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As a historical colony of the United States, the Philippine English lexicon shares most of its vocabulary from American English, but also has loanwords from native languages and Spanish, as well as some usages, coinages, and slang peculiar to the Philippines. Some Philippine English usages are borrowed from or shared with British or Commonwealth English, for various reasons. Due to the influence of the Spanish language, Philippine English also contains Spanish-derived terms, including Anglicizations, some resulting in false friends, such as "salvage". Philippine English also borrowed words from Philippine languages, especially native plant and animal names (e.g. ampalaya, balimbing), and cultural concepts with no exact English equivalents (e.g. kilig); some borrowings from Philippine languages have entered mainstream English, such as abaca and ylang-ylang.
Some terms are only used in some regions. Examples are bringhouse (bringing food home from fiestas), which is only used in the Visayas, and haggard (police on motorcycles), which is used only in Visayas and Mindanao.