Tagalog - use of SIYA to refer to non-humans

[Christopher Sundita]

Hi,

Just recently, I ran into a phrase that read "binili ko siya" (I bought it). 
This confused me because I thought this refered to a person.  In reality, it
was referring to a thing. I question the speaker about it and he says it's
quite common around Manila, though not considered "standard" grammar.

As a native speaker, I found this a bit jarring to my ears. I would have used
one of the demonstratives ito, iyan, or iyon instead of "siya" or simply no
pronoun at all (i.e., "binili ko"). I've talked with relatives, who are from
Manila, and they agreed - but we have not lived in the Philippines for almost
20 years.

Are any of you familiar with this phenomenon? Does it exist in other Philippine
languages as well?  I know in Kapampangan it's possible, but their treatment of
pronouns is different than other Philippine languages'.

Thanks

--Chris
http://salitablog.blogspot.com

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