How do you rate the written and spoken English of FIlipinos?

Question

This question is for foreigners on the board.
How do you rate our English,....... truthfully? Is it average, good , very good or excellent?

Answer 1

it depends in a lot of aspects: parents (if they were trained ever since a child), education (level they were), friends (if they speak english instead of filipino most of the time), etc.

let just put it this way: (to be comparable)
compare filipinos with other asian countries hotels. i agree 100% that filipinos are the best. they are easier to understand. even the cleaning staff in the hotels can give you an answer in english. because in other countries, they need to call on someone. filipinos don't carry much accent. if they do, it is still understandable. foreigners don't have a difficult time shopping, the sales people know more than enough english to accomodate all the customer needs. not just the basic how much, what color, etc. in writing on the other hand, they can do well too because they studied by the book so mostly, it's the memorize thing... who cares, it works... when it comes to the english language in general,
TWO THUMBS UP FOR THE FILIPINOS! :)

Answer 2

The written English for most Filipinos is very,very good esp. when it comes to grammar,
composition,sentence construction, and spelling. As a matter of fact much better sometimes from the majority of Americans. In comparison to the United States, literacy rate in the Philippines is higher due to the fact that education is valued. The curriculum and the whole school system is patterned after the Americans'..

However, the spoken English might need some polishing,especially with it comes pronouns and phonetics. And there's a distinctive accent. As with other non-English speaking countries,that's understandable. After all there are 87 dialects or"languages" among these 1,760 islands comprising the Philippines. Even the national language is just taught in the schools as a subject. Even though the medium of instruction is in English. But altogether, compared to other foreign countries, the accent is comprehensible .

Answer 3

Very good/excellent! I am an American born-female, (non-Filipino) and have been to the Philippines 2 times. I have been all over Manila and Luzon all the way up to IIlocos, Loag , Vigan, etc, also to Panay and Boracay. Last time I stayed about a month. I rate the Filipinos written and spoken English a zillion times better than a LOT of Americans! I am not joking. A lot of Americans can not speak English properly or write well at all. I find a lot of Filipinos are not confiedent with speaking English because they might be shy of self concious(did I spell that right?harr harr!) I honestly believe Philippines has higher literacy rate than United States. Don't worry ur great!

Answer 4

I'm a Filipino but I want to answer your q. I am presently teaching Koreans and I've noticed that they exert a lot of effort, they spend a lot of money to learn the language, and do everything they can just to learn. Not many of them learn the language after all those efforts. Some learn after some years or so. But if the same effort is exerted by a Filipino, and the same amount of money is spent only to learn the language, he can go farther than an ordinary Korean learner or any other Asian learner. The fact that Filipinos have common sense to understand something in English makes English easy for us to learn. Many of those whom I teach study the hard way. They do it by the rules not by the sense that they even breakdown an unclear sentence (to them) by detemining the subject and the predicate, the parts of speech, and the role of every part in the sentence. It's good but that makes English complicated while it shouldn't be for English is not Mathematics. Later, you'd find them arguing with you because it is really easy but you won't be able to explain it. To Filipinos, there is no need to do all these stuffs and you won't need any explanation because there is such a thing like common sense. Anyway, this is what I've observed.

One thing that makes many Filipinos good at English is also the exposure to the language as it is the chief language of the Philippine business, media, politics and education. As to the educational level someone has attained, we still can say that there are many Filipinos who are good at the said language without being able to get a college degree. I know many people who are good at English but they don't have degrees higher than high school. Many Filipino folks are good at English too because during their time, the said language was strictly used compared to the situation these days that students in school are free to use a language they are more comfortable with.

By the way, English is not only widely used in Manila. There are many natives of the Northern part of the Philippines who are not comfortable in Tagalog but they do well in English. In Baguio alone, you'd find people like this for this was where many Americans lived in the past for engineering and missions. Again, "exposure" answers the questions.

Answer 5

I've found the English to be excellent. I'm a non-filipino, married to a filipina and have been to the islands many times.

English is taught in schools through the high school level. Verbal is well understood, but one of the issues I've run into concerns the rigidity of the classroom environment. If one makes a mistake in speaking English in class they are ridiculed to the point of embarrassment. It sometimes take a bit of prodding to get someone to speak the language as they fear making a mistake and may not get the opportunity to practice often.

A lot of filipinos don't understand that we can understand even broken English.

Answer 6

Littlebit of a broad question, but I think you get better English skills (written and spoken) from Philippinos who are from Metro Manila area compared to the provinces. I have been all over the Philippines north to south and also married to a philippina, who is from Manila. To spin the question I wonder what the rank of foreigners would be when it comes to speaking Tagalog (the philippine national language) I do know I need alot more practice at it though LOL.

Answer 7

it really depends on the filipino speaking and writing the language. i find that gramatically, they are better than most foreigners, but they can get a bit nervous when they converse. there are some confusion with the 'p' and 'f' consonants when spoken, but it's all a matter of their accent and not their misunderstanding of the basic english language.

Answer 8

I cant help it, but I need to say what I think, I'm a Filipina but I work in the US does that work for you? ;-)

Speaking and understanding english (compared to non -english speaking countries) the Philippines gets the highest rate. In my opinion.

Accent? that's a different story. :-) Same with other countires.

The medium of instruction in the Philippines is English so I guess that's why majority of Filipinos can read and write in english.

Hey, I interact with other nationalities in my line of work, and I can proudly say that Filipinos can communicate way better that other non-english speaking nationalities! :-)

Answer 9

Ever so slightly less than the English of someone who was reaised in an English speaking country. Some philipino people speak English better than Americans, most better than Koreans. It really depends on their exposier to the language.

Answer 10

Some speak excellent english and sound very american. Others speak it well enough to get by conversationally, and then there are some who don't speak a word of it. Varies like the weather, I'd say.