In previous posts I have mentioned that I am a contractor at what is considered a mid-sized firm in the United States. I know a great deal about this firm, as I was once an employee there. As a contractor, I'm working pretty much the same evening-night-wee hours of the morning shift that I'd previously worked, and with the same group of people.
About six months back, I made an observation: not including myself (as I was not an employee), only one person out of the five who worked at night was a native English speaker (and the one who was a native, born in the USA speaker, was of Mexican heritage and fluent in Spanish). I'm reminded of this because I just found out that one of my coworkers- who has been with the company for over twelve years- is leaving at the end of this week.
Charly- sometimes known as Chaz or Chazbaby, taught me quite a bit, and I'm grateful for this. I also helped him a bit with English, and he eventually grew to trust my judgement and expertise in linguistic matters enough to ask my advice when he needed to write some serious stuff, such as our nightly job status updates, or when he needed to be perfectly clear on his motorcycle forum. After a bit of digging, it seems that it was George Bernard Shaw who originally came up with the idea of "two nations separated by a common language". Although Mr. Shaw was referring to Great Britain and the United States, his truism can also be applied to the United States and the Philippines. And one need go no further than Charly to prove this.
According to wikipedia, there are approximately 206 nation states, sixty of which claim English as their official or primary language. The Philippines is one of these. However, just because one speaks the language, it doesn't mean one speaks the lingo.
Charly loves humor, and growing up near Manila, I don't think he experienced much in the way of classic American humor. For example, he was only recently introduced to the classic Laurel and Hardy Who's On First routine. He found a clip of the routine on YouTube, and I think the first night he played it for a solid hour.
My experiences with Charly over the years have underscored for me just how difficult American English must be for someone to learn. He grew up exposed to a form of English in Manila, but to the American ear it sounds accented and just plain odd at times. For example, I understand that in Tagalog gender is not associated with pronouns, so that when he is talking about his wife, Charly will use "him" or "he". Ditto with his daughter.
Much of American English is contextual. For example, in English if I wanted to say, "I give the milk to the cat", because of the way that the words are positioned, one understands that I am giving milk to a cat. However (in German, for example) I would say (write) Ich gebe der Katze die Milch (English: I give to the cat the milk).
I'm not sure what else to say at this point. I wish Charly the best, and English is what English is.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
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