The issue whether Filipinos are native speakers of English or not is a complicated task to discuss, because it is rich in ambiguity. The complication arises mainly out of issues with definitions of terms (such as “native speaker,” “mother tongue/language,” “native language,” “first language,”etc.) (Terralingua 2007). There are also issues relating to criteria of defining the language status of the Filipinos in general, use of English in the Philippines, proficiency of speakers, and ethnicity or country of origin. Depending on linguistic perspective and biases, most Filipinos can be considered either non-native speakers or native speakers of English.
Those who judge that Filipinos are non-native speakers assert that Filipinos don’t measure up to the definition of a native speaker as “a person who has learned a language from an early age and who has full mastery of that language” (Google 2007), because Filipino speakers of English are not comparable to Americans or the British in terms of accent, fluency, vocabulary, and grammar. English is not most Filipinos’ first language, mother language, or vernacular that a person learns basically first from his/her family (Philippine English 2007). While a native speaker may be a bilingual or multilingual without formal education, such as “cultural immersion before puberty” (First Language 2007), most Filipinos learn English formally at school. These proponents point out the fact that Pilipino (Tagalog) is the Philippines’ national language, and generalize that it is most Filipinos’ first language (Roeland 2006), which it is not, and English—though one of the official languages, the other being Pilipino—is just used as a second language (Philippine English 2007). The reported figure (42,500,000) for second language speakers (L2) is only 63.71% of the total population (66.7 million) (NSO March 18, 2005). Filipino speakers of English as a second language (92.59% of 45,900,000, the total speakers of English) far outnumber those who speak English as their first language (7.41% of 45,900,000, the total speakers of English) (Philippine English 2007). According to this perspective, therefore, Filipinos are rated as non-native speakers of English.
The same definition above can be used to consider that most Filipinos could be bilingual or multilingual native speakers, who have learned English, either as first or second language, from an early age either at home, in the community or at school before puberty. The 2000 Census of Population and Housing by NSO indicated that “six out of ten persons aged 5 years and over can speak English” (NSO 2005), which further indicates that the Filipinos are the 4th largest English speaking-population (45.9 million) in the world after India, the USA and the UK (List of countries 2007). Filipinos could qualify for the criterion that, as Davies (2003) asserted, distinguishes non-native from native speakers: "A child may be a native speaker of more than one language as long as the acquisition process starts early and necessarily prepuberty.” Filipinos further qualify for other more criteria outlined by Davies: intuitions about idiolectal grammar, intuitions about the standard language grammar, discourse and pragmatic control, creative performance and interpreting and translating into L1. Accents, fluency, vocabulary and grammar are no longer regarded as non-native-like, since they are just a variety of English as an international language—just like there are varieties among British, American, and other Englishes around the world; these competencies are left to the individual speaker, as there are different levels of speakers among Americans and British people. Being a native speaker doesn’t have to be identified anymore with the first language, since a multilingual native speaker can use several languages proficiently with ease as his first language, due to early childhood exposure and training. In this sense, Filipinos can be native speakers of English, too. And many are. But the new generation—the below 25 years old group don’t do nearly as well as the older ones, who used it more. Changes in schooling have hurt the English ability of the younger ones. In Thailand too—just the hours in school may not be enough to produce proficiency—they need to practice outside of class.
References
Davis, A. (2003). The native speaker in applied linguistics. Message posted to http://www.arts.ed.ac.uk/celtic/poileasaidh/daviesseminar.html
First language. (2007). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 9, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_speaker
Google. (2007). Definitions of native speaker on the web. Retrieved January 9, 2007, from www.ub.es/div5/departam/dll/recursos/prov71.htm
List of countries by English-speaking population. (2007). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 9, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population
NSO. (2005). Educational characteristics of the Filipinos. Retrieved January 9, 2007, from http://www.census.gov.ph/data/sectordata/sr05153tx.html
Philippine English. (2007). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 9, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_English
Roeland, P. (2006). The Filipino issue. Message posted to http://www.ajarn.com/Contris/philiproelandjune2006.htm
Terralingua (2007). Mother tongue. Retrieved from, on, etc. http://www.terralingua.org/Definitions/DMotherTongue.html
