Filipino guy:”You ride me. We go wonderful. Eat the bitch. Then we come back 5″.
Me:”Yes! Let’s go!”.
Translation: “You ride with me. We go to the waterfalls. Eat at the beach. Then come back at 5 pm.”
My fellow travelers and I were in stitches before we explained to the guy the importance of prepositions in the English language.
Most Filipinos understand English. Makes it easy to communicate and travel. Prepositions aside, I’d take broken English any day over Google Translate. There’s a new law mandating teaching the local languages in schools. Children were learning English and Tagalog but not their mother tongue. While this improved their chances of finding jobs in the global market, it disconnected them from their tribal heritage. Hence the effort to mend this gap.
Singing is a favorite pastime here. In most countries, people dance for stress relief, in the Philippines, they sing. They sing karaoke in restaurants, malls, streets, resorts…etc. Beggers walk around with portable microphones singing and asking for money. When they sing, their English is typically impeccable. Cover bands here are excellent. Another popular entertainment is cock fighting.
85% of the population is Roman Catholic. Sex education and family planning are almost non existent; large families are the norm. Monty Python’s “The meaning of life” scene of the Catholic family is pretty descriptive of life here. Families live behind trees in cardboard houses, under bridges and in cemeteries. Just like cats and dogs. Eating Balut, a boiled chicken fetus, doesn’t even register as harsh. It’s all relative.
