Chabacano: The Case of Philippine Creole Spanish in Cavite

This study is an assessment of the vitality of the Manila Bay Chabacano varieties spoken in Cavite City and Ternate, Philippines. These Spanish-lexified creoles have often been described as endangered, but until now there has been no systematic description of how stable the varieties are. The evaluation of the vitality of Manila Bay Chabacano is made based on participant observation and interviews conducted in both communities over the past nine years, using the UNESCO (2003) framework. Comparison between the two varieties shows that the proportional size of the speech community, degree of urbanization, and proximity to Manila account for differences in the vitality of the creoles. In rural Ternate, Chabacano is more stable in terms of intergenerational transmission and the proportion of speakers to the overall community. In the more urban Cavite City, most speakers are of the grandparental generation, but the community is more organized in its language preservation efforts. This study sheds light on two creole varieties in need of further documentation and sociolinguistic description, as well as the status of minority languages in the Philippines. It also offers a critical assessment of a practically-oriented methodological framework and demonstrates its application in the field.

2019

This paper discusses perspectives on language description and endangerment in creole communities, with a special focus on Chabacano-speaking communities in the Philippines. I will show how, from the early days of research on these varieties, linguists with an interest in Chabacano often present the varieties under study as endangered in a moribund state or aim to describe a ‘pure’ Chabacano system without Philippine or English influences, silencing a great deal of the daily multilingualism and hybrid language practices that have always been present in the communities. In general, this paper sheds light on the complex dynamics of discourses on endangerment and authenticity in research about multilingual communities. It also contributes to the discussion on how these types of contexts challenge common Western assumptions about language loss and on authenticity in multilingual communities.

2013

This study analyzes the origins and development of the phonology of Cavite Chabacano, focusing particularly on the role of superstrate and substrate influence on the history of the vowel system. This endangered language, spoken in Cavite City, Philippines, is a Spanish-lexified creole with Tagalog as the substrate. The study incorporates sociophonetic methodology, insights from second language phonological acquisition, and consideration of the language attitudes and ideologies of the speakers in order to describe the development of the phonological system. The data come from word list tasks, reading tasks, interviews, and perceptual dialectology tasks conducted during six months of fieldwork. The first part of the study describes the segmental and prosodic phonology of Cavite Chabacano, including synchronic and diachronic variation related to how the phonological system developed over time under input from the substrate and superstrate systems, particularly with respect to the vowel system. Modern Cavite Chabacano has a 5-vowel system like the superstrate Spanish and generally preserves Spanish forms faithfully, but there are some words that have vowels differing from the Spanish forms in ways that indicate early substrate influence from the Old Tagalog 3-vowel system. The second part of the study focuses on the sociophonetic analysis of the vowel system, arguing that it is at the phonetic rather than the phonological level where substrate/adstrate influence in the language is most evident. Stressed vowels and phrase-final vowels are significantly different from unstressed and nonfinal vowels in terms of vowel quality and duration. These phonetic patterns are more characteristic of the substrate Tagalog than of the superstrate Spanish. The results also confirm and expand upon previous claims (German 1932, Miranda 1956) about dialectal variation in the vowel system. The dialects of the Caridad and San Roque districts of Cavite City both have acoustic overlap between unstressed high and mid vowels, but in San Roque there is more phrase-final mid vowel raising, particularly for /e/. Overall, Caridad has a more dispersed vowel system compared to San Roque, perhaps indicating greater phonetic restructuring as the additional vowel contrasts of Spanish were acquired. However, substrate influence in the prosodic conditioning and phonetic realization of the vowels is evident in both districts. The third part of the study shows that Cavite Chabacano speakers have high metalinguistic awareness of this dialectal variation in the vowel system, and that the San Roque dialect has greater prestige. It is argued that substrate influence in the vowel system initially arose through phonetic restructuring during second language acquisition, but that due to sociohistorical and ideological motivations, the substrate features were retained even as Cavite Chabacano phonology otherwise conformed to standard Spanish in terms of other features. The study combines methodology and insights from sociophonetics, historical phonology, second language acquisition, and perceptual dialectology in order to provide a nuanced account of how the Cavite Chabacano vowel system emerged and developed over time. The results demonstrate how substrate influence in creoles can be evident at the phonetic as well as the phonological level, and how sociohistorical factors can shape the development of the language.

Indigenous Languages of Latin America Actas del …, 2011

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R. Ludwig, P. Mühlhäusler, S. Pagel (eds.) 2019: Linguistic ecology and language contact. Cambridge: CUP, 2019

In the last contribution of part four, Steve Pagel ties in again with the reflections of the theoretical articles in this volume by demonstrating how a non-ecological analysis and the use of ‘non-natural’ data can result in essentially misguided judgments. His subject matter is the historical contact between two genetically and typologically unrelated languages: Spanish and Chamorro on the Mariana Islands. Pagel compiles heterogeneous contact typological evaluations of Chamorro from the last decades, in which classifications in and beyond several categories of the contact/mixed/new language type are proposed. By examining the underlying methods and empirical data, he reveals individual problems and ultimately proposes an alternative classification of Chamorro, guided by an ecological analysis and based on ‘natural’ data.

The Ternate Local Government in 2011 approved Municipal Ordinance No. 01 S-2011 which requires all primary schools in the municipality to include Chabacano in the list of subjects. The ordinance was implemented to preserve the province’s mother tongue which is Chabacano, which is now considered endangered. This study deals with the assessment of the ordinance and the improvements it has brought among residents. Data were gathered through triangulations which surveyed students of the three most populated schools in Ternate – Ternate Central Elementary School, San Juan Elementary School, and Sapang Elementary School; Focus Groups Discussion (FGD) with selected students; and Focus Interviews with the school principals and local government officials. The instruments’ analyses yield the assumption that the ordinance was able to attain its goal of students speaking Chabacano. Nevertheless, usage of the language differs on where and with whom it is communicated. Some students speak Chabacano when conversing with social groups while others use it outside their circles; however, certain students speak the language during class hours only. Teachers were given references for teaching; but it was reported that the said manual was “insufficient” to educate the students. As a result, understanding the language and how to use it were never easy for both teachers and students. The discovery suggests that through the ordinance, elementary students were able to be educated about the province’s mother tongue; however, it is discovered that the implementation of the ordinance to preserve the language is still not enough. Keywords: Chabacano, Communication Strategies, Mother Tongue, Language, Assessment, Communication Situations

Globally, languages are disappearing at an unprecedented rate. People who belong to language groups must be aware of the factors that lead to language extinction or endangerment to make effective choices about how to preserve the language's future. This paper discusses the Pangasinan language (the eighth most widely spoken language in the Philippines) and its decline. It gives an outline of the Pangasinan language's current vitality and covers the Philippines' language policy history. It also considers a situation in which globalization may provide unexpected chances for language revitalization. This study seeks to serve as a springboard for future research and aids teachers and other relevant educational personnel in identifying, comprehending, assessing, and implementing appropriate language-endangerment remedies. The authors also provide suggestions for future research based on their findings.

This paper is a critical summary of three studies on Chavacano. Whinnom gave a detailed history and theory on the emergence of Chavacano and its dialects; Forman showed how Chavacano is a language with its own system, and not a bastardized Spanish ; Lipski continued Whinnom’s work by giving his own refined theory on the formalization of Zamboangueño Chavacano, different to that of Whinnom’s. The primary aim of this paper is to assess whether Chavacano is a Philippine Spanish Creole or Filipinized Spanish Creole.

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), 2023

The development of the sugar industry in the town Violeta (located in the central region of Cuba), at the end of the second decade of the 20th century, caused the external and internal migration of Haitians to this territory of Ciego de Ávila; whose presence has been notable not only in economic terms, but also culturally, especially in the contact between Creole and the Spanish language. However, today it is evident that the linguistic identity brought from Haiti has been weakened by a group of descendants who deny its Antillean roots; while others advocate its maintenance. In this sense, a sociolinguistic study was carried out to determine what level of conservation is manifested in Haitian creol and what are the causes or reasons that contribute to the existence of diverse linguistic realities. For this, we worked with a group of 28 informants-without distinction of sex-that correspond to Haitian emigrants and their descendants born in Cuba; those who kept the Creole language in a diglossic state, but gradually replaced it with other modes of speech. The present study focused on the phonetic and syntactic level, which shows how, from the contact between languages-and the need for the Haitian to try to learn Spanish as a second language-, a mixture of linguistic codes was produced without that a Creolization of Spanish was produced. In addition to understanding how three evolutionary trends have manifested in creol: maintenance, weakening and cancellation.