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Specifically Turkey, which is officially, politically, and geographically both part of Asia and Europe. The largest part, Anatolia, is part of Asia. So yes, by the other posters logic, Iranians, Iraqis, Turks, Pakistanis are Asians.
So, bottom line, it's not that simple to put the country in a category because the Philippines was rulled by Spain for almost 356 years. One cannot categorically deny their Spanish culture. It has been influenced by a number of cultures, Muslim Arabs in the 1300s, the Chinese merchant traders, the Rule of Spain for 356 years, and the most recent the United States. But, to deny their Spanish culture of 356 years is just silly.
As an expat that worked in the Philippines, I saw the Spanish culture everywhere from their religion to their food to the name sake of the country from King Philip of Spain. Heck, even their currency today is the peso. The Filipino culture is predominantly Spanish in almost every way and comparable to the Latin countries. The original national anthem was written and sang in Spanish. The flag that they raised during their revolution had "VIVA LA REPUBLICA FILIPINA" written on it. Traditions and celebrated holidays and important days are the same as the days celebrated in Spanish speaking countries.
What makes it difficult for people to understand and easy to deny their Spanish culture is that Spanish isn't widely spoken throughout the country, only by the upper class of society and every generation it's even less. There are also full blooded Spaniards in the Philippines that cannot Speak Spanish unlike their parents generation.
One reason why Spanish wasn't widely Spoken is because the Spanish Friars made it a point that the masses should not learn to speak and read Spanish. The Friars kept things in secrecy and it was advantageous for the Friars to keep the masses with as little knowledge of Spanish as possible even though it was the official language. The upper class and educated were the group that ultimately spoke the Spanish language. Well, one might asked, how can a country not speak Spanish after 356 years of Spanish rule. Well, just look at the native Americans in the US and Canada, only 3 Native American laguages in the US and Canada are expected to survive into the next 40 years, despite the many different Native American Languages that has survived for thousands of years. The past policy of the American government by promoting English and banning the native language has to do with it. In the Philipines case it was the other way around, they kept Spanish in secrecy and not widely taught, the results are the same, when a ruling power promotes one language over the other, it will succeed.
When the Americans took over the country in 1898, Spanish was banned completely and English promoted, as a result of that, English is widely spoken in the Philippines today. With the exception of the poor communties in the provinces, the mode of instruction in the Philippines is the English language, meaning if you attend a math class in high school or college, the class is taught in English. When people from a different provinces can't speak Tagalog, even though Tagalog is one of the official language, the other English, they speak in English to communicate.
It is this reason, why Spanish is not widely spoken today in the Philippines today but one cannot deny their Spanish heritage of 356 years.
Does being catholic make a country Spanish?
Did Filipinos chose to name themselves afer king philip?
What unifying language shuld the anthem have been sung in? They did bot have a national language during independence.
As for food, what about the Mexican and asian influenced? There are a lot of chinese influence in the food.. Does it make the country Chinese?
Hispanic was just an American term invented in 1970 or something for convenience purposes for the census for someone self-identifying as coming from Latin America (other Spanish-influenced cultures qualify but probably the term was just used because there was enough of a number of Latin American-origin people in the US to make it noteworthy on a census).
This thread contains a question which asks forumers about what they think. It's not about absolute right or wrong, but about differing opinions and I think we should respect others' opinions, even if they belong to a minority.
Some may think Philippines are Hispanic or Semi-Hispanic and they should be given the chance to at least express their reasons, which wouldn't be possible of the thread was closed.
That said, I'll let the mods decide if they want to close this or not.
This thread contains a question which asks forumers about what they think. It's not about absolute right or wrong, but about differing opinions and I think we should respect others' opinions, even if they belong to a minority.
Some may think Philippines are Hispanic or Semi-Hispanic and they should be given the chance to at least express their reasons, which wouldn't be possible of the thread was closed.
That said, I'll let the mods decide if they want to close this or not.
Neutre, agreed. I don't think the mods would shut this thread down because it's popular. It should remain open. This country is one of the most mysterious in the world.
The people of the Philippines are both Hispanic (the Spaniards think so), Asians (because they are physically located in Asia by the definition of the Western conquerors) and Pacific Islanders ( DNA proven ).
If you take that only 1% of the Filipino population has any spanish ancestory, it's not hard to see that We are NOT hispanic.
I do not accept them hispanics anymore they accept me being one of them, We are our own people.
Religion is the worst import that could have landed it's shores.
If you take that only 1% of the Filipino population has any spanish ancestory, it's not hard to see that We are NOT hispanic.
I do not accept them hispanics anymore they accept me being one of them, We are our own people.
Religion is the worst import that could have landed it's shores.
Islam & Hindu was also imported in the Philippines from earlier migration in the Philippines. some of the earlier settler of the Philippines religion is Hindu & Animist. Islam was brought in by middle easterners.
I guess the worst invader that came to the Philippines I think was the Japanese empire army during WWII. A lot of our elders struggled as comfort women, they get abused and raped, the reason why the Japanese came in to the Philippines was because the US Naval bases was inside the Philippines territory & that we were under the US colony at that time. Japanese enemy at that time was the United States. I guess I couldn't blame it to Spain all the bad things happened in the Philippines, today the enemy of the Filipinos are those corrupt Filipino officials working in the government.
This seems like an easy question until you start to think of many nations in Latin America. Consider Mexico where 30% (conservative estimate) of the population are indigenous Americans with no Spanish blood whatsoever and often Spanish is not their first language. So taking that into consideration The Philippines might fall into that area. If your name is Perez, Garcia, Ramos etc you certainly can count yourself as Hispanic. It seems like a multi-ethnic country. You also have a lot of people of Chinese descent and all those groups mentioned in the post by Pinal.
The whole Hispanic idea is a mischaracterization invented for convenience by Anglo-North Americans. It is language that really decides what you call Latin American nations. There is no term to define a nation by language in English that I can think of. The so-called Hispanic population of most countries is "Hispanoparlante" or "Spanish speaking". In that case the Philippines is not a Hispanic country. I met a lot of Filipinos in Spain who claim Spanish ancestry and they can define themselves as Hispanic if the wish.
We tend to do this with language disregarding the feelings of the people we are talking about. If you are born in the USA you actually have no name for your own nationality as the word "American" can apply to anyone born in The Americas. Some languages call us officially by our US citizenship like in Spanish "Estadounidense" and sometimes hyphenated to Estado-Unidense.
When I was a student in Japan in the 1960's I had a friend and classmate from the Philippines named Leonardo Sarmiento, now it doesn't get more Spanish than that. He and most of his friends spoke fluent Spanish and so did I so we mostly communicated in Spanish. At that time most of the wealthy Filipinos went to private Catholic Schools usually staffed with Spanish friars and nuns. The Filipinos of that era stayed pretty close to their Spanish roots. I don't know how it is today but I imagine that there are still a lot of people there who hold their Spanish background in high esteem.
After I left Japan I lived in Spain for 15 years and found that again the economic well off from the Philippines sent they children to Spain to study and many remained in Spain and married Spaniards. I was brought up on the West Coast in Los Angeles CA where there are a lot of Filipinos. Interestingly the Filipino kids I went to HS with often had Spanish surnames but tended to become part of the Asian community rather than the Hispanic community and if they married non-Filipinos their partners were predominately Asian. I found the same was true in Hawaii. As Pinai showed us on another thread the Filipino people have faces as varied as most American countries and are a rainbow of colors. So I can understand how one person like the above poster easily identifies with the Spanish background and another with the Asian.
Very interesting people, they can look like almost anything.
Exactly. And some of us like to put people in boxes and make them choose. We are unfortunately often conditioned to think in terms of
"either Y or X or .."
instead of
"Y as well as X as well as ..".
Some folks like to insist that Philippines are either Pacific Islander or Asian, assuming that PI and Asian are mutually exclusive, even though Philippines are unquestionably linguistically and phenotypically much closer to Pacific Islanders than to East or South Asians, as pinai and the videos show us.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pinai
So to the question "Are Philippines .. ?", one can answer:
Pacific Islander ~ Yes
Asian ~ Yes
Hispanic ~ [see poll options ]
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