By Thelma Bowlen

“Puerto Ricena?” The guest smiled at me as I waved hello.

“No,” I smiled back as I continued walking. “Filipina!”

I get this a lot. The choices are always that I’m from Puerto Rico, Panama, Thailand, or China, or a mixture of any of the above, but never the Philippines. Unless it’s a fellow Filipino asking me where I’m from. Even then, there is always doubt in the asking.

I often make the same mistake. My heart skips a beat as I tentatively ask, “Are you from the Philippines?”

“No,” came the reply one day from the pretty girl with brown skin and long black hair. “Indonesia.” She smiled.

But the one thing that I am never wrong about is detecting a Filipino accent. My years in broadcasting trained my ears to discern my fellow comrades in radio and TV commercials. “That’s Rey,” I would declare at my car radio while stuck in traffic on EDSA as the Mitsubishi ad came on. “May has yet another ad I didn’t get hired for . . .”

I would continue when the latest PLDT commercial played.

“And this one went to Lily . . . ,” I would announce as a Pamper’s commercial aired.

It’s a gift I have not been able to use since arriving in the US last September. This knowing-who-it-is-who-did-the-ad trick of mine.

What I do get to use this skill for is in knowing when I’m speaking to a Filipino either in person or over the phone when I call Dell or Capital One or the Orlando Sentinel or Sprint. The first thing I ask is “Pinoy (or Pinay) ka?” after which, I proudly launch into my second tongue and conduct my side of the customer care call 95 percent in Tagalog. Depending on the company, the poor rep is sometimes not allowed to speak in our shared tongue, so they politely tell me so, to which I say, “Okay lang! [That's fine]) Ako na lang ang mag-ta-Tagalog para sa ating dalawa. [I'll speak Tagalog for the both of us.]” They always laugh. Having once been a training manager for customer contact centers in the Philippines, I know how tough their jobs can get so now that I’m on the other end of the phone, I figured the least I could do is let them hear a kindred language.

The voice talent in me has nearly mastered a New York accent courtesy of one of my colleagues who was born and raised in the Bronx. When I’m on a roll, Edwin tells me I sound pretty good. I don’t know if I could keep it up consistently in Manhattan though, should I decide to pass myself off as a local when or if I get to visit. I am absolutely sure though that I can say “cawfee” just like Fran Drescher.

The hotel where I work now is the perfect place to hear accents and to learn the most basic greetings in at least four languages–Creole, Spanish, Russian, and English. What amazes me is how similar Tagalog and Spanish are. Words that I never realized found their origins in Spanish now play in my ears in a new way.

“Como esta?” is merely the longer version of the Filipino “Kumusta?” The phrases go on. We greet each other in the hallways in each other’s languages. “Kumusta ka?” comes at me from an African-American face. Or I’ll smile a reply to my Latino friends’ greetings, “Muy bien!” Or “Todo bien!” in Portuguese.

It’s all good. Soon, I will learn more than just his and hellos. You never know where life can take you. Another language or two can always come in handy whether in person or on the phone back home with a customer service rep who just might find it amusing to hear a caller halfway around the world speak his native tongue.

Thelma Bowlen is now based in Florida, having returned to the US after 27 years in the Philippines. Back in Manila, she was known as Joey on the Philippine FM radio morning show “Zach and Joey in the Morning.” Read about her story on Exits and Entrances.

Photo credit: Thelma Bowlen