Language skills

June 14, 2007 at 4:11 am (Expat, Fil-Am relationships, Filipinas, Living in the Philippines, Philippines)

I spent the weekend in Cebu City , taking advantage of Cebu Pacific Airline‘s new direct Clark-Cebu flights, paying just P1600 each way, including taxes. How about that? Much better than the old way of losing four hours just to go from home to the Manila airport, and then have to hang around for a flight out of that decrepit old terminal. Clark’s airport is just 30 minutes from my apartment.

My reason for going, other than just to get out of town for a while, was to meet up with a girl I’d met on a previous trip. That didn’t work out however because she’d moved back to Leyte and I was not really keen on taking a ferry boat to her town. But I’m not disappointed at all; I met some really nice folks.

Besides, Cebu city is a pleasant place to hang out. Unlike Manila, the taxi drivers are courteous and honest, jeepney routes are sensible, traffic flows fairly smoothly, and the locals are friendly.

While walking a downtown street and passing three girls our eyes met in that look that says “hey, might be fun to know you.” We winked and flirted a bit but I refused to stop near them because of the presence of a hooker and some rough-looking guys. Instead I said “let’s move on down a bit” and I walked about 20 paces then stopped. They didn’t seem to be aware of those people at first but eventually realized what I was doing and we got together, later ending up in a Jollibee to talk. . . and talk.

They are really three of the nicest and sweetest girls I’ve met in this country. And I had an important learning experience with them. I’d gotten kind of jaded here, uncomfortable and even a bit bitchy at times about the level of communication here, making friendships and even commerce difficult in the worst case, merely amusing otherwise. But not all Filipinos lack these basic communication skills. These three girls, at 19, 20, and 21 speak English like you and I do. We were able to all talk as fast as we wanted as well as instantly catch each others’ jokes. Damn! Where have they been all this time?

At one point one of the girls was telling about eating balut , fermented chicks right from the eggshells. Filipinos really seem to love ’em. She was very animated and exaggerating all the slurps and nibbling on the semi-formed beak and saying they eat them at night so they don’t have to see them. I was also exaggerating my disgust and interjected with “Well don’t think I’m going to be kissing you now!” Then the second one laughed and immediately jumped in to say SHE doesn’t eat balut so I told her okay I WOULD kiss her. Then the third one made sure I knew she didn’t eat them either. When you can laugh and joke and play with language like that you KNOW you’re communicating the way folks should.

We agreed to meet the next day, having another long and fun gab-session. Living in the Philippines would not be so isolating if there were more people like these around. I hate it when I have to slow down my speech, repeat myself, and dumb it down for local comprehension. I’d gotten to the point of believing that Filipinos must communicate well among themselves and the problem was my foreign accent. But meeting these three girls totally disproves that. Besides, I have a very neutral accent and it’s probably one of the easiest to understand of all native English-speakers. If I have trouble communicating here imagine how the Aussies or Germans do it!

Sad to say I could only stay two days in Cebu. Monday was Independence Day and hotels were full up. I almost didn’t get a room as it was. Also the big city was jammed with shoppers getting things for the new school year, probably lots of provincial folks in town for that. But even the foreign zone was packed so I bought a ticket to come back after just two days there. That’s okay though. Next time I’ll make sure I have hotel reservations and plan it all a lot better. Gonna go back soon I hope. Don’t want those girls to slip away from me.

Oh, the learning experience I spoke of? Shiela, the girl I was going to meet, the one the trip was originally all about, well the reason I was attracted to her was for the same language skills. She was just so articulate and intelligent and fun to talk to when I met her. But Shiela and the new girls I met have something in common. . . they are all from the eastern side of South Leyte province. Now that’s a really remote region of the country, has no cities or towns to speak of. But yet the small communities there seem to produce some great communicators.

I wonder how and why that happens. The Ifugao people in Ifugao province have better than average language skills in English also, noticeably better than most lowlanders. A hundred years ago they were running around in loincloths and killing each other in tribal warfare. . . for good reason they were called “headhunters”. While the Ifugao are good, the people of South Leyte’s eastern side, those who live east of Sogod town, on the peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and the eastern shore of Sogod Bay, are without doubt the best I’ve seen yet.