Stupid is as stupid does

Exactly! Educated. That is the key. IF you go to school, especially a private school, your English will be quite good. Not everyone goes to a good school let alone any school past elementary. Things have changed a bit now but it was more true back in the day.

 

Lol.. Yes all true what you said. My comment though was a joke.

 

Only absolute in life is death

 

If you're not calling people stupid then you're off topic.

Only because an English speaking school gives you lots of opportunity for practice. Otherwise it seems that school is a place where you can acquire a badge so that you are call yourself educated and accuse others of not being so. Not sure what else it's good for here.

Dumaguete gives you as much opportunity for practice in English as it does in Tagalog. But I'll concede defeat. Let's makes a compromise? The most widely spoken language after native dialect in Dumaguete is... Taglish?

This is a strange one which seems a bit hand-wavy. Filipino is a nationality and Tagalog is a language. The constitution lists Filipino as the national language.

Here's section 6 of the constitution, yanked off some shady website on the internets.

Yeah, okay. What kind of BS are you trying to pull on us? "We speak. We'll call it Filipino. And however we might speak in the future, that's Filipino also."

They could be speaking Klingon in the future and still call it Filipino.

I get the sense that Filipino is sort of a grab bag to include everyone who doesn't speak Tagalog. If the government is printing out flyers which warn "Typhoon, RUN!" then those flyers better be in all the local dialects and maybe English and Tagalog also (the French can go **** themselves.) So... Filipino is the official language?

Opinion? Anecdotes? I wonder if anyone would like to weigh in on this?

 

The constitution goes on to say:
Section 7. For purposes of communication and instruction, the official languages of the Philippines are Filipino and, until otherwise provided by law, English.

 

Official or not, I would say, from my own experience, that more filipinos speak "filipino" better than English. It really matters not what it is officially.

It is like here in the States.. They claim home ownership is the " American Dream"

Reality says, that is because you gotta be sleeping to believe it, and that is why it is called a dream. George Carlin came up with that but oh so true.

 

Good shoes brought from abroad fall apart here - I think it is due to the glues not being suited to high temperatures (also possibly the humidity as well).

 

That could be the point - I tend to swear at my shoes a lot and I think the 'soft' Brit ones couldn't take it.