IN describing Philippine English, I begin with vocabulary and not typically with pronunciation, simply because vocabulary would have to be used in both speech and writing. I shall describe Philippine English pronunciation much later when I have already discussed language structures appearing in both speech and writing. Linguists have a more technical term for 'vocabulary,' and that is 'lexicon.' There would, indeed, be technical differences between the two, but I shall save you readers from that kind of puzzle since that is not the focus of today's column.

In this column, I particularly wish to draw attention to some words, or lexical items, which are peculiarly Philippine English. Not that they are exclusively used in Philippine English, but a number of them are more frequent in Philippine English than in other varieties of the language. Some of them have actually been retained in the Philippines while they have been out of fashion in other varieties, most especially American English.