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It must be ano!

Language is a funny thing, we all speak the same one differently, and this is never as true as with English. Just the difference between British English and American English, is enough to make enemies of people in the same family.  Canadian English is different from British English and Australian English is as far apart from Brittan as American English is.

There is a phenomenon in the world of Language and it is the fact that everyone wants to learn the number three language in the world—English. Chinese is the number one spoken language based on the billion people who speak it, next is Spanish due to Mexico and South America and third is English, which, in my mind, begs the question which English.

There are more Americans than any other group speaking English, however, when I was teaching English in Thailand, I had a British instructor tell me, American English was a bastard language. Language to me is a moving target, which continues to change.  If you read my book, I spent some time on the subject . An example is Elizabethan English, which is so far away from English spoken today and it is a mere four hundred years old.

There are some great jobs teaching English all over the world and Asians are the biggest consumers.  At this writing  Disney is hiring in China for English teachers with a great compensation.  English has become the language of business, with the preponderance of English, on the Internet, it brings this fact home to non English speakers.

Amongst ESL teachers new hybrid words have emerged, mainly in jest, with reference to all the different types of English now spoken. There is everyone’s favorite Jinglish (Japanese English) and Korish, Filam, Tinglish and the list goes on.  In the Philippines they have their own brand of English, because Tagalog is a language of borrowed words, resulting from so many different countries occupying the country.  Amongst the borrowed words are a lot of English words from America and England. This reaches through all the stratas of society; college in the Philippines is taught in English…ah sort of, I took a class, and when they get lost for words, it is taught in Tagalog; I haven’t taken anymore classes as a result.

My wife actually speaks a very good brand of English and we communicate, now after 4 years quite well. We just have a language of our own.

There is a word in Tagalog, whose literal translation is what; the word is ano (pronounced ‘ann no’).  They have the same word in Japanese, which is used like we use “ah” eg; he was— ah— about six feet tall. But when a Filipino can’t think of a word in Tagalog or English they substitute ano.  Where is my ano? He said I don’t like ano. Do you have an ano?  I would warn you against starting to say it, because it robs you of your vocabulary.

There are many such things that Filipino’s say, or substitute in casual conversations.  One of my first introductions to this was, after I met my wife, I asked if she had seen my glasses.  If you have glasses you probably know it can be hard to find your glasses without your glasses.  I asked my wife, “Where are my glasses?”

She said, “Der.” I said where der?”

“Der, der” Came the answer so descriptive.

We laugh about it all the time because it is so stupid, but the other day I was looking for something and she said it is here, and I started to look in the wrong place and she said no here, here pointing to some other place.  It is so funny; I devoted a section in my book to the Filipinese of English. Among all the misunderstandings, between my wife and myself,  English and translation is at the root of it all.