The Pinoy Version: A Revelation

Abstract

Pinoy is a heterogeneous language that incorporates elements of English into an oral version of Tagalog, the national language of the Philippines. In 2018 the Philippine Bible Society published a written version of the New Testament in Pinoy. This study seeks to explain the success of the translation. The thesis is that any formulation that deviates from the current and natural way of saying something as articulated in its oral form makes the sentence more difficult to understand. (As in any language, it takes a native speaker to discern if a construction is natural.) The Pinoy New Testament translation was undertaken with the goal of reflecting the spoken form so that it would be easy to read and understand.