Spanish and filipino

Maribel   Wed Apr 11, 2007 12:51 pm GMT
>> The above is confusing and irrelevent to this discussion. We are talking about people who indeed have such lineages. <<

I apologize. Either I misunderstood you or you weren't very clear when you made this statement: "Some Filipinos in where I live, believe that we are Hispanic, while some believe that we are Chinese, while the truth is, we are mixed of both."

>> Maribel, I hope you don't have that mentality. <<

Nope. I'm not as obsessed with race, ethnicity, or nationality as those people you seem to keep encountering. Frankly, I don't care if one has Spanish blood, Chinese blood, American blood, mixed blood, is Tagalog or Visayan or Ilocano, or negrito, or what have you. If you're born in the Philippines or trace your lineage to people who were born in the Philippines, then you're Filipino. If you're 80% Chinese and identify yourself as Filipino, so be it. If you look black, have a Filipino grandmother, and identify yourself as Filipino, that's perfectly fine with me.
Unknown Author   Wed Apr 11, 2007 7:07 pm GMT
--->"Some Filipinos in where I live, believe that we are Hispanic, while some believe that we are Chinese, while the truth is, we are mixed of both."<---

You clearly misunderstood my point. I am talking about what the other Filipinos think. Some of them think we are Chinese, some of them think we are Spanish, some of them think that we are Indonesians, some of them think that we are Malaysians and so on.

What I meant in that sentence was "Us Filipinos, are a mix of different Asian races and European Spanish"

compared to Latinos

They are a mix of Native Indians (people who originally came from Major parts of Asia to Latin America) and later on Mixed with the European Spanish. Just in Case you are wondering... "Many Latin American Spanish do look similar to Filipinos." , I have hundreds of friends from Latin America and they definitely look Filipinos. While the other Latin Americans looks white, or tan skinned like us, but different face form, are the ones who have more European blood in them, Latin America also consist of Afro American Spanish, due to the fact that Spain brought their African slaves in Latin America in the past and they were left behind after they fled from the American forces.
Guest   Wed Apr 11, 2007 9:05 pm GMT
Maribel, no need to apologize. But it was unknown author who said that not me. I don't think she meant all or most filipinos have chinese and spanish blood in their mixtures, but just spanish or chinese blood runs in filipino mixtures.

You said:
"Extensive genetic research has shown that the Ami tribe of Taiwan is the closest genetic relative of the Filipinos."

Then you qualified it:
"I just re-read the wikipedia article on Filipino's ancestry. Cross out "Extensive genetic research" and replace it with "One genetic study..."

No need to qualify it. That one study you're referring to I believe is the same one I read about. It was quite extensive. But I knew there were connections between the two, but not all filipinos, just the Batanes people in the Philippines. Have you seen a Batanes? I know of at least 5 families in Hawaii who are Batanes. They are tall and slender people from the islands of Batanes provence, a place which is closer to Formosa than to Luzon. The Batanes are Ivatans, who trace their roots to prehistoric Formosa. The Ami's in Formosa and the Ivatans can understand each other's language.
Chacaroy   Wed Apr 11, 2007 9:07 pm GMT
that was me above. I forgot to wrtie in my name. lol.
Unknown Author   Wed Apr 11, 2007 11:49 pm GMT
I would like to invite everyone to share your ideas and opinions to the topic I started entitled. "Should Philippines start speaking Spanish again?"
Chacaroy   Thu Apr 12, 2007 12:23 am GMT
I think the national language should be both english and spanish, the two most used by the all the countries in the world. Only about 50 years ago english replaced spanish. There is good behind this replacement because the RP is now the 3rd largest engish-speaking country. Now let's revert to spanish; it shouldn't be hard for the filipinos to speak spanish again. We have to accept that the filipinos are hispanic; we know they are not americans.
Unknown Author   Thu Apr 12, 2007 1:08 am GMT
I strongly agree with Chacaroy, but it would be better to always have something that we can call ours, which is the Tagalog, even though that Tagalog is a language that is made up of different languages together lol.

But all in all, Philippines having English and Spanish and Tagalog as official languages, it will be a definite asset for each Filipino. East Timor was once a Portuguese colony, alongside Philippines, it is the 2nd largest Roman Catholic country in Asia, but East Timor is still undeveloped. East Timor has 3 official languages, 2 are their native tongue and Portuguese.
Don Pedro   Thu Apr 12, 2007 1:39 am GMT
I AGREE!!! BRING BACK THE SPANISH LANGUAGE!!!!!!
Chacaroy   Thu Apr 12, 2007 10:38 pm GMT
I have to correct my previous statement about the relationship between the Formosans and the Filipinos. According to latest austronesian migratory theory, Maribel is correct. It's not just the Batanes, but all Malays in the philippines, indonesia, malaysia, etc., may have originated from Formosa. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austronesian_people

The old and still prevalent belief is that the malays came from the south and went north. Now it is appears that it is generally accepted by anthropologists that the reverse is correct. I think this is what Maribel was referring to.

The Batanes, however, are very closely related to the Ami's in Formosa. I think a good comparison would be between the Visayans (or Bisayans) in the central philippines and the Bisayans in Western Sabah in Malaysia. Cebuano and Malaysian Bisayan language are similar.
For example: "Amahan namu nga itotat sa langit...." Cebuano Visayans would suspect that it is the beginning of the Lord's Prayer. And it is.
Guest   Fri Apr 13, 2007 10:30 am GMT
The reason why Filipinos switched to English in an instant it's because when the Philippines was still under the control of Spain, few Filipinos had acess to education that the majority of them coud not even read or write.

By the time the Philippines was under American rule, many of them got a taste of education for the very first time. Their self esteem was uplifted which they did not experience during the Spanish regime.

If only the Spanish authorities cared for the education of the Filipinos by setting up schools all over the country, then at least the Filipinos would have been still speaking Spanish.

Furthermore, the biggest mistake of the Spanish authorities was they did not teach the native peolple to speak Spanish with the exception of those few who had access to education and therefore they belong to the upper class which were called Hispanized natives. They had a fear that if the entire people of the archipelago shared a common language, they could easily rebel because since they could easily communicate to each other. So the Spanish authorites let the vernacular languages flourish which is equivalent to tribalism that the native Filipinos did not have a little knowledge of the cultures and languages of those who belong outside their ethnic group. It wa like a DIVIDE AND RULE tactic.

So, who's to blame to this present linguistic and cultural situation?
unknown author   Fri Apr 13, 2007 12:13 pm GMT
Still wondering how the Latin Americans speak Spanish while the same thing happened to them :P

Plus Spanish was still spoken until Corazon Aquino became president and that was around 1987 if i'm not mistaken. Beyond that year, there are only very few Spanish speakers left.

English is just being promoted at this current time, only few years ago when the Philippine government made it the English speaking "mandatory" in private schools. I just left the Philippines last year.

And to honestly tell you the truth, only the upper class citizens speak English properly. Most of the people there have a horrible grammar or terrible English accent. The ones who can speak it straight are the ones with high wealth status back there.

Which is again, the same in the past during the Spanish era.
unknown author   Fri Apr 13, 2007 12:24 pm GMT
"""English is just being promoted at this current time, only few years ago when the Philippine government made it the English speaking "mandatory" in private schools. I just left the Philippines last year. """

made the English speaking "mandatory" *** (correction) , still half asleep haha

and another addition :

Students who go to public schools are mostly unable to speak English, only very very few of them, I would say 2/10 of the public school students are the ones who can speak and write in English, and only 1/2 of that 2/10 are able to use the English language properly.

For private schools, in the lesser private schools, where poor to average families usually send their children, I would say 4/10 are able to use the English language properly. For the high class schools, 8/10 students can use the English language properly. That is based on my observation when I was still a student and a resident of the country, not to mention that is only in Manila. So far what I have heard is, residents in other cities other than Manila or Cebu , have horrible English grammars and accent.

I always meet people here who just migrated from different parts of the Philippines, I know one who just came from Manila, though she used to go to a high class college in the Philippines, she has a lot of bad grammars.

Filipinos I meet who came from the rural areas of the Philippines , most of them are really having a hard time to speak and understand the English language. Some of them can't even speak Tagalog properly.

What exists now is what used to exist in the Spanish era. The distance of each island makes the transportation harder for people here, to move to that other place therefore affects to communication. Also the current government doesn't really give a damn about the Filipino education that much either. Why do you think that more than 60% to 70% of the Filipinos are still uneducated? , could be higher actually.
Guest   Mon Apr 16, 2007 6:24 am GMT
Kumusta ka?

Ang hindi marunong lumingon sa pinang galingan ay hindi makararating sa paroroonan

pa'alam po!
Unknown Author   Mon Apr 16, 2007 7:44 am GMT
Tell that to those in charge ,they're the ones who changed our official language to Tagalog.
Another Guest   Tue May 01, 2007 2:16 pm GMT
Kumusta lahat?

Ang mga Bisaya ay walang pakialam sa Tagalog. They'd rather speak English and I'm sure Spanish if it was still taught in schools.

Yun lang po.

Bye.