- About the Philippines
- The Filipino People
- The Economy
- Why Visit the Country?
- When to Visit
- Entering the Country
- Moving Around the Islands
The Filipino People
Most Filipinos refer to themselves colloquially as “Pinoy” (feminine: “Pinay”), which is a slang word formed by taking the last four letters of “Pilipino” and adding the diminutive suffix “-y”.
The pre-1987 Philippine alphabet (Abakada)’s lack of the letter “F” had caused the letter “F” to be substituted with “P”. This is the reason, when the 28-letter modern Filipino alphabet has been made official in 1987, the name Filipino was preferred over Pilipino.
In a survey conducted by Social Weather Stations (SWS), more than 60 percent of the 1,200 respondents said they were very proud to be Filipinos while more than 30 percent claimed they were proud of their national identity. The respondents also cited the following qualities of the Filipinos: God-centered, industrious, faithful, has convictions, responsible, peaceful and law-abiding, and loving and caring.
Despite the many problems hounding the Philippines, Filipinos still consider themselves as among the happiest people in the world. Results of regional surveys conducted by MTV-Asia, ACNielsen and the Economist magazine have indicated that Filipinos are the happiest people in Asia.
In the World Values Survey conducted by University of Michigan, the Philippines was ranked 12th among 54 countries in the world in terms of happiness index. Among Asian countries, it was ranked first. According to the survey, the top ten happiest nations in the world were Iceland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark, Australia, Ireland, Switzerland, Great Britain and Venezuela.
