Living in The Philippines > Languages, Learning History, Politics etc.

Peso(s) or Piso?

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Peter:
Of course the Philippines' official spelling is "Piso". But how is it pronounced?

Filipino/Tagalog pronunciation, in general, follows the Spanish style, where an "i" within a word is pronounced as "ee". An "e" being is pronounced as "aye".

Where some confusion exists, IMHO, is how a native Filipino speaker pronounces the word, as opposed to how an alien, brought up and educated in a native English speaking culture, would.

 In the main, Filipinos will pronounce English words using Filipino grammatical usage, while aliens will use the form they have been educated with. Whether English-English, American-English, India- English, whatever English ad nauseam. LOL!

For example, on an English segment on local TV news recently, the Apollo space programme was being discussed. The 3 Filipino commentators all pronounced the word as "Ap-o-lo" almost 3 words, while the American guest pronounced it "Ah-pollo" one word. Did this matter? Probably not, as they could understand each other and, more importantly, so could I as an alien viewer.

There are, of course, many exceptions to the fore-going, as those who have been in contact with Filipino call centres can testify. In general though, many, many people, British, American, Filipino, will use their own educational experience as a termplate for how they pronounce a word, whether that is correct in the foreign language they are trying to master. Or not LOL!

You say to-mate-o, I say to-ma-toe


Peter

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