Philippine Englishes

Summary
Philippine Englishes are local varieties of English in the Philippines. This model is recently theorized by Wilkinson Daniel Wong Gonzales who focused on the plurality of a 'standard' English variety in the Philippines. For short, Gonzales proposed that Philippine English is almost similar with Australian English or New Zealand English in that it has already reached the final stage - differentiation - of Schneider's dynamic model. He believes that Philippine English has reached a point in its development where variation is happening within the variety itself.
History of Philippine English
Philippine English has evolved tremendously from where it began decades ago. Some decades before English was officially introduced, if not arguably forced, to the Philippines, the archipelagic nation has been subject to Spanish rule and thus Spanish was the language of power and influence. However, in 1898, when the Spanish gave the United States control of the nation, the English language, although initially disfavored, became widely used in a matter of years, which was catalyzed by the coming of American teachers called ‘Thomasites’ (Bolton & Bautista, 2004). Before the Americans supposedly gave the nation its well-deserved independence, language policy makers have started discussing about forming a common language for the Philippines— Filipino. Eventually, Filipino became the national language, and English was given the status of an official language of the Philippines; English is more or less the dominant superstrate language, as it is perceived by many as a symbol of status and power, replacing Spanish. With the English language highly embedded in Philippine society, it is only a matter of time before the language is indigenized to the point that differentiates from English in the United States or the United Kingdom. This, along with the formal introduction of the World Englishes (WE) framework to English language scholars in the Philippines by renowned linguist Braj B. Kachru in a conference in Manila (Kachru, 1997), has opened the floodgates to research on this new emerging English, ever since branded as Philippine English.
Developments and issues in Philippine English
That Philippine English has now been recognized as one of the World Englishes, specifically an outer circle English, can be attributed to the efforts and pioneering work of local linguists such as Bautista (2004), who worked on the Philippine component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-PH), a corpus that is more or less a pioneer of its kind, that would eventually be used by most researchers interested in both synchronic and diachronic phenomena in Philippine English. For synchronic studies, probably the most foundational and influential reference for Philippine English of the 1980s and 1990s would be Bautista’s (2000) monograph on Philippine English features, where she discussed subject-verb-agreement, tenses, nouns, among many others. What has not been discussed by Bautista (2000) has been gradually looked into by scholars such as Tayao (2004), who surveyed existing studies in phonology for Philippine English in the late 1990s across the lectal continuum synchronically. Many other synchronic studies such as Tayao’s (2004) have been made and soon, a plethora of them have published across local and international journals. The overabundance of synchronic research in Philippine English as well as the availability of new data and analysis software may have somehow catalyzed the trend of diachronic studies, which is apparent in the early 2010s. For instance, Collins, Borlongan, and Yao (2014) took at modality by using the PhilBrown corpus, recently compiled in De La Salle University, to study Philippine English of the 1950s and 1960s. This was briefly followed by Borlongan and Dita’s (2015) diachronic study on expanded predicates using the same corpus.
With the slow emergence of diachronic studies in Philippine English, another debate has surfaced - whether or not Philippine English has achieved what Schneider (2003) refers to as endonormative stabilization. Schneider (2003) himself noted that Philippine English is still fossilized at stage 3 or nativization, along with Malaysia English; however, some years after, Borlongan (2011, 2016) argued that Philippine English is already at the dawn of stage 4, claiming that event X, a criteria of Schneider’s (2003), has already taken place along with other signs. In response to this, Martin (2014a) supported Schneider’s (2003) otherwise since Philippine English has not yet been given a status of identity-carrier yet. Up to this day, the debate has not yet been resolved; nevertheless, it would appear that the foundation upon this argument was built is questionable. For one, the data source or ICE-PH, as Bautista (2004, p. 22) self-admittedly claimed, is “Manila-centric”. The implications of this extend to all studies that use this corpus; unfortunately, almost all of the studies in Philippine English to this day are largely ICE-PH based and assume findings from a underrepresented standard Philippine English. The issue here is that by continuing on this standard English variety, we are unconsciously ignoring the fact that other minorities and variations exist within the variety, which is exactly what Irvine and Gal (2000) identifies as erasure. Thus, just as Gonzales (2017) has pointed out, it is imperative that we redefine Philippine English and start looking into other local varieties.
Interestingly, some have already hinted this. Bautista (1982,1996) claims that there are three sub-varieties of Philippine English: yaya or nanny English, bargirl English, and colegiala or college girl English. Although they were questioned by Tinio (2013), who criticized that the model offers little by way of explaining how gender and class delineations affect change, Bautista’s (1996) findings suggest that there are, indeed, variations within the standard Philippine English. Tayao (2003), on the other hand, also advocates this after finding out that variations across the lectal continuum exist. Furthermore, Gonzalez (2004), stressed the possibility of having indigenized varieties within new Englishes as a result of pro-mother tongue language policies coupled with the undying importance of English as a global language.
Moving towards Philippine ‘Englishes’
Earlier, it was claimed by Bautista (2004) that the data source where most Philippine English research is based is skewed towards Manila. This, along with other current Philippine English research (e.g. Bautista, 1996; Tinio 2013; Tayao, 2004; Tupas, 2004, 2016) implies that other varieties may be possible. Gonzales (2017) proposed that Philippine Englishes exist; his use of the term encompasses regional (e.g., Manila English) and social variations (e.g., yaya or nanny English, etc.). Indeed, the Philippines is too large to be represented by one standard Philippine English. It has, according to Lewis, Simons, and Fennig (2016), 183 documented languages. Adopting Thomason & Kaufman (1988), Muysken (1981, 1997, 2000), and Lefebvre’s (2004) subtratist framework, each of these languages may each have a different substratal impact on English, giving rise to possible Englishes. For example, Dumdum, Mo, and Mojares (2004) suggest a possible variety in Cebu. Within the notion of Irvine and Gal’s (2000) fractal recursivity, such Englishes may give rise to more Englishes in light of social variations, creating unique and sometimes overlapping Englishes.
But in terms of regional variation, Villanueva (2016), without using the term ‘Philippine Englishes’, has somehow managed to conduct a pilot investigation on such regional variations by studying four macro-language-influenced varieties of English, particularly by analyzing theses and dissertations from four Philippine regions. What he discovered was groundbreaking, in that there were evidence of significant differences among these four varieties or Englishes, although his study, like many others, focused on the acrolectal variety. Nevertheless, with substantial evidence pointing toward the rise of local variations, Philippine Englishes do exist. And these Englishes provide many opportunities for further research in the field.
Types of Philippine Englishes
According to Wilkinson Gonzales, Philippine Englishes can be divided into three major types:
I. Regional substrate-influenced Englishes
A. Indigenous-language-based (e.g., Iloilo English)
B. Foreign-language-based (e.g., Philippine Chinese English)
II. Social Englishes
A. Lectal Englishes (e.g., acrolectal Philippine English)
B. Occupation-based Englishes (e.g., Yaya English)
C. Fractalized Englishes (e.g., urban upper acrolectal Binondo Manila Philippine Chinese Business English)
III. Hybrid Englishes (e.g., Taglish, Conyo English, and Hokaglish)
Schneider's Dynamic Model
Gonzales claims that Philippine Englishes is at Stage 5 or differentiation of Edgar Schneider's model. He places Philippine English in the same level as Australian English or New Zealand English.

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