Lost in Translation

Folks who grew up in the Philippines and speak the native language(s) of that country tend to have a hard time pronouncing certain consonants. "F" and "v," for example, tend to come out as "p" and "b." And, just as English speakers sometimes do, the hard "t" occassionally will be dropped from the end of words.

Earlier this year, I was visiting Pops in the Philippines and he was telling me about a town we were driving through.

Pops: Look around—you can see dat dis is a piss-poor town.

Me (outraged, thinking that it's not the residents fault if they're piss poor before realizing my dad wouldn't say that): I'm sorry—what kind of town is this again Pops?

Pops (enunciating carefully): It's a. Pish. Poor. Town.

Me (thinking hard till a lightbulb comes on): Oh! It's a fish port town! They ship fish!

I don't think of Pops as having an accent—to me, it's just my dad's voice—so these occassional reminders always take me by surprise and crack me up.