ONLY In The PHILIPPINES...

[wac3]

no kidding talaga! first time ko na encounter tong ganito kawalanghiyang tao! imagine sa gitna ng edsa umiihi! fu*%ing a$$hol# SOAB to the max! daig pa ang aso! dapat ginitgit ko na yun eh para mabitin sya...OUCH! :D

[silverbx986]

from a foreigner's perspective. sorry if this was posted here before.

A Rhose, by Any Other Name
By Matthew Sutherland

"A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches" --(Proverbs 22:1)

WHEN I arrived in the Philippines from the UK six years ago, one of the first cultural differences to strike me was names. The subject has provided a continuing source of amazement and amusement ever since.

The first unusual thing, from an English perspective, is that everyone here has a nickname. In the staid and boring United Kingdom, we have nicknames in kindergarten, but when we move into adulthood we tend, I am glad to say, to lose them.

The second thing that struck me is that Philippine names for both girls and boys tend to be what we in the UK would regard as overbearingly cutesyfor anyone over about five. "Fifty-five-year-olds with names that sound like five-year-olds", as one colleague put it. Where I come from, a boy with a nickname like Boy Blue or Honey Boy would be beaten to death at school by pre-adolescent bullies, and never make it to adulthood. So, probably, would girls with names like Babes, Lovely, Precious, Peachy or Apples. Yuk, ech ech. Here, however, no one bats an eyelid.

Then I noticed how many people have what I have come to call "door-bell names". These are nicknames that sound like - well, door-bells. There are millions of them. Bing, Bong, Ding, and Dong are some of the more common. They can be, and frequently are, used in even more door-bell-like combinations such as Bing-Bong, Ding-Dong, Ting-Ting, and so on. Even our newly-appointed chief of police has a doorbell name - Ping. None of these door-bell names exist where I come from, and hence sound unusually amusing to my untutored foreign ear. Someone once told me that one of the Bings, when asked why he was called Bing, replied "because my brother is called Bong". Faultless logic. Dong, of course, is a particularly funny one for me, as where I come from "dong" is a slang word for... well, perhaps "talong" is the best Tagalog equivalent.

Repeating names was another novelty to me, having never before encountered people with names like Len-Len, Let-Let,Mai-Mai, or Ning-Ning. The secretary I inherited on my arrival had an unusual one: Leck-Leck. Such names are then frequently further refined by using the "squared" symbol, as in Len2 or Mai2. This had me very confused for a while.

Then there is the trend for parents to stick to a theme when naming their children. This can be as simple as making them all begin with the same letter, as in Jun, Jimmy, Janice, and Joy. More imaginative parents shoot for more sophisticated forms of assonance or rhyme, as in Biboy,Boboy, Buboy, Baboy (notice the names get worse the more kids there are -- best to be born early or you could end up being a Baboy).

Even better, parents can create whole families of, say, desserts (Apple Pie, Cherry Pie, Honey Pie) or flowers (Rose, Daffodil, Tulip). The main advantage of such combinations is that they look great painted across your trunk if you're a cab driver.

That's another thing I'd never seen before coming to Manila - taxis with the driver's kids' names on the trunk.

Another whole eye-opening field for the foreign visitor is the phenomenon of the "composite" name. This includes names like Jejomar (for Jesus, Joseph and Mary), and the remarkable Luzviminda (for Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, believe it or not). That's a bit like me being called something like "Engscowani" (for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland).

Between you and me, I'm glad I'm not.

And how could I forget to mention the fabulous concept of the randomly-inserted letter 'h'. Quite what this device is supposed to achieve, I have not yet figured out, but I think it is designed to give a touch of class to an otherwise only averagely weird name. It results in creations like Jhun, Lhenn, Ghemma, and Jhimmy. Or how about Jhun-Jhun (Jhun2)?

There is also a whole separate field of name games -- those where the parents have exhibited a creative sense of humor on purpose. I once had my house in London painted by a Czechoslovakian decorator by the name of Peter Peter. I could never figure out if his parents had a fantastic sense of humor or no imagination at all -- it had to be one or the other. But here in the Philippines, wonderful imagination and humor is often applied to the naming process, particularly, it seems, in the Chinese community. My favourites include Bach Johann Sebastian; Edgar Allan Pe; Jonathan Livingston Sy; Magic Chiongson, Chica Go, and my girlfriend's very own sister, Van Go. I am assured these are real people, although I've only met two of them. I hope they don't mind being mentioned here.

How boring to come from a country like the UK full of people with names like John Smith. How wonderful to come from a country where imagination and exoticism rule the world of names. Even the towns here have weird names; my favorite is the unbelieveably-named town of ***moan (ironically close to Olongapo and Angeles).

Where else in the world could that really be true? Where else in the world could the head of the Church really be called Cardinal Sin? Where else in the world could Angel, Gigi and Mandy be grown-up men? Where else could you go through adultlife unembarrassed and unassailed with a name like Mosquito, or Pepper, or Honey Boy?

Where else but the Philippines!

[chua_riwap]

from a foreigner's perspective. sorry if this was posted here before.

A Rhose, by Any Other Name
By Matthew Sutherland

"A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches" --(Proverbs 22:1)

WHEN I arrived in the Philippines from the UK six years ago, one of the first cultural differences to strike me was names. The subject has provided a continuing source of amazement and amusement ever since.

The first unusual thing, from an English perspective, is that everyone here has a nickname. In the staid and boring United Kingdom, we have nicknames in kindergarten, but when we move into adulthood we tend, I am glad to say, to lose them.

The second thing that struck me is that Philippine names for both girls and boys tend to be what we in the UK would regard as overbearingly cutesyfor anyone over about five. "Fifty-five-year-olds with names that sound like five-year-olds", as one colleague put it. Where I come from, a boy with a nickname like Boy Blue or Honey Boy would be beaten to death at school by pre-adolescent bullies, and never make it to adulthood. So, probably, would girls with names like Babes, Lovely, Precious, Peachy or Apples. Yuk, ech ech. Here, however, no one bats an eyelid.

Then I noticed how many people have what I have come to call "door-bell names". These are nicknames that sound like - well, door-bells. There are millions of them. Bing, Bong, Ding, and Dong are some of the more common. They can be, and frequently are, used in even more door-bell-like combinations such as Bing-Bong, Ding-Dong, Ting-Ting, and so on. Even our newly-appointed chief of police has a doorbell name - Ping. None of these door-bell names exist where I come from, and hence sound unusually amusing to my untutored foreign ear. Someone once told me that one of the Bings, when asked why he was called Bing, replied "because my brother is called Bong". Faultless logic. Dong, of course, is a particularly funny one for me, as where I come from "dong" is a slang word for... well, perhaps "talong" is the best Tagalog equivalent.

Repeating names was another novelty to me, having never before encountered people with names like Len-Len, Let-Let,Mai-Mai, or Ning-Ning. The secretary I inherited on my arrival had an unusual one: Leck-Leck. Such names are then frequently further refined by using the "squared" symbol, as in Len2 or Mai2. This had me very confused for a while.

Then there is the trend for parents to stick to a theme when naming their children. This can be as simple as making them all begin with the same letter, as in Jun, Jimmy, Janice, and Joy. More imaginative parents shoot for more sophisticated forms of assonance or rhyme, as in Biboy,Boboy, Buboy, Baboy (notice the names get worse the more kids there are -- best to be born early or you could end up being a Baboy).

Even better, parents can create whole families of, say, desserts (Apple Pie, Cherry Pie, Honey Pie) or flowers (Rose, Daffodil, Tulip). The main advantage of such combinations is that they look great painted across your trunk if you're a cab driver.

That's another thing I'd never seen before coming to Manila - taxis with the driver's kids' names on the trunk.

Another whole eye-opening field for the foreign visitor is the phenomenon of the "composite" name. This includes names like Jejomar (for Jesus, Joseph and Mary), and the remarkable Luzviminda (for Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, believe it or not). That's a bit like me being called something like "Engscowani" (for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland).

Between you and me, I'm glad I'm not.

And how could I forget to mention the fabulous concept of the randomly-inserted letter 'h'. Quite what this device is supposed to achieve, I have not yet figured out, but I think it is designed to give a touch of class to an otherwise only averagely weird name. It results in creations like Jhun, Lhenn, Ghemma, and Jhimmy. Or how about Jhun-Jhun (Jhun2)?

There is also a whole separate field of name games -- those where the parents have exhibited a creative sense of humor on purpose. I once had my house in London painted by a Czechoslovakian decorator by the name of Peter Peter. I could never figure out if his parents had a fantastic sense of humor or no imagination at all -- it had to be one or the other. But here in the Philippines, wonderful imagination and humor is often applied to the naming process, particularly, it seems, in the Chinese community. My favourites include Bach Johann Sebastian; Edgar Allan Pe; Jonathan Livingston Sy; Magic Chiongson, Chica Go, and my girlfriend's very own sister, Van Go. I am assured these are real people, although I've only met two of them. I hope they don't mind being mentioned here.

How boring to come from a country like the UK full of people with names like John Smith. How wonderful to come from a country where imagination and exoticism rule the world of names. Even the towns here have weird names; my favorite is the unbelieveably-named town of ***moan (ironically close to Olongapo and Angeles).

Where else in the world could that really be true? Where else in the world could the head of the Church really be called Cardinal Sin? Where else in the world could Angel, Gigi and Mandy be grown-up men? Where else could you go through adultlife unembarrassed and unassailed with a name like Mosquito, or Pepper, or Honey Boy?

Where else but the Philippines!

All true.....

***MOAN.....He-he!

[wac3]

ONLY IN THE PHILIPPINES will you encounter motels having a long queue on valentine's day. :D

[Elroi]

everybody becomes your Tito or Tita..

parents ng friend mo, friend ng parents mo, parents ng gf/bf mo..

[aceshark]

....where you can find DRIVERS (mostly CAB) interchange the tail/brake lights and backing lights.....d*mn!!!!!

and i saw a taxicab with this mode of brake lights... and guess what the name of the taxi is.... PRIMITIVE TAXI. ayus.

[banaweonline]

silverbx986,
this is the most funniest thing i have ever read in this thread. it is soo true.

[Alpha_One]

As for the name thing: old, old, old!
As for everything else: Hardly "Only in the Philippines". Kind of interesting how people throw that term around. Shows how proud people are of their country.

Anyway, someone mentioned the yellow light meaning "go faster". I remember when I was a young kid (maybe four years old) I called the yellow light the "fast" light. Dati kasi tarantado yung tatay ko, with his smoking habit, his useless hobbies and his joyriding the Isuzu Gemini (cheap diesel then). Sharing lang.

[M]

... where the expressway is hardly "express"

... where the fast lane = shoulder

... where you can use the shoulder to pass ... but only where there are no PNCC officers, which is only 2 points in the entire length of the SLEX (one northbound and one southbound)

[ess]

...where you can switch on your hazard light, and tailgate a convoy or ambulance to get ahead of other drivers.

[CVT]

Everything that's written here on traffic conditions points to Controlled Chaos, Arranged Anarchy, Methodical Mess, Checked Confusion or bluntly,- SNAFU!

[M]

... where you can be a corrupt politician, and during your trial, you expose another politician's corruption, you become "not guilty" in an instant and a national hero to boot!

[niky]

... where you can be a corrupt politician, and during your trial, you expose another politician's corruption, you become "not guilty" in an instant and a national hero to boot!

Hmmm... :lol: I remember when AMA was brought to court regarding their numerous courses without permits. Finger pointing lang ang ginawa nila at other schools who were operating while still trying to fix their permits (at least they were trying, yung AMA, hindi). All of a sudden, all the major Colleges and Universities (including one or two branches of ours) were under fire, and no further mention was made about AMA's "illegal" courses...

[wac3]

...where you see drivers turning on the hazard lights when it's raining hard.

[banaweonline]

...where you see drivers turning on the hazard lights when it's raining hard.

more like gaya gaya puto maya...
wala naman dati iyan.
pero in fairness, additional safety din iyan kasi mahirap talaga mag maneho sa malakas na ulan.

only in the philippines..

that people interchange their plate numbers to avoid color coding. but some are so stupid to put in old plates for new cars and vice versa......
and the police don't know how to differentiate old from the new.

[wac3]

pero in fairness, additional safety din iyan kasi mahirap talaga mag maneho sa malakas na ulan.

it's not really additional safety as said in a TV program i watched in the US. it's more of an annoyance to other drivers because hazard lights tend to give out more glare to other drivers especially when their windshield is wet.

[wildthing]

annoyance to other drivers....i doubt...try to run 80kph on NLEX with the full heavy rain, tingnan ko kung hindi ka kabahan paghindi mo namamalayan ang ibang oto na super lapit na pala....

just my 2 cents.

[raine_s]

na ang police ay hindi naman talaga police lalo na pag pasko =>

DRIVER:" BOSSING BAKA PWEDE NAMAN PAGUSAPAN 2"
POLICE:" CGE PANG MERIENDA NALAN" hehe

[vhenok]

Hmmm... :lol: I remember when AMA was brought to court regarding their numerous courses without permits. Finger pointing lang ang ginawa nila at other schools who were operating while still trying to fix their permits (at least they were trying, yung AMA, hindi). All of a sudden, all the major Colleges and Universities (including one or two branches of ours) were under fire, and no further mention was made about AMA's "illegal" courses...

Taka ka pa...appointee ni GMA si Amable as Ambassador of Goodwill of ekek somewhere in da Middle East, basta, di ko na remember...

[niky]

Hehe... that was during the time of Erap... malakas di sila kay Erap dahil may stock din siya sa AMA. Anggaling nila, noh? Political survivors.

A lot of other schools are hostile to AMA because of that action. Kami nga, competitive, pero patulong tulong din (within the inter-school organizations) to uplift the state of education. They just throw money at any quality or standards problem to make it disaffffeeeeaaaar.

And now they have their own nursing school... business school... etc... money talks!