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Author Topic: New / Filipina girlfriend / sometimes confused  (Read 1642 times)

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Offline Jimmyhopes

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New / Filipina girlfriend / sometimes confused
« on: March 05, 2017, 02:57:50 PM »
Hi my name is Jimmy. I'm new here, obviously; and I have a Filipino girlfriend, which is a pretty new relationship, considering. My last girlfriend was from Singapore and that was somewhat of an adjustment for me. She, however, had lived in America for many years so there was not that big of a cultural adjustment. However with my new girlfriend, who is from the Philippines, has never been to America and is currently working in Taiwan; there's a big cultural difference.  I find that sometimes I'm kind of confused. Confused about how she says things and what she says. Her English is pretty good: I mean we don't have that much trouble communicating but sometimes she finds it difficult to say how she feels or Express how she feels. And because of that sometimes I have trouble understanding. I want to understand and I want to be attentive but sometimes it's very difficult and I'm afraid I'm going to mess things up and I'm afraid I'm going to lose her if I don't figure it out. So I'm here hoping for some experienced advice. So hopefully you guys can help me out. It would be great to find someone who either is Filipino to help me out understand or find someone who has lots of experience with that culture. This is just my introductory post.  I will likely post another post explaining more details as to specifically what I am confused about; what I need better understanding on it. hopefully I'll get some help with that. thank you.

Offline Ray

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Re: New / Filipina girlfriend / sometimes confused
« Reply #1 on: March 06, 2017, 01:09:09 PM »
Hi Jimmy. Welcome to the forum.

For starters, I strongly recommend that you read Culture Shock! Philippines by Roces.

Try Amazon...

Ray

Offline robert angel

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Re: New / Filipina girlfriend / sometimes confused
« Reply #2 on: March 06, 2017, 05:11:36 PM »
Patience.....There are times where if you're pretty sure you've got 'the gist' of what she's saying, just roll with it. Asking her to resay every other word gets old real quick for the both of you.

A lot of areas have Speech Pathology students training for work in schools and hospitals who'll have graduate students help foreigners for free with English verbal and written expression. My wife took advantage of that.

You typically have to already be a tight couple for this, but my Filipina wife and I had--and even occasionally still do, have fun with going over words that her dialect (and there are many, many different dialects in the Philippines) make hard to pronounce.

Like 'scissors' used to be 'Caesars' and a lot more. We use common tongue twisters and make up our own. Back home, relaxing with close family, close friends in the Philippines 'dat' for 'that' generally flies, but not here.

I imagine in certain parts of the USA that are very dense in any language, the ladies/men may not feel compelled to change their English ability--they have no pressing need--even signs are in their language. I know places in the USA, where be it many of the Asian, Middle Eastern languages, or Russian or Spanish, people can go from cradle to grave in the USA w/o worrying about English.

Once you're a teenager, English is a royal pain to learn and those that do often never lose their accents.

I still occasionally still have to ask what she said, but usually it's because the TV, radio or something else makes it less than perfectly clear. Otherwise like described above I'd probably have no issue or I'd be able to read between the words--but that's increasingly rare.

Difficulty with spoken English language transfers to written English expression too and working in a professional capacity. My wife's really polished up well there. Occasionally she asks me to proof an important business letter, but then again, I ask the same of her on mine, as well on how to spell some words.

I must say I respect guys who marry women from Spanish speaking, as well as Asian and other nations. I couldn't imagine having a wife who only spoke Vietnamese or Thai--the sing song pitch drives me nuts

Culture Shock the Philippines has been around a long time --at least 1992, and I hope it's been well updated, as a lot has changed since then, provinces and cities, especially with mass media and the internet's influence. That said, with over 25 years married to two Filipinas, there are still 'cultural' things I don't know, probably never will and/or wouldn't understand anyways if they tried to explain. While sure they're are similarities across the 7000+ island archipelago, there's a lot of regional differences too. You can get old editions of that book for a few bucks.

So between places like half.com, amazon, abesbooks.com etc., hopefully there's an edition not grandly priced But it's gone from I think 244 pages in 1992 to 352+ in 2012, so maybe they found some good stuff. If you HAVE to have the 2014 edition, Amazon has it used---from:
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Re: New / Filipina girlfriend / sometimes confused
« Reply #2 on: March 06, 2017, 05:11:36 PM »

 

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