Template talk:Philippine English

Shari'ah

The international spelling of this word is as Sharia. If we want to get fancy and break out the Hans Wehr transliteration, sharīʿah. Shari'ah being the correct spelling is certainly a unique feature of Philippine English. So, why the revert, Howard the Duck? --Psiĥedelisto (talk • contribs) ^{please always ping!} 17:12, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

"Shari'ah" is not the spelling Philippine English uses. If you'd use Google News, the ratio is an overwhelming 14:1 for "sharia". More people spell "honour" in the Philippines than "shari'ah" (but more still spell "honor"). Howard the Duck (talk) 17:17, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

@Howard the Duck: Uh, but, the law uses Shari'ah. RA 11054. Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas implementing rules sand regulations also: . Legal journals also: Law & Policy, University of Denver. Supreme Court does internally: ; ; (page 74); Rappler has before → ; National Commission on Muslim Filipinos ; the Facebook pages for the associations of Shari'ah lawyers do: , , ; all the way from 1994: ...clearly some news organizations are using the international spelling, but everyone with real authority as it were to decide these things has decided on Shari'ah. Psiĥedelisto (talk • contribs) ^{please always ping!} 17:41, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

WP:NC, please. Google News coughs up "~11700 results for "sharia" and "Philippines", excluding variant spellings. For "Shari'ah" and "Philippines" excluding variant spellings, it coughs up 783 results.

Translating Arabic words into English gives you several spellings for the same more. Muammar Gaddafi can be spelled no less than 5 ways. We'd defer to WP:NC. In the Philippines, it's undisputed that "Sharia" is the most prevalent spelling. Howard the Duck (talk) 17:51, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

@Howard the Duck: These Google News queries are really quite immaterial. South China Morning Post, The Australian, "Bitcoin News", whatever that is; there's really no expectation any of these are written in Philippine English. It's common to localize terms in news stories et cetera, New York Times doesn't transcribe Boris Johnson saying colour; The Guardian doesn't change to using color when talking about America. Psiĥedelisto (talk • contribs) ^{please always ping!} 17:57, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

WP:RS as immaterial? How can that be?

Well, Google used to allow to search by origin, but that's not possible now, therefore I used "Philippines" as a search string, for a lack of a better way to bring up Philippine-based searches. And it still brings up local media using "Sharia". Even the Inquirer used it on Twitter. Even the Supreme Court uses Sharia. They can't possibly be wrong too? Howard the Duck (talk) 18:04, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

@Howard the Duck: Assuming (a) articles about the Philippines should be in Philippine English, all RS without a reasonable expectation of being written in Philippine English, are, yes, completely immaterial. Just because a source is about the Philippines doesn't mean it's in Philippine English. Use by Supreme Court in a "court locator"—I don't know that a spelling mistake some programmer made trumps all of the documented uses of Shari'ah in law, regulations, etc. It seems Shari'a, note apostrophe, is acceptable alternative by the SC per . Again, a tweet by a probably millennial intern, over actual articles in the Philippine Daily Inquirer: ; ; . Psiĥedelisto (talk • contribs) ^{please always ping!} 18:11, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

• ABS-CBN "Bangsamoro Organic Law creates opportunities for financing based on Sharia, for the middle to upper income Muslims"
• GMA "SC allows Sharia consultant for JBC"
• Inquirer "Reach and limits of Sharia"
• Inquirer "it would enshrine certain provisions in the Sharia Law"
• Inquirer "The Muslim Law on Personal Status, based on Sharia law"
• Inquirer "Both are experts in their fields: dean Morado in Sharia law"
• Inquirer "there were proposals to create a constitutional court, a high administrative court and an appellate Sharia court"

If anything, "Shariah" is more prevalent, with Manila Bulletin's searches coughing up a total of three articles all spelled "Shariah". (Or maybe they have a bad search engine?)

And please, stop dragging millennials on to this. If anything, "Shari'ah" is the third most prevalent spelling over "Sharia" and "Shariah", thereby even failing WP:NC even further.

Some additional searches for "Sharia":

• Philstar "we have Islamic financing, the Sharia-compliant stocks"
• Philstar "Sharia Law sought as guide for proposed Bangsamoro state"

Some searches for "Shariah":

• Philstar "blood money does not apply under Shariah or Islamic law"
• Philstar "the Shariah law or judicial system"

I tried searching GMA News for "Shari'ah" and I got a big fat egg. ABS-CBN has two pages worth of news articles with "Shari'ah", all of it local; it does have more than 10 pages for "Sharia", and there were at least 2 pages worth of local news in English using "Sharia", sometimes with the variant "Shari'a", all in one article. There are 7 pages using "Shariah", and the first 2 pages are mostly local news. Again, if anything, we'd rather stay at "sharia" or move to "shariah". Howard the Duck (talk) 18:41, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Here are some Philippine news searches in English from Duterte's favorite news website:

• Rappler "Dimaampao, born in Marawi City, is pushing for the organization of a sharia appellate court"
• Rappler "Sharia court employee shot dead in Jolo"
• Rappler "former head of a sharia court in Central Mindanao"

For "Shari'ah", these are the only two that I can find. Most of the results are in Indonesian.

• Rappler "Bicam approves creation of Shari'ah High Court"
• Rappler "Islamic banks differ from regular banks as they adhere to Shari’ah law"

I counted 7 news articles about the Philippines in English using "Shariah". Again, most likely millennials made these, and they're apparently terrible spellers. Howard the Duck (talk) 18:49, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

@Howard the Duck: Thanks for taking the time to do this research. I'm sorry if my use of the word millenial offended you. I'm 26, so I am one as well—I was using the word as a stand in for inexperienced or not the reporters themselves. I thought it strange you were leaning on tweets is all. So, putting this together with what you wrote over at Talk:Sharia in the Philippines, it seems to me like (a) it is a common usage to call the concept of Sharia law Sharia, but (b) the individual courts themselves should be Shari'a or Shari'ah. Is that your understanding as well? Psiĥedelisto (talk • contribs) ^{please always ping!} 20:01, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

It depends as per WP:NC. If WP:RS call it "Sharia Court", we follow WP:RS. I stalked a Sharia Circuit Court in Iligan, and it spells itself as "Shari'a Circuit Court", just like what the law that created it. Now, I dunno what WP:RS calls it. Howard the Duck (talk) 20:08, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Also, why even bring up a variant of the spelling rarely used used in the Philippines, of a word that's not used that much in the Philippines? I don't see any of the spelling variants for "sharia" are specified in similar templates. It's always three from colour, realise, travelled and analyse. British English has more words, but, yes, no variants of "sharia". Maybe because it's a loanword of English? Howard the Duck (talk) 17:28, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

@Howard the Duck: See the above, it's not a rare variant spelling, but the correct spelling. Perhaps your latter argument is better, but I was looking for easily provable differences between Philippine English and American/UK English, to show the differences, and I believe Shari'ah is one. Psiĥedelisto (talk • contribs) ^{please always ping!} 17:43, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

You can watch GMA-7 all day and won't encounter the word "sharia" being uttered... even in news programs. You'd probably have to watch an entire month for it to be uttered. It simply is not relevant enough to be listed here. Howard the Duck (talk) 17:51, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

@Howard the Duck: OK, that's fine; but I made changes to article titles as well, i.e., Shari'ah in the Philippines, so I'm interested in the question in general. Psiĥedelisto (talk • contribs) ^{please always ping!} 17:58, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

@Howard the Duck: Which you seem to have undone...even though every court calls itself Shari'ah Court in the law. It really doesn't matter what international media call it. Not one bit. Psiĥedelisto (talk • contribs) ^{please always ping!} 17:59, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Yes, because local WP:RS use "sharia" instead of this spelling. By a wide margin. Howard the Duck (talk) 18:08, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

@Howard the Duck: Sorry, I don't see proof local RS prefer "Sharia", certainly not by a wide margin. Some news articles have it, fine, but it has an official name in the Bangsamoro Organic Law; the courts likewise have official names; Shari'ah lawyers call themselves Shari'ah lawyers. Shari'ah in the Philippines is about the organization of the Shari'ah court system, there's no reason to not use the official spelling of Shari'ah as per Congress. I don't get why this is at all controversial, or why you leaned for so long on international media, as if they matter. Psiĥedelisto (talk • contribs) ^{please always ping!} 18:16, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

WP:OFFICIAL. Official use doesn't mean it is the most used of all. If anything I'd agree with using "Shari'ah" iff both official and WP:NC usages of it are one and the same. "Shari'ah" isn't even the top 2 usages in the Philippines. Howard the Duck (talk) 18:29, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Minor typo

The template renders with a misplaced space around the clause enumerating unique Philippine English terms. Note that there is an extra space before the parenthesized clause (which is automatically corrected), and a missing space after it.

i.e. "some terms may be different or absent from (including jeepney and cyberlibel)other (sic) varieties of English."

This template uses the terms parameter to enumerate the unique Philippine English words. None of the other English variant templates use the terms parameter and documentation on this parameter is absent from the Template:English variant notice documentation, so I suspect this parameter has been deprecated. I suggest we either scrap the terms parameter or cascade this to the editors managing Template:English variant notice. PaoloBarts (talk) 06:10, 7 September 2025 (UTC)