Author Topic: “Blue the kick! Blue the kick!”  (Read 3215 times)

Joe Carillo

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“Blue the kick! Blue the kick!”
« on: September 01, 2014, 12:06:27 AM »
A letter to me from a Forum member based in Exeter, Pennsylvania (August 31, 2014):
 
Dear Mr. Carillo,
 
A couple of years ago, I went to Hawaii to attend a friend’s birthday celebration. When the birthday celebrant was about to blow the lighted candles on his cake, a Doña Dionisia look-alike dressed in ballroom dancer’s attire suddenly blurted out of the blue and shouted, “Blue the kick! Blue the kick!”
 
Everyone guffawed except me and some American guests who did not get the Filipino joke. Minutes later, somebody explained to us what was behind the gimmick. Well, I laughed but my response came in too late. Anyway, there’s a saying that “He who laughs last, laughs best.”
 
I have heard so many times before that the Philippines is the third largest English-speaking country in the world. If this is so, why is it that many words in the world’s lingua franca are spoken differently in different regions in the Philippines?
 
Many thanks and please continue writing your weekly column in The Manila Times that I never miss reading.
 
Yours truly,
Rocky Avila