The Portuguese and other ghosts in the Philippines
Analysis and Opinion
By Joe America
My household is in near crisis mode, and it’s hilarious.
My wife is convinced someone is stealing food from our refrigerator. Last week a zucchini squash disappeared. A few days later, an extra hard-boiled egg she stashed there went missing.
“We have Portuguese!” she declared, meaning poltergeist. Well that cracked JoeJr and me up and it hasn’t been the same since.
Now any strange noise and “It’s the Portuguese!”
LOL
She is setting traps for them. A can of tennis balls sits on the back door handle, sure to crash down if one of those pesky Portuguese tries to get in. Well, my wife is gifted with spiritual talents like mind-reading and rituals that are not superstitions, they are beliefs. I don’t argue.
What can we draw from this?
- Filipino hearing and pronunciation of English can be sketchy. Nosebleed stuff.
- The Philippines is filled with ghosts and suspicious spirits, you know it, I know it. ABS-CBN knows it.
These two qualities make the Philippines somehow richer, more mysterious, more dramatic, and more lovable than ordinary nations. It’s a place of surprises and grand humor. It’s a place of deep forests and dark jungles harboring all kinds of spirits and unseen creatures from white ladies to Portuguese.
I’ve had run-ins with them, so I’m a believer.
The word poltergeist comes from the German language words poltern ‘to make sound, to rumble’ and Geist ‘ghost, spirit’ and the term itself translates as ‘noisy ghost‘, ‘rumble-ghost’ or a ‘loud spirit’.
Yes, I’m with my wife on this one.
We have guests.
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Cover photo produced by Word Press image generator using the article as a prompt.
The Society of Honor by Joe America 
I smiled while reading this Joeam. Portuguese indeed…haha!
Terrific, Arlene. We need to smile more. The Portuguese are definitely here. My wife left the house briefly and left the lights on. When she returned, they were off.
Terrific writing, Joe. Refreshing break. Just to add to this misheard and mispronounced hilarity, all true:
🤣😂🤣 Wonderful andrew. Brazil sprouts are very healthy I understand. I never knew what rebonding was until my wife got it done. Expensive business. We use white paper plates instead of China. Saves on water and electricity (dishwasher). We seldom use red pepper flakes, or never. Cheers!
My father told the story, possibly just invented by people after the US returned (he experienced the Battle of Manila on the ground 80 years ago as a barely 11 year old boy) that Filipinos thought the returning Yanks worshipped San Amagan (son of a gun), a saint nobody knew.
your wife is right about rebonding, expensive and can be harsh for the hair that one, and women have to be careful coz rebonding may have a nasty afterkick. in the long run and after long time use, rebonding probly cause middle age women to lose hair and become bald. the price women paid for beautiful ultra colored hair.
I use dry shampoo. which my brother sometimes use on his pet dog.
I once used dog shampoo on my hair by mistake. So pardon me for smiling.
There is this story about Quezon sending away a priest, telling his secretary to tell the press to go to hell, after she told him Sir da press is there to see you.
Allegedly, that is when he decided that English could never be the Philippine national language.
ahem, quezon’s secretary is definitely not bisayan! bisayan are best english speakers in the country. fantastic mimics they are too.
It’s probably Magellan, who was Portuguese. Mactan must be too loud, including planes taking off and landing – and overbuilt for any ghost to still be noticed there.
Besides the first people him and his crew met (who gave them food and drink as they had run totally out of it, landing on an isolated spot in Samar) were Waray, he might have noticed that the language sounds very familiar, even as he has learned little in half a millenium.
Ha! I’ll tell my wife that. She’ll get a kick out of knowing the pest has a name.
c’mon, joeam. your wife is probly mestiza and has european blood. magellan is probly her blood relative too. if she traces her family tree going back centuries.
I wont trace my family tree, apparently I come from monkey! says my distant relatives.
No, my wife is down from the mountains I’m pretty sure. Probably neighbors of your ancestors.
Puriring…poor hearing.
That’s perfectly good English. (snort)
fund post joeam
😀😀😀🍻
when I was in high school, I was in a choir. I was s for soprano and the girl next to me was a for alto. there were 20 of us, different voices blending together. we were singing negro spiritual, adam lay abounded, bounded by a bond, for thousand winters he thought it not too long. but I heard the alto girl next to me sang, buhok pinakulong! instead of thought it not too long. I swallowed my laughter and ended up with a bad hiccup that gave way to uncontrollable hiccups. the soprano girl behind me couldnt control herself and doubled up in laughter!
our music teacher punished us all by giving us extra practice time. we had to be deadly serious, not giggling and laughing. our audience paid to hear us sing and had expected perfection.
buhok pinakulong = hair sent to prison.
How about the song “By the time I get to Phoenix, she’ll be rising…” Glen Campbell, I think. Later in the song it is “By the time I reach Albuquerque…” This Filipina would sing “by the time I eat the turkey…”
funny when it is meant to be funny, jokes and laughter all around. we filipinos have that by the truckload.
but the bad thing about mishearing is that a lot of filipinos have hearing problem. not with volume but with clarity.
too often hearing is impaired, we filipinos love loud to loudest noise specially on end of year celebrations with christmas and new year. all that fireworks, firecrackers, indiscriminate firing of firearms into the air, well wishes, etc. the louder the noise the better, and the best of luck to attract. but luck becomes summat elusive and shied away, and bad luck pounced instead. limps got amputated as casualties of firecrackers, people got shot and died due to indiscriminate firing into the air with bullets ricocheting. too much loud noise overtime cause hearing loss.
in the meantime, we laugh while we can, be happy and have good time. tomorrow an audiologist maybe in order. I will forget that I say this.
😂🤣😂
🤣😂🤣 Hard to top that one. +10
Hey, don’t forget the Erap jokes! My favorite is the one where he gets the restaurant bill and asks why it is so high. The waiter says it is partly because of the ambiance. Erap blurts out: “Sino ang nag-order ng ambiance?!”
I’ve been in conversation with Fil-ams here, former Manila folk (because that is a different humor by itself) and we agree that what we miss most about the Philippines is Filipino humor. I love to make my 9 year old granddaughter laugh with my Pinoy pronunciation of English….”lipistik ka ng lipistik, hindi ka naman nag brash your teet!” That is a line from Apo Hiking Society, I think!
I’ve traveled a lot and the two countries with the deepest sense of humor are the Philippines and Egypt. My wife and kid are hilarious. JoeJr is a bit of a mimic and can imitate the way different nationalities speak English and it’s hilarious. His dialog when gaming with foreigners has everyone in stitches.
I think, the Irish has weird sense of humor. have you seen Irish dancing? as long as you dont move your arms and they stay firmly on your side, it is not considered dancing no matter how lively the music, how much you prance around and how high your legs kick in the air. apparently that is how the olden days Irish managed to duck the king of england’s edict that no Irishpeople celebrate and be happy when england was in mourning. so convincing were the Irish that they definitely were not dancing, the english were fooled and the Irish continued on with their dancing, celebrating england’s loss. right under the noses of the english guards.
Wonderful story. Then there’s them Russians who prance about in a squat. Or black tap dancers who tap across desks and tables. We are a weird species.