English for Filipinos
MANY peoples in this world speak two or more languages. For us shifting from a local language to English is necessary. And it is easy. Some characteristic changes make it even easier. In the local languages, the ending of words hardly ever change. They reduplicate or change the first or middle syllable but not the ending. In Latin (or the Latin languages like Spanish or French) the endings change considerably. In English there are only two important changes of the endings and these are the final “s” and final “d” or “-ed.” And this is where the Filipino speaker stumbles because he is not used to it. So, 50 percent of English grammar mistakes of Filipinos are in these endings. Once corrected Filipinos have little trouble in English grammar. The first rule is: Verbs in the present tense, third person singular, end in “s.”
“He works.” “She plays.” Third person singular.
(“I work.” “They work.” First person or plural does not end in “s”)
The second rule is plural of nouns usually end in “s” or “es”:
“Many balls are used in tennis.” “Congressional spouses help.”
(“One ball is used in basketball.”)
The third rule is past tense of verbs usually end in “d” or “-ed.” “He worked yesterday.” (Wrong: “He work yesterday.”) The fourth rule is that auxiliary verbs usually take the present form of the principal verb except for the auxiliary verbs “to have “and “to be.”
“He may work.” “He can (might, could, should, do) work.”
(Auxiliary “have” and “be” take the past tense: “He has worked.” “The work is finished.”)
With these four grammar rules the Filipino speaker can correct 50 percent or his potential grammatical mistakes in English.
A fifth rule is prepositions in English vary but not in Filipino languages. We have only one preposition “sa” but English has many: “On, in, above, under, within, beside, after, below, to, for, between, by, without, etc. “Use your imagination when using prepositions in English.
Then in pronunciation, the local languages use a full vowel all the time. In English only the accented vowel is pronounced as a full vowel; all the others are pronounced as “uh” or swa.
With these rules the Filipino can improve his English grammatical use. Here is to better English speaking.