Orthography and Grammar
Because English is part of the curricula from primary to tertiary education, most Filipinos can speak fairly fluent English, although there might be differences in diction and pronunciation. Most schools in the Philippines, however, are staffed by teachers who are not native Anglophones and thus think using Austronesian instead of Germanic grammatical structures. Non-standard usage arises from their second language acquisition of English.
Philippine English follows American English orthography and grammar, except when it comes to punctuation as well as date notations. For example, a comma almost never precedes the final item in an enumeration. Dates are also read with a cardinal number instead of an ordinal number (e.g. "January one" instead of the "January first") even if the written form is the same.
Read more about this topic: Philippine English
Famous quotes containing the word grammar:
“Grammar is a tricky, inconsistent thing. Being the backbone of speech and writing, it should, we think, be eminently logical, make perfect sense, like the human skeleton. But, of course, the skeleton is arbitrary, too. Why twelve pairs of ribs rather than eleven or thirteen? Why thirty-two teeth? It has something to do with evolution and functionalism—but only sometimes, not always. So there are aspects of grammar that make good, logical sense, and others that do not.”
—John Simon (b. 1925)