here's a little something i wrote (out of boredom and irritation, i guess) to address the filipino population. i intended to write it in my sister and i's barok dialect, but once i kept writing, i noticed that "hey, this looks better in plain english."
there is one problem the filipino population will face at least once in their lifetime. it is the problem of speaking straight English and writing correct English continuously. English is known as the global language, and it is paramount to almost every economy's success. the problem is that most filipinos are slightly to badly illiterate at the English language. because of this, the average filipino is ridiculed because of his ability or lack thereof to speak fluent English. what are the common mistakes of the filipino in his or her grammar?
first, foremost, and most notorious is the diction. of all the things, most filipinos don't know how to say some, if not most, of the words in the language correctly. "lab" becomes "lub", "live" becomes "leave" (i should know, it confused me earlier today), "intrams" becomes "intrums", "audi" becomes "owdie", et cetera. of course there is no surefire way to quickly fix this dilemma, but then again, it will always take practice. (if you witness me doing this, it's because i'm mocking barokness.)
the second most notorious is the subject-verb agreement. most filipinos construct sentences with verbs that laughably, do not agree with the tense of the subject. this is a very common mistake, and it happens all, if not most, of the time. no one bothers to fix it because they deem it acceptable as long as the message gets across.
the next notorious mistake would be the use of the apostrophe. there are very distinct differences between possessive pronouns, plural forms of words, and the short-cutting purpose of the apostrophe. there is a very big difference between "its" and "it's". words like "jesus" (i.e. nouns that have an 's' as their last letter) are not plural; therefore it should be "jesus's" and not "jesus'". (care to debate?) "dont" and "don't" is acceptable to some extent, however, because there is no alternate form aside from "do not" (the exception of the apostrophe can be classified as a typographical error).
the fourth notorious error would be the misuse of words that sound alike (homonyms, if i remember correctly). examples in question would be the use of "they're"/"their", and "you're"/"your". many people (actually including myself, but i usually double-check my sentences before i write them or press "send", thereby correcting myself before i make my statement on paper) make this mistake very often. for the record, "they're" stands for "they are", "their" is a plural possessive pronoun, "you're" stands for "you are", and "your" is a singular possessive pronoun. this mistake is not limited to those two pairs of words.
the next error would be the evil taglish. file conyotica (i made the term up) under this as well. the most annoying form of conyotica/taglish would be the "make [insert filipino verb in present tense]". that just goes to show that you're either 1) conyo, or 2) just plain half-assed. anyway, i hope this form of talking would be abolished. if you're going to speak english, speak straight english, and if you're going to speak filipino, speak freaking straight filipino. if you don't know how to, magpaturo ka.
the last one, which, i believe, is not as grievous an error as the above five, is the typical misspelling of words. "receive" becomes "recieve", "believe" becomes "beleive", "strength" becomes "strenght", so on and so forth. although i will admit that yes, the rules of spelling are confusing to some extent, you should practice your spelling so that these kinds of typos will be successfully avoided.
those six are the most common errors in english grammar that i observe all too often, and those are just the basic mistakes (don't get me started on political correctness). i praise the few who manage to keep their english clean and correct (myself included :D). i assure you it isn't very easy to do, but if you have a mother that bred you to have good penmanship (for a guy, at least) and knows how to edit your essays, you're well-off. but for those who don't have such a mother, all it takes is practice, anyway.
good evening. ;)
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