I am an English editor and am curious: Why is the adjective for the Philippines spelled “Filipino”? Does this have to do with Spanish influence on the counry :?:
Phillipines is English Word.
Filipino is tagalog word refering to male filipino and all filipino in common. female word for filipino is filipina.
Pinoy is tagalog slang for Filipino, equivalent female form is pinay.
ax
As far as I know, it’s Pilipino/a in Tagalag which morphed into filipino/a from Spanish influence (although I think Pilipino is still used) and never became Philippino/a because that’s too complicated.
There is no “ph” in the Pilipino alphabet – this is a nice, pat answer if you really need a rule.
But, in my experience, Philippine culture is rife with exceptions to rules and such. For example, there isn’t any letter ‘c’ in Pilipino either, but this doesn’t keep there from being MANY Tagalog names that start with the letter ‘c’ (70% - 80% of Pilipino is made up of Tagalog) – ‘Calamba’ and ‘Cavite’ to cite two simple examples.
Chainsmoker, I think you are right about the morphing, but it’s the other way around. The country is named after Phillip of Spain (I think it was Phillip II, but I’m not sure) – so it should have morphed to Pilipino from Filipino.
Then again, there isn’t any “f” in the pilipino alphabet either! Which is partly why p and f are often interchanged by Pilipino speakers. I believe you could actually get away with the following pronunciation and still be clearly understood in Manila:[quote]Den again, dere isn’t any “ep” in the Filifino alpabet either! Which is fartly why fee and ep are opten interchanged by Filifino sfeakers.[/quote]
I always figured any ph spelling was a result of the notoriously poor spelling of Americans (who ran the country for about 50 years)
In English, “Filipina” is another word for “maid” (female), especially one who also provides certain (ahem!) other services to her employer. So maybe they’re trying to avoid this word with the creative spellings.
Vincent,
where do you get that meaning? You invent it? Show a dictionary entry that prove your statement. Filipina is not the only caregiver out there. Many poverty-stricken south east asian were also enslaved in many big cities of the world today.
Please don’t generalize, not all filipina does the *other" service or whatever you termed it. It’s only their bad fate that lead some of them a vendre son ame au diable.
regards,
ax
I don’t get you, Vincent. You can’t be that stupid as to believe what you wrote here. That leads me to believe that you just want to get a rise out of people. I suppose calling the females of a nation maids and whores is one way to do it, but surely there must be a more artistic way to go about it. Are you that bored with life? Do you have no sense of artistic quality or style? I don’t see the point.
(sigh) A few years ago what’s-her-name the former PM of the Philippines protested against a DICTIONARY that gave “maid” as one definition of “Filipina.” So no, it’s not just me.
Doesn’t mean she didn’t have a point, though. I have no idea what part of the world was responsible for this characterization. It may have been the American military bases they used to have there, Clark and Subic.
This is Greek, sorry, but I recall something similar happening in…I think it was Australia. It’s a bit like the Taiwan-products-are-shoddy commercial. It may not be fair, but like it or not, it does reflect a fairly wide perception. Actually I have immense sympathy for these women, and the conditions they have to go through for their families.
From a quick look at a search engine, all I can find is that there was a Greek dictionary that defined Filipina as “maid” and an erroneous report about that the Oxford English dictionary having done so. If you intend to stand by your ridiculous post, I would be curious to know where you use the word “Filipina” to mean “maid” and who understands you.
Perhaps I’m mistaken, but doesn’t “maid” originally mean a young unmarried woman? And doesn’t “Filipina” simply refer to a young unmarried “maid” from the Philippines?
Some of those Filipinas are indeed fair maidens, n’est pas?
Here’s another web discussion about Taiwan based Filipinos - tsinoy.com/forum/viewmessages.cf … &Topic=119
Not that I’m siding with anyone, but here’s a link that I thought would clear some things up. http://www.filipinawives.com
P.S. The link is not some freaky deeky Pr0N (porn) page. 
I came across this explanation while trying to find out whether the word “moro” used in relation to the Philippines is the same as the Spanish word “moro” meaning “Moor.” (It is.)
- The word “Filipino” is Spanish and originally referred to Spanish colonialists living in the Islas Filipinas (Philippines.) Similar to the English word Indiaman, which means a European person domiciled in India, as opposed to an actual Indian.
- In the Spanish colonial period, the native people of the Philippines where called “indios” (Indians.)
- The darker-skinned Moslem people of the southern Philippines where called “moros” (Moors) - a reference to both their skin colour and their religion.
Later, the word “Filipino” came include all people from the Philippines, including the moros.
Sorry it took me so long to get back to y’all. Life is what happened when I went off-line. It became atrociously boring and put me on the brink of paranoid schizophrenia, so I have returned to this virtual world of delusion, perhaps a milder form of schizophrenia when it does not develop into full-blown dementia.
Thank you all for the F-/Ph- help. It is clear now. I truly appreciate it. 
Gus,
Veinte ocho na ngayon ang mga letra sa ating alpabeto, kasama ang letrang “C” at “F”.