Are Filipinos considered...

Factual Questions
21

Cite?

Between my sister and I, we passed through the entire Philippine educational system all the way up to post-graduate level. Unlike the US, educational policy is set at the national level. In no way was Spanish taught until college, and I was in one of the last classes where this was a requirement. You can still, of course, elect to study Spanish. The medium of instruction (again this is a national policy) is English or Tagalog (sorry, “Filipino”); not Spanish.

Perhaps you mean that “teaching Spanish” includes the acknowledgement during language classes that certain words in everyday use were originally Spanish. But that would mean we were “taught Chinese” as well.

22

Thank you, Terminus Est for a more recent perspective. And Monty, I was disagreeing with your assertion that Spanish is studied at all educational levels in the Philippines. I provided the numbers for clarification of the exact state of the Spanish language in the Philippines today, sorry if that was unclear.

No one today can call the Philippines a Spanish-speaking country. Now, if you want to call the Philippines a Spanish-influenced country, then you would be asserting an irrefutable fact.

23

Back to the original question asked: Are Filipinos considered Latino or Asian? Definitely Asian, though Latino is kind of iffy. Does it refer to just people from Latin America, or to the non-Spaniards from the former Spanish Empire?

You can make a strong, largely undebatable case for the Philippines as a Hispanic country, though.

24

No, I meant that courses in learning Spanish are available at every level. Since you’re being obstinate in your error, please make a phone call to any one of the schools in Zamboanga City. Ask.

25

The Philippines are islands. And they are in the Pacific Ocean. So I guess in that sense the Filipino people could be called “Pacific Islanders.”

That does not, of course, make them Polynesian any more than it makes them Micronesian or Melanesian.

They ARE Austronesian. The Pacific Islanders are Austronesian, too. Austronesian is a higher-level language taxon that includes these major groups:

  1. Taiwanese aboriginal
  2. Indonesian
  3. Oceanic.

The languages of the Philippines such as Tagalog, Ilocano, Cebuano, etc., are part of the Indonesian group of Austronesian. Other languages in the Indonesian group are Malay, Javanese, Malagasy, and Cham (Cham is spoken in Cambodia and Vietnam, and is the only Austronesian language native to a continental mainland instead of islands. The Malay language is spoken on the mainland, but it originated on Indonesian islands.)

Polynesian, Melanesian, and Micronesian are the subdivisions of the Oceanic group of Austronesian languages. They are related to the Philippine languages, but are in a different group of Austronesian, more closely related to Malay. As syncrolecyne noted above, the Filipinos are of Malay origin.

There is a linguistic continuity connecting Malay and Tagalog which runs all the way across northern Borneo and the Sulu Archipelago, in which the dialects blend gradually from Malay to Philippine. The languages spoken in northwestern Borneo, like Iban, are closer to Malay, and the languages in northeastern Borneo, like Kadazan, are quite similar to the Philippine dialects of Sulu. See The Malay Peoples of Malaysia and Their Languages by Asmah Haji Omar (Kuala Lumpur, 1983).

If the Filipinos are to be considered Latino by virtue of having a bit of Spanish ancestry in the mix, then so must the peoples in former Spanish colonies of Africa, like Rio Muni, Fernando Poo, Western Sahara, and Sidi Ifni, plus the towns of Ceuta and Melilla on the coast of Morocco. However, I have never heard of these African peoples described as “Latino” and somehow I don’t think we ever will.

For that matter, what about the Netherlands? Maybe the Dutch should be considered Latino.

26

Sorry, I left out a few words and made a misleading sentence. I meant to type: The Filipino languages are more closely related to Malay.

As for the Low Countries, once occupied by Spain: you know Ludwig van Beethoven had a dark complexion because of his Flemish ancestry. When he was a schoolboy, the other kids called him “the little Spaniard.”

Therefore Beethoven was definitely a Latino. You can hear it in his Fifth Symphony: cha-cha-cha-cha!

27

Okay Monty, fair enough, I’ll take your word for the Zamboanga schools, but your post made it sound like Spanish was universally studied as a requirement in Philippine schools. Do these schools teach Spanish as an after-school deal, like Chinese schools, or is it a requirement for their students to graduate? If the latter, then I must retract my retraction.

The reasons for Filipinos to study Spanish may be obvious, but obviousness goes out the window when politics is involved, especially the nationalist kind that advocated removal of Spanish from Philippine schools.

28

I’ll ask my aunt, a native Zamboagueña, about the state of Spanish education in Zamboanga.

I suspect that Monty’s assertion about Spanish being taught “at all levels” will become weaker still.

29

What is your problem with the written word in English, Terminus? I did not say “mandatory at all levels.” I said “is taught at all levels.” Hell, French is taught at all levels in California; however, it’s not mandatory at a single one of them!

30

The onus is on you, Monty. Show me a kindergarten in the Philippines where Spanish is taught. Taught and not simply spoken. Give me a website, a phone number, an email, or a mailing address that I can verify your claim. I’ll fly out there myself if necessary. It’s about time I visited home, anyway.

I guess I’m just a dumb Flip, I don’t understand English very well.

31

I hate to say it, but you seem to be splitting hairs here. It’s kind of absurd to suggest that if I say that algebra is taught at all levels in the US I must include roups of 5 year olds.

32

So in a thread entitled “Are Californians considered…” would “French” be a useful answer?

Let’s get off the subject of what optional languages may or may not be offered in this or that city’s schools and stick to the OP, which is about the claimed ethnicity of persons from the area.

33

Before this thread is locked or moved to GD, I just re-read your OP, which leads me to repost the following:

  1. Culture (aside from some objective factors) and ethnic labeling and self-labeling tends to be subjective.

  2. “Considered” by whom? Are you asking do Filipinos consider themselves “Latinos”? or Do Latinos consider Filipinos “Latinos”? or Both? and are you talking self-labeling by those living in the US or in Latin America and the Philippinnes?

  3. There are a group of Filipinos that talk about connecting with Spanish heritage and “Hispanicness”, but from what I have read they would still not consider themselves Latinos.

  4. Major Latino organizations that I know of do not consider Filipinos as Latino.

  5. Pinoys and Pinays that I have met as friends, through work, and Filipino cultural events (and from my scant reading of filipino culture, fictions, movies, etc) here in the US see themselves w/i that rubric of Asian.

Finally, talking from a mainstream point of view in the U.S., Filipinos are considered Asian.

XicanoreX

34

I am with a Filipino at work right now who just informed me that Spanish stopped being taught in the Philippines in approximately 1994.

35

This is a bit off topic, but I must add that Nabisco sells cookies in Spain called “Filipinos.” They are delicious. A few years ago I sent an email to Nabisco to find out why they are not sold in the U.S., but never rec’d a reply.

I think some surveys re: race and national origin actually have a separate category for Filipinos.

36

For some reason, I associate “Latino” with “Hispanic-American”. I guess some folks might consider it appropriate to consider Filipinos to be “Hispanic-Asian”. I think it’s more, well, polite to allow a group to supply their own indentity label.

37

But that’s not what you said earlier. You said that “Filipinos speak Spanish” — no “some” qualifier. The vast majority of Filipinos know some Spanish words, but they do not speak Spanish.

38

JThunder: Bullshit. That’s not what I said.

39

See
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/reports/census/20010529-9999_1m29asians.html

“The dominant ethnic group of local Asians remains Filipinos…”

40

JThunder, he’s right, you must have misread what Monty wrote. However, how useful is it to say that some Filipinos speak Spanish, in a thread about whether or not Filipinos should be called Latino, like the moderator asked?

Some Filipinos speak French too. And Esperanto. So what? I agree with JThunder’s point: While some Filipinos speak Spanish, when speaking in generalities–as JThunder was–you can get away with saying Filipinos aren’t Spanish speakers.

And as Jomo Mojo pointed out, no, you can’t consider Filipinos Latino, unless you consider the people from all those other countries Latino too. So the original question has now been answered: Asian or Latino? Asian, not Latino.