impressions of an American in the Philippines My wife and I took an Inter-City van from Toledo to Cebu City. We walked to a waterside terminal. Several vans were parked, with locals sitting inside, waiting for departure. A woman stepped in my path, trying to sell me bottled water and sugar water. I bought two waters…
Impressions of an American visiting the Philippines… At my host family’s house, I found out that the surrounding neighborhood was dotted with relatives. When I visited the house, up to twenty children under fourteen years of age would come running. That’s my cousin, they told me, those are our other cousins… and they are our sister in…
Here, There, and Everywhere Remember those “this word=that word” memorization sheets you would get in foreign language courses at public school? Those never worked that well for some of us. At least, not alone. That’s why we don’t simply want to teach and learn straight-up translations, in these Cebuano-English lessons. Sometimes the this=that is straightforward…
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…