Nosebleed

Filipinos’ English Phobia

Each of us has something we are afraid of and the only way to face them is to identify clearly what they are and accept these facts. We have to be honest to ourselves that we are vulnerable and that we may probably need another person to help ease the inner turmoil. Even the most confident of the Avengers, genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist Tony Stark, has fears. And although he was afraid of saying it out loud, he did what he thinks was best to address the things he was most afraid to happen.

Filipinos have a very solid background of learning and living the English language in our everyday lives, tracing back to when we were babies where our family would most often than not teach the young ones “close-open” and “where’s the light?” instead of saying “bukas-sara” and “nasan ang ilaw?” Sounds awkward, right? We even talk to pets in English.

English is our medium of instruction throughout the whole education system. Sometimes, employers who interview you for job applications base your qualifications not just from what they see on your resume, but also on how good your English is in answering the questions. We practice so hard on perfecting our Fs and Vs and using words that are beyond elementary vocabulary. And Filipinos are used to watching American movies without Filipino captions proving that our listening skills are enough for a good conversation and even making a joke or two. And yet, we still are afraid of communicating with foreign people in the universal language. Why?

We are afraid of making grammatical and pronunciation mistakes. We are afraid of sounding like we don’t know the language too well. We try to sound how Americans and Canadians speak. We are afraid that our other kababayans would hear our English and think that we are not good enough. Because that’s how we see other people who are struggling with the language as. We are afraid that others will judge us the way we judge them. We know as an audience how we react to these mistakes and we are afraid being on the other side of the joke. We are used to seeing people get mocked on television for having poor English communication skills. I’m even putting myself out for writing an English article about our insecurities of the language.

Guess what? Foreigners don’t really care about your grammar and pronunciation as long as they get the gist of what you are talking about and the flow of conversation is uninterrupted. Communication is successful when both parties understand the messages sent to each other. They would even wait patiently for you to gather your thoughts because they understand it is not your native language. Sure, I had some troubles understanding them at first because watching Hollywood movies is quite different from real life communicating and expressing ourselves to native English speakers.

Someone from work even complimented me for speaking clearly without an accent and said that they envy Filipinos for knowing more than one language. They are astonished at how foreign the Filipino words and other dialects to them when they overhear a group of Pinoys talking amongst themselves. And here we are, worried that we mispronounced ‘forward’ and ‘verify.’ Joke on me, I said ‘crack pot’ instead of ‘crock-pot’ the other day.

Worry not. Filipinos actually know better grammar than them as we were so very critical about it in our learning years. We learned the language, studied its structure, practiced spelling of the most difficult words, and read numerous literatures written in their language. It just happens that we are more comfortable of using it in the learning and professional environment, that when we’re thrown into the socialization part of usage, we seize up and translate everything in our head. Relax, you can do it, you’ve had at least 10 years of ammunition, so fire away with your creative ideas and express yourself. Gather your confidence and speak out, you’ll be surprised at how much easier it will become the more you talk to these kind people.

But of course, never forget our beautiful Filipino language. No matter how fluent we become in whatever language we are using as an immigrant or worker of another country, we can still express ourselves best in our mother tongue. Use our language at home for the continuation of our culture through generations.

by: bautistamacy

Article originally posted at pinoy-canada.com

Link: http://pinoy-canada.com/articles/filipinos-english-phobia-scared-of-english/