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Chavacano
| Chavacano creole | |
|---|---|
| Chavacano | |
 Extent of the Chavacano language in the Philippines | |
| Official in | Philippines (only in Zamboanga) Malaysia (only in Sabah) |
| Spoken in | Philippines Malaysia Indonesia |
| Region | In the Philippines: Provinces of Zamboanga, Zamboanga del Norte, Zamboanga Sibugay, Zamboanga del Sur, Basilan, Cavite, Cotabato, Davao and Tawi-Tawi In Malaysia: In Tawau and Semporna, Sabah In Indonesia: In Ternate and Tidore.[citation needed] |
| Speakers | 1.2 million [citation needed] |
| Family | Creole language Spanish creole Chavacano |
| Writing system | Latin |
| ISO 639-2 | crp |
| ISO 639-3 | cbk |
Chavacano (chabacano) is a creole language of the Philippines and parts of Malaysia and Indonesia, lexified by Spanish.[1][2]
It is spoken mainly in the city of Zamboanga, and also in the provinces of Zamboanga, Zamboanga del Norte, Zamboanga Sibugay, Zamboanga del Sur, Basilan, Cavite, Cotabato, Davao and Tawi-Tawi in the Philippines; and it has spread through Filipino immigration as far as Semporna in Sabah, Malaysia. It was also spoken in Ternate[3] and Tidore in Indonesia.
According to 2020 figures, Chavacano is spoken by more than 1.2 million people in different areas of the Philippines and by some 45,000 in Sabah (Malaysia).
Historical, social and cultural aspects
Varieties
- In Luzon:
- In Mindanao:
- Castellano Abakay (Davao)
- Cotabateño (Cotabato)
- Zamboangueño (Zamboanga, Basilan and Semporna-Sabbah in Malaysia)
Only the variety spoken in Zamboanga has vitality.
Etymology
Chabacano is a word of Spanish origin meaning "vulgar", "common", "of low quality". During the Spanish colonial period, it was called by the Spanish-speaking population the "street language", "language of the parian" or "kitchen language" to distinguish it from the Spanish spoken by the peninsulares, insulares, mestizos or the upper class called "ilustrados". However, many of its first speakers were of parents of different origin, Chinese immigrants and Spanish or Hispanic American soldiers and civilians.
History of the language
The Chavacano language has a long tradition in the Philippines, as it forms part of its Hispanic heritage, the fruit of contacts between the Zamboangueño population and Spanish speakers, both peninsular and New Spanish (Hispanic American), transferred to the islands of the archipelago. The word comes from the adjective "chabacano", whose meaning is "vulgar" or "artless", since the Spaniards considered this creole language a "vulgar" Spanish. The variety called "ermitaño" has disappeared since the bombardment carried out by American troops and the Japanese bloodletting in the Second World War. [citation needed]
In general in Chavacano the great majority of words are of Spanish origin, but Filipino and the local languages play an important role in the composition of sentences and the grammar. In the past it was disparagingly called the "shop language" or "Spanish of the pariah".
It began based above all on the Spanish language of the Spanish-speaking inhabitants who reached distant Mindanao and their need to communicate with the natives, who spoke a very large number of languages, impossible to learn all at once.
There is also a small Chavacano-speaking community in the north of Sabah, in Malaysia.
The main languages of the Philippines, such as Tagalog, and even more so Visayan, Ilocano and their variants, also have a very marked Spanish influence (in Filipino, of 8,000 root words, 5,000 are of Spanish origin), and there is even influence on the languages of the Caroline Islands, which also, in one way or another, had Spanish influence.
At present there are more than 1.2 million speakers of this language in the Philippines, the vast majority in Zamboanga and in Basilan. In these cities there is radio and television in Chavacano and intense activity to promote its value.
In 1999, a congress titled "Cultiva el lenguaje Chavacano ayer, ahora y hasta para cuando" was held in Zamboanga, organized by the Ateneo de Zamboanga within the framework of the cooperation program between Spain and the Philippines "Towards a Common Future", financed by the Directorate General of Cultural Cooperation and Communication of the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport.
On 19 and October 20, 2000, the Symposium "Shedding Light on the Chavacano Language: Learning from General Linguistics and Similar Cases" was held in Manila, organized by the Instituto Cervantes of that city, with the collaboration of the History Department of the Ateneo de Manila. This institute, maintained by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Spain, seeks to offer courses in Chavacano together with those in Spanish.
Media
At present the Chavacano language is used in various local media, among which the daily television newscast TV Patrol Chavacano stands out.[4]
Linguistic description
Lexicon
Sixty percent of the lexicon comes from Spanish and forty percent from local Philippine languages.
Morphology
As for morphology, it is very similar to that of other creole languages: there is no gender for the singular and plural forms and all nouns are preceded by the article «el». On the other hand, verb tenses are built with particles: ya-kome yo ('I have already eaten, I ate'), ta-canta yo ('I am singing'), ai-canta yo ('I will sing').[5][6]
In the data of Forman (1972) and Grant (2002) for Zamboanga Chavacano, the normal word order is verb–subject–object (VSO), not SVO as in Spanish:
Note in sentence (2) the presence of the nominal pluralizer manga, which is phonologically identical to that of the local Philippine languages. Another characteristic is that nominal words are usually invariant and frequently do not distinguish gender, thus el bisikleta 'the bicycle', el dalaga 'the girl'. However, it has some grammatical categories that do not exist in Spanish, such as the inverse voice, which allows the order of constituents to be altered:
- (5a) maestra ∅ el dalaga
- teacher VOICE.DIRECT ART girl
- (5b) el dalaga amo maestra
- ART girl VOICE.INVER teacher
- 'The girl is a teacher'
Examples[7]
- Ya mirá yo con José.
- ('I saw José.')
- Ya mirá José.
- ('José saw.')
- Ya pidí sila pabor con su tata.
- ('They asked their father for a favor.')
- Ele ya empezá buscá que buscá con el sal.
- ('He/She began to look everywhere for the salt.')
- Ele ya andá na escuela.
- ('He/She went to school.')
- Si Mario ya dormí na casa.
- ('Mario slept in the house.')
- El hombre, con quien ya man encuentro tu, es mi hermano.
- ('The man whom you met is my brother.')
Dialectal varieties
Zamboangueño Chavacano
An example of the dialect would be:
Treinta y cuatro kilómetro desde el pueblo de Zamboanga, Bunguiao un
diutay barrio, estaba como un desierto. No hay gente quien ta quedá.
Abundante en particular de magá animal como puerco, gatorgalla, venao y
otro pa. Magá pajariador lang ta puede visitá con este lugar.
'Thirty-four kilometers from Zamboanga City, Bunguiao, a small barrio, was once a wilderness. No people lived here. The place abounded with wild animals such as pigs, wildcats, deer, and still others. The place was visited only by (bird) hunters.'
The "Our Father"
The Our Father in Zamboangueño
|
(Common)
|
(Formal)
|
Chavacano of Cavite and Ternate
Examples of Chavacano from Cavite and Ternate:
Puede nisos habla: que grande nga pala el sacrificio del mga héroe para niso
independencia. Debe nga pala no niso ulvida con ilos. Ansina ya ba numa?
Debe haci niso mga cosa para dale sabi que ta aprecia niso con el mga heroeque
preparao din niso haci sacrificio para el pueblo. Que laya? Escribi mga
novela como Jose Rizal?'We can say: what great sacrifices our heroes have made for our independence. We must therefore not forget them. Do you like this? We must do things so that it is known that we appreciate our heroes; that we are ready to make sacrifices for our people. How shall we do it? Do we write novels like José Rizal?'
See also
References
- ↑ "Chabacano, el último de Filipinas". El periódico (in español). June 9, 2017. Retrieved July 7, 2017.
- ↑ "El chabacano quiere sobrevivir y dejar de ser un 'español barriobajero' en Filipinas". 20 Minutos (in español). October 16, 2011. Retrieved July 9, 2017.
- ↑ A. P. Grant, 2007, p. 174
- ↑ Atahualpa Amerise (June 9, 2017). "El idioma chabacano, último vestigio del español en Filipinas". La Crónica (in español). Retrieved July 7, 2017.
- ↑ Cf. Pablo M. Díez, "Cruzada para dignificar y extender el chabacano, el español de Filipinas", in Abc of Madrid, 15-IV-2014, http://www.abc.es/cultura/20140415/abci-chabacano-espanol-filipinas-201404132140.html
- ↑ Grant, 2007, pp. 176-179
- ↑ "Chabacano". www.staff.ncl.ac.uk. Retrieved 2020-10-24.
Bibliography
- Grant, Anthony P. (2007). "Some aspects of NPs in Mindanao Chabacano". In Baptista, Marlyse; Guéron, Jacqueline (eds.). Noun Phrases in Creole Languages. Creole Language Library. Vol. 31. John Benjamins Pub Co. pp. 173–204. ISBN 978-90-272-5253-1.
