Phonology
Most of the native Malayo-Polynesian languages of the Philippines do not contain the phoneme. Thus, some Filipinos substitute for when they pronounce English words containing . Some even pronounce English words that normally do begin with with an through hypercorrection due to confusion over which pronunciation is required.
Like, the sound is also virtually non-existent in most major native languages of the Philippines. Partly because the and sounds in Castilian Spanish (specifically the Iberian dialect, the basis for teaching the Spanish language and its pronunciation in the Philippines) are not distinguished and both are pronounced as, some of the older generation of Filipinos would pronounce the letter in all English words as .
Languages of indigenous minorities that had limited contact with the Spanish colonial government often retain the sound. The sound also occurs in some of them. Examples are the Ivatan language, Ibanag language, and languages of the Lumad tribes in Mindanao and Visayas. All of them are minor indigenous languages of the Philippines. The Ibaloi tongue in the Baguio-Benguet area of Northern Luzon also has naturally occurring and sounds, as in sifa (interrogative who) and divit (a traditional wrap-around skirt). The modern spelling of the name of one of the most numerous ethnic groups of the Philippines, the Manobo tribes of Mindanao, is actually the hispanized spelling of the original Manobo word Manuvu.
A phenomenon among the older generation of Filipinos is their pronunciation of all the English words starting with s + consonant such as star, spade, stampede, slide, stigma, statue, sky, stable, strict, and stew. These words are pronounced by some of them as "istar/estar", "istampede/estampede", "istigma/estigma", "istatue/estatue", "istable/estable", "istrict/estrict" and "istew/estew" because these older people were exposed to the Spanish language and were used to the Spanish system wherein there are no words starting with s + consonant, but instead es + consonant. Thus, estrella (star), estampida (stampede), estigma (stigma), estatua (statue), estable (stable), estricto (strict) and estofado (stew).
Another issue is supersegmentals. In pronunciation, emphasis often tends to be put on the "wrong" syllable in a word or on the "wrong" word in a sentence as compared to North American English or British English.
Read more about this topic: Philippine English