I received the following e-mail this morning from Forum member Juanito T. Fuerte: Hi, Joe,
What do you think of a formal or semi-formal business letter that starts out yelling “Greetings!” or “Cheers!” before proceeding with the main body of the letter? I certainly don’t have any hang-ups about it, but I want to know if this is a normal or an acceptable practice here in the Philippines so that I won’t get embarrassed if I started using the same.
Incidentally, when I left the Philippines for America many moons ago, the title of respect “
po” was used only in connection with addressing an elderly by a younger person or, by a child when addressing an adult but, never by an elder to a younger person. Now, I hear everybody—both young adult and older folks alike—using the word when addressing each other. It’s nice to hear that everybody seems to have become more respectful to/of each other but, the word “
po” from an elder person to a younger one still sounds odd to me. It makes me wonder if we have lost the true meaning and intent of the word so that we now use it loosely and casually.
On second thought, maybe the Filipino people have simply decided that the word “
po” is just as appropriate from a younger person to an elderly as well as from the elderly to a younger person. Now, if some of the folks in high public places could also learn to be respectful especially of the country’s coffers, the people would have more reason to say “greetings” and “cheers” to each other!
My reply to Juanito:Frankly, I think the use of “Greetings!” or “Cheers!” to start a formal or semi-formal business letter shows superficiality, vagueness, laziness, and utter lack of imagination on the part of the writer. It’s terribly unpleasant to be greeted either way and I must admit that at least in my case, these expressions set the wrong tone for whatever pleasant or unpleasant message follows afterward in the letter or e-mail. I would rather that the writer greet me with a plain “Hi!” or “Hello!” or go straight to the point of his letter without any salutation.
As to the widespread use of the Tagalog word “
po” these days, I feel that people take recourse to it not so much as a sign of respect or deference but simply to approximate the sense of the English adverb “please” or the French “
s’il vous plaît” to express politeness. We all know that Tagalog doesn’t have a direct and precise word for “please”; all it has by way of rough translations are “
Puede po[ho] ba?”, “
Maaari po[ho] ba?”, and “
Paki,” all of which are semantically off the mark because they sound more like supplicating than expressing politeness. However, not using them gives the form of address in Tagalog a rough edge to it, so people are compelled to use “
po” by default to soften it up. (When you tell someone, whether young or old, “
Buksan mo ang bintana”—that’s “Please close the window” in polite English—without any of these three default expressions, you’ll come across as a blunt and disrespectful character.) I know that this will be disconcerting to a lot of people like you who have been away from the Philippines for a long time, but this is an unpalatable language reality that we have to live with and learn to take with a grain of salt, so to speak.
I have to disagree with you, though, when you say that there should be more reason for Filipinos to say “greetings” and “cheers” to one another if folks in high public places in the country would learn to be respectful of the country’s coffers. The incidence of graft and corruption in our government, on one hand, and expressing ourselves properly and politely, on the other, are mutually exclusive things. I therefore think that even if all of our public officials become scrupulously honest and saintly overnight, we should still avoid starting our letters with lazy and superficial salutations like “Greetings!” and “Cheers!” as a matter of courtesy and good English.
