into the stop consonants [p] and [b],
respectively.
 Th-stopping. The dental fricatives becomes into the alveolar stop consonants /t/ and /d/,
respectively.
 The /z/ phoneme is devoiced into an /s/.
 Older speakers tend to add an I or e sound to the cluster st- due to Spanish influence, so the
words star and lipstick sounds like istar/estar and lipistick respectively.
 The letter “z” is usually pronounced as a “zey” like in Jamaican English however, in
standard Philippine English, it is pronounced as “zee.”

VOWELS

 Vowels in Philippine English are pronounced according to the letter representing each, so
that ⟨a, e, i, o, u⟩ are generally pronounced as [a, ɛ, i, o, u], respectively.
 The schwa /ə/—although a phonological feature across numerous Philippine
languages such as Kinaray-a, Meranao, or the Abagatan (Southern) dialect of Ilokano—is

absent.
 The following are the various approximations of the schwa:
 Words that end in -le that succeeds a consonant (such as Google) are generally pronounced
with an [ɛl], … except for words that end -ple, -fle or -ble (apple, waffle and humble), which
are pronounced with an [ol].
 The rhotic vowels /ər/ and /ɜːr/ may be pronounced as
o an [ɛr] (commander),
o [ir] (circle) or
o an [or] (doctor), usually by non-native speakers outside urban areas or the elderly.
 The /ɪ/ phoneme may be merged or replaced by the longer /i/ for some speakers. The
words peel and pill might sound the same.
 The /ɒ/ may be pronounced as an [o] (color) or an [ɐ] (not).

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NON-NATIVE PRONOUNCIATION

 Filipinos’ first language have generally influenced our pronunciation skills, and this leads to
mis- or distinct pronunciations of some words.
 Some examples of non-native pronunciation include:

Victor [bik’tor]
Family [‘pamili]
Lover [‘laber]
January [d3an’wari]
February [f/peb’rari]
Stephen [i/e’stipen]
Twenty [‘twenti]

REFERENCES:

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_English Wikipedia, retrieved September 19,

2019
 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/phonology Merriam Webster, retrieved
September 19, 2019
 Youtube.com “Sounds of English Vowels and Consonants (phonetic symbols)Patrick yaw,
thoi, 3 years ago, retrieved September 24, 2019

-END OF DISCUSSION-

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