Snacking

In our curioua and funny version of English, we have many many peculiarities that amy cause other countiies to smile and nod appreciaby. Among the many I’ve noticed is our predilection for adding the word “Top” to certain other words when they mean a high honor. As in their child achieving the highest accolade in class as being the Top One when they merely mean the First Honor. Adding the “Top” to it makes some sort of sense in their limited command of the language. Using such a  double superlative is uniquely Filipino.

It has always disturbed me when Fiipininsms like this pop up now and then. It’s fine, i guess and not worth the effort to correct anyway. I’ve seen worse, and I know what they mean to say. But when the word is appllied to a proper name, I feel it’s taking it a bit too far. It’s making the mistke more acceptable and immortalizing it in our cultural experience.

This morning, I came across a guesting of a new band called Top One Project on my morning watching habit Unang Hirit. These days, I sleep in the day and am up most of the night. I watch Unang Hirit, which starts at 4:55am, for the latest news and information. They’re great at that, although the show sometimes devolves into a quasi-vatiety show, and they invite dance groups, singers and bands to perform on the show, This morning, they had invited Top One Project.

Calling a band Top One Project immortalizes the mistake and further validates/promotes the wrong application of the term, creating a new Filipinism. Call me a Grammar Nazi. I just can’t stand mistakes like these.