I have so many great writers on my team.
But sometimes, sometimes, I read what they’ve written, and it just doesn’t sound right.
If you’ve hired a Filipino writer, you know what I mean.
There are no spelling mistakes, and the grammar is correct. However, some of the words or phrases they use seem … off.
There’s a word for it: Filipinisms.
Filipinisms are English words or phrases only used in the Philippines to refer to specific things.
A typical example is when they call the toilet a “comfort room”.
Or “brown out” when referring to a power outage.
“Avail” instead of purchase or buy or use.
My writers admit that Filipinisms are hard to shake off. Using Filipinisms feels right because that’s how they learned English growing up. That’s how they use English every day.
But once they learned it’s not used anywhere else, they now check for it when editing their work. One of my writers, Princess, even took a workshop on how to avoid Filipinisms to improve her writing.
Here are some of the most common Filipinisms you may have seen your OFS use:
- They use “Open and close” instead of “turn on and off” appliances.
- “Fill up the form” instead of “filling out” a form
- Using traffic as an adjective instead of a noun: “It will be traffic” instead of “Traffic is bad”.
- “Cope up” instead of “cope with”
- Using “with regards to” instead of “with regards” or “with regard to”. They just combined both.
- Using “would” in the wrong context (there is no “would” feeling in Filipino)
- “Malling” – no US correlation. It means going to the mall and walking around and window shopping.
- “Car napper”. Uhhh…you mean…thief?
- “works”, “stuffs”, “foods” – they pluralize words to mean “a lot of”. Words we don’t pluralize.
What can you do to help your writer shake off Filipinisms?
First, they have to be aware that they’re using it. If they don’t know, point it out. However, once they are aware of it, their writing and ability to spot mistakes will improve.
Second, let them edit and fix their work. It will be hard for them to do this initially, but the more they do this, the better they’ll be at it. In my case, I don’t even have to point them out anymore. I just tell my team they need to fix things when a piece of content doesn’t feel right.
Third, use services like Grammarly. It helps a lot!
Lastly, encourage them to read more material written by native English speakers. The more exposed they are to how native English speakers write, the easier it will be for them to adopt that writing style.
Your writer can be trained to shake off Filipinisms. You can also train them to do more or make their writing even better! You can give them that training and more at VAsMadeEasy.com.
John