Tag: language

Philippine society elite ridicule Vice President Sara Duterte’s Visayan accent

September 1, 2024 Ramon Ortoll 2 Comments

Remember how the ouster of former President Joseph ‘Erap’ Estrada was engineered by the Yellowidiots led by former presidents Fidel ‘Tabako’ Ramos and Cory Aquino in 2001? Then when former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) and Cory got into a tiff over Hacienda Luisita, the Yellowidiots turned against GMA and began a demolition job on…

Media, Society

Is there still hope of turning the Tagalog dialect into a modern intellectual medium of communication?

March 28, 2023 benign0 16 Comments

Back in the old days, televised news reporting used to be mostly done in English. The EDSA “revolution” changed all that. Practically overnight, Tagalog news shows such as pioneer shock “news” caster Noli de Castro’s TV Patrol turned what was once a public service into mass entertainment. Key to this was the pivoting of telejournalism…

Culture, Development, Education

Tagalog is a mere dialect

March 12, 2023 benign0 36 Comments

The Tagalog dialect is the pale basis for “Filipino” which is a variant of it Filipinos were led to believe is their “national language”. This is why Manila — which started as a Tagalog settlement that was turned into a colonial outpost by the Spaniards — is referred to as “Imperial Manila”. That’s because non-Tagalogs…

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Culture, Education, Society

Leni Robredo has FAILURE written all over her face

August 13, 2021 Ramon Ortoll 6 Comments

The more critical thinkers among the public have noticed Vice President Leni Robredo’s speech pattern to be mostly incoherent. She can’t organize her thoughts verbally in a manner which she can be understood by her audience. Most wonder why this is considering she is a UP graduate of Economics. Even her grasp of her major…

Government, Politics

The demise of Spanish culture and urbanidad y civilidad in the Philippines gave rise to today’s IDIOCRACY

July 7, 2021 Ramon Ortoll 6 Comments

The use of Spanish words and terms in the vernacular is almost nil at this point with the new generation. Their parents didn’t grow up in households with older relatives from the generation where Español was the lingua franca of society. The mestizos are also disappearing from society. The third generation who managed to squander…

Culture, Education, History

The word “charot” reflects Philippine society’s cowardly COP-OUT culture

October 21, 2019October 21, 2019 benign0 4 Comments

Why say something if you don’t intend to mean it? That, in essence, is the dishonest underpinnings of Charot Culture. The word charot in normalspeak is “joke only”. Filipinos who say something tongue-in-cheek, sarcastically, or to convey a sense of irony often have to resort to appending their statement with either one or even both…

Culture, Education

Leni Robredo’s statements are as pointless and dangerous as her position in government

April 11, 2019 Ilda 14 Comments

Current Philippine Vice President Leni Robredo has become the country’s laughingstock. Her statements turn into memes and get mocked for being pointless. Frankly, most members of the Liberal Party have become laughingstocks too, but since Robredo issues more statements compared to her party mates, she is the default spokesperson for the Opposition and therefore, their…

Government, Politics

Few (if any) Filipino “national heroes” are soldiers

August 27, 2018 benign0 25 Comments

I noticed something about Filipino “national heroes”. None of the ones that the nation’s “thought leaders” wax poetic about most frequently are soldiers. As I wrote a while back, most of them died with their back turned towards their assailants. They captured no territory nor held a stronghold to the death. They are hailed as…

Culture