IN describing Philippine English, I begin with vocabulary and not typically with pronunciation, simply because vocabulary would have to be used in both speech and writing. I shall describe Philippine English pronunciation much later when I have already discussed language structures appearing in both speech and writing. Linguists have a more technical term for 'vocabulary,' and that is 'lexicon.' There would, indeed, be technical differences between the two, but I shall save you readers from that kind of puzzle since that is not the focus of today's column.