Impressions of an American visiting the Philippines… A food van with big speakers woke me just before seven a.m., blasting an American pop song that I vaguely recognized from the 1990s. Kind of frat-boy spring break-feeling, like the band Sugar Ray, but not them… maybe. The van driver was selling fresh breads of all kinds,…
I was (am) an American of African descent, a visitor to the Philippines, Cebu area, such as Toledo City. The Philippines as a nation is famous for friendly people. When I arrived, I found out that the hospitality was more than just a rumor, and mostly genuine. Even in the United States, where skin color…
In our first Cebuano-English lesson, we went over some basics that an English-speaking visitor to the Cebu (Visayan) area of the Philippines might want to know. Let us continue with some basics. Excuse me and-or Pardon me. “Usba gud” can be used for Excuse me, I don’t understand what you meant by that. “Oos-bah good.”…
There are not many Cebuano-English lessons online as we write this. It is mainly for Americans or other foreigners who enter the Cebu region of the Philippines and want to have some level of communication with the locals. People often say, “Filipinos mostly speak English,” and while that is technically true, there are lots of…