Tyron Judes D.

Casumpang May 6, 2015

PS 220 Final Requirement Dr. Santamaria

Zamboangueño Chavacano:
Philippine Spanish Creole or Filipinized Spanish Creole?

This paper aims to shed light on different questions regarding

Chavacano. To do this, three sources shall be used as primary references:
Spanish Contact Vernaculars in the Philippine Islands by Keith Whinnom
(1956), Zamboanga Texts with Grammatical Analysis by Michael Forman
(1972), and The Place of Chavacano in the Philippine Linguistics Profile by
John Lipski (2001). These studies are linked to each other to the extent that
Forman will refer a number of times to Whinnom – being one of first scholars
to investigate on Chavacano – and Lipski to both Forman and Whinnom. All
three supplied grammatical analysis for Chavacano. However, each one’s
primary contribution in his study shall be different. 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 contrary to some scholars’ valuation of the language;
lastly, Lipsky continued Whinnom’s work by giving his own refined theory on
the formalization of Zamboangueño Chavacano, different to that of
Whinnom’s.
These major points discussed by Whinnom, Forman, and Lipski shall
be the main content of this paper together with some additional topics:
grammatical comparison of Zamboangueño Chavacano, Tagalog, and
Spanish; and an evaluation of Zamboangueño Chavacano as Philippine
Spanish Creole or Filipinized Spanish Creole.
Lastly, a few issues and terminologies must be clarified. As evident in
how the three authors approached the word ‘Chavacano’, the term then
pertains to a language existing in the Philippines, and not to a particular ethnic
group, unlike Tagalog which refers to both the language and the people.
According to Whinnom, Chavacano has four dialects in different places in the

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Philippines: Ermita, Cavite, Zamboanga, and Davao. That is why, the term
cannot pertain to a single ethno-linguistic group given that it is a consolidation
of its various dialects from different places in the country.
The Philippine Spanish Creole language spoken in these places are
referred to as Chavacano, which means awkward and clumsy in Spanish. It is
a term the Spaniards used to call the contact vernacular that emerged in the
country. The term eventually lost its negative connotation to those speaking
the contact vernacular. According to a native Chavacano speaker for
Zamboanga, they use ‘Chavacano’ to refer to their language in general and
Zamboangueño, on the other hand, to refer to the residents of Zamboanga.
This paper primarily focuses on the Chavacano dialect used in Zamboanga.
For practical reasons, this paper shall use Zamboangueño to refer to the
Chavacano dialect spoken in Zamboanga.
Philippine Spanish Creole and contact vernacular shall also be
interchangeably used to refer to the Chavacano dialects in general.

The origin of Philippine Spanish Creole (Whinnom)

The very first Philippine contact vernacular emerged in the island of
Ternate in Moluccas, not in the Philippine islands. And the language the
Spaniards met when they arrived at Ternate was already a Portuguese pidgin.
During the 16th to 17th century, the Portuguese had a short-lived
occupation at Ternate. Like Spain, Portugal also sponsored expeditions and in
1521, the ship Victoria reached Ternate and established a permanent garrison
there. By 1540, the Portuguese were able to extend their power all over the
Moluccas and suppressed the sultanates on the islands. Come 1574, they
were driven from Ternate due to a revolt led by the sultan’s son avenging his
father’s death.
It was around this period that a Portuguese pidgin developed in
Ternate. According to Whinnom, when the Spaniards arrived, a Portuguese
contact vernacular was already existing in the area. Portuguese and Malay
were the lingua franca in the Eastern seas during that time, and even the
Dutch used Portuguese when trading at Ternate. So, it would not be

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surprising to encounter a Portuguese pidgin in the area. Even in the 32-year
gap between the Portuguese withdrawal and Spanish occupation in the
Moluccas, the popularity of Portuguese language was still strong. And it is
from this language that Philippine Spanish Creole shall be developed.
In 1606, the Spanish fleet arrived at Ternate and destroyed its
sultanate. Just like the Portuguese, they established their own garrison there.
According to Whinnom, the garrison soldiers shall be the ones responsible for
the emergence of the Spanish contact vernacular in the area. These garrison
soldiers kasi were the ones most likely to have direct personal and linguistical
contact with the natives of Ternate and not those in the high positions. These
soldiers did not have much racial prejudice unlike their commanders and so,
their contact with the natives eventually led to intermarriage and the
proliferation of the Spanish contact vernacular.
Whinnom emphasizes the need for intermarriage to explain the
development of Ternateño, the term he uses for the Spanish contact
vernacular at Ternate. Spanish was not the lingua franca at that time. Thus, a
contact vernacular based on it was less likely to arise if not for intermarriage.
Cases of other contact vernaculars in the world developed even with minimal
intermarriages for the contact vernacular was based on the lingua franca.
Moreover, these military troops were illiterate soldiers who had no
linguistic inclinations. And so, a pure preservation of their language would not
be of their primary concern. To break the language barrier, they taught the
natives simple vocabulary and inflection. The natives consequently used
analogical simplification on what was transmitted to them. Most of these
soldiers were Mexican mestizos that married the Malay natives, some of
Portuguese descent. It would be easy for us to assume that Spanish and
Portuguese are two languages close to each other, and so there should be a
good level of understanding at the onset between the Spanish soldiers and
the natives using Portuguese pidgin. However, Whinnom claims that these
two groups were speaking two mutually unintelligible languages – albeit
paradoxically, for he also has claims that Portuguese was already intelligible
to the Spaniards at that time. But in my own interpretation, perhaps it is

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because the soldiers were illiterate and their level of Spanish would only be in
the conversational level that Portuguese is unintelligible to them. Portuguese
is still a different language after all, and must be beyond the scope of their
comprehension. And since they were originally from Mexico, their encounter
with Portuguese could have been very rare. More so, the Portuguese they
encountered at Ternate was not even Portuguese in its pure form but a pidgin.
The degree of difficulty comprehending must be threefold. The natives
themselves must have dealt with the same situation which is why Whinnom
would opt to consider the two languages mutually unintelligible and that a new
one would emerge from the meeting of these two: a mixed Spanish and
Portuguese pidgin. This will be the language connecting the Spaniards and
the natives, and passed on to their children.
Another factor that made the absorption of Spanish by the natives of
Ternate more effective was the Christianization of the natives during the
Portuguese occupation. When the Spaniards arrived, there was already a
small Christian community ready to accept the Spaniards due to Muslim
persecution of Christians. In short, the Spaniards and the native community
were united because of a common enemy and this union led to closer and
more intimate relationships that would necessitate the inception of the
Spanish contact vernacular.
In 1663, the Spanish garrison was forced to go to Manila carrying with
them approximately 200 families speaking the contact vernacular.
Unfortunately, there are no existing texts on Ternateño, as it also became less
Portuguese and Malay when it dwelt in the Philippines. New characteristics
were adapted by the language compelling Whinnom to say that Ternateño will
do little in explaining the features of the four Chavacano dialects in the
Philippines. Instead, its most important contribution is clarifying the origin of
the dialects.
The Spanish garrison’s relocation to Manila was because of a needed
military reinforcement to be used against the invasion of Chinese pirate
Koxinga. The 200 families from Ternate were brought to Ermita, Manila, just
outside Intramuros. A few years after, this community got relocated again to

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Cavite, another military camp, because major fights happened between them
and the Tagalogs. However, they were not joined to the existing communities
in Cavite but away from them in order to avoid the same incident that
happened with the Tagalogs. The migrants from Ternate would find
themselves at Tanza, San Roque, and the New Ternate in Cavite.
Even though the migrants from Ternate were expelled from Ermita, the
Ermitaño dialect of Chavacano still developed and somewhat flourished in the
area in that short contact. The Tagalogs adopted and adapted the language of
the migrant community. The development of the contact vernacular was very
natural because Intramuros was a Spanish-speaking community and Tagalog
people were also enlisted to the garrison troops. Ternateño was still
comprehensible to the Spanish-speaking communities although very
simplified; and perhaps, it was adopted by the Tagalogs to connect more to
the Spanish communities. So while a Chavacano dialect was being instated in
Cavite, another dialect was also incipient in Ermita.
By 1719, a Chavacano dialect would also emerge in Zamboaga but it
would not have as direct a lineage to Caviteño than Caviteño to Ternateño.
According to Whinnom, Zamboagueño had a semi-independent growth.
Backtracking a bit, in 1631, Spanish priests were sent to Zamboanga
on a mission to Christianize the natives. However, the widespread raiding by
the marauders from Sulu made their mission very dangerous and
necessitated the establishment of a military and a fort in the area. Fort Pilar
was built to house the garrison and Zamboanga became the major military
base of the Spaniards in Mindanao.
Thirty years later, around 1662, the Spanish military forces were
defeated by the Moros and it was only until 1719 that they were able to return
to Zamboanga to reestablish themselves and rebuild the fort. The garrison
was composed of Mexican, Tagalog, and Visayan soldiers. According to
Whinnom, it was very probable that many of the Tagalog soldiers spoke the
Ermitaño and Caviteño dialects, though this is just his speculation. Just like
what happened in Ternate, the intimacy of the illiterate soldiers with the non-
Spanish speaking natives, intermarriages, and the existence of a common

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enemy in the Moros caused the emergence of a Spanish contact vernacular in
Zamboanga. But this time, it was a dialect with Visayan features.
Although there was no direct link to the earlier Chavacano dialects,
Whinnom classifies Zamboangueño’s growth as semi-independent because
the dialect shares the same verbal system as Ermitaño and Caviteño. But this
is very disputable for the native Philippine languages share the same verbal
system, as part of the family of Austronesian languages. Creole languages
are formed by the convergence of a parent and substrate language. The
parent language is usually the Western, foreign language supplying most of
the lexicon of the contact vernacular, while the subtrate language is the
natives’ language responsible for most of the grammatical structure. Since
native Philippine languages share a common grammatical structure, the
contact vernaculars developed from them would naturally possess the same
grammatical structure. This is why there is still the possibility that
Zamboagueño could have emerged independently from the other Chavacano
dialects. Lipski will have a detailed and more complex explanation on the
fomulation of Zamboangueño.
The Davaueño dialect, on the other hand, is a direct decendant of
Zamboangueño. In 1900, a considerable number of people from Zamboanga
transferred to Davao and resided at what is now called Bonifacio Street. This
Zamboangueño-speaking community influenced the residents of Davao to the
point that the Davaueño dialect was actually a purer form than that in
Zamboanga.
Of all the Chavacano dialects mentioned above, Zamboangueño
proved to be the most enduring and propagated in the present.

On why Chavacano is not bastardized Spanish (Forman)

According to Forman, Whinnom’s appraisal of Philippine Spanish
Creole is against the common assumption of linguists that creoles are real
languages susceptible to linguistic treatment just like the “standard” and
“normal” languages. Whinnom, for instance, finds it absurd to attempt to write
a grammar on Zamboangueño, stating that the said language has so many

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contradictions that formulating any rules for it is not worthwhile. Forman
debunks this claim by citing Whinnom’s description as based essentially on
Spanish, which Whinnom actually admits. Moreover, Whinnom already had a
value judgment on Tagalog as “comparatively clumsy” when he did his
assessment of Zamboangueño. Clearly, Forman finds it unfair and misleading
if we judge Zamboangueño’s linguistic value using only precepts based on
Spanish. Afterall, Spanish is just the parent language of the contact
vernacular, and the substrate language/s (Tagalog, Visayan) must also be
taken into consideration. Consequently, Forman attempts to give an analysis
of Zamboangueño that does not neglect the contribution of the Philippine
languages to its grammar, in order to have a better understanding of
Zamboangueño.
Forman also criticizes the texts used by Whinnom in evaluating
Zamboangueño. All his linguistic sources came from songs, which obviously
will not give the best grammatical circumstances to understand the language.
In his book, Forman used recorded speech from native speakers of
Zamboangueño under varying circumstances. With this, his linguistic analysis
is based on the day-to-day use of the language by the informants.
With these, Forman shows whether Zamboangueño is indeed a broken
and bastadized Spanish or not. The term Chavacano itself connotes this idea
of awkwardness and clumsiness in the contact vernaculars relative to
Spanish, but this Forman already pointed out to be a misguided
understanding of the language. To counter this, he began with the common
observation of foreigners on the capacity of Filipinos to assimilate foreign
influence. The foreign influence taken in is shaped to suit the Philippines to
the point that they are no longer recognizable to the people from which they
originated. The essential question to be sought by linguistic anthropologists is
now redirected, from “In what ways was Spanish bastardized in its contact
with the Philippine languages?” to “In what ways was Spanish assimilated,
reshaped, and Filipinized in its contact with the Philippine languages?” The
grammatical content for this question shall be tackled in a different section.

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 Zamboangueño seen this way will reinforce Philippines’ cultural
continuity and the persistence of its existing social patterns. Forman citing
Henry Lewis in his book, “There is a wide range of situational adjustments
which do not require formal changes in the basic social principles or thematic
patterns.” This is in accordance to Margaret Mead’s principle of “constructive
borrowing” wherein she states that the whole process of cultural evolution
depends on this constructive borrowing. The parent language supplying the
lexicon may be of Spanish origin but the lexical terms borrowed are adapted
to suit the themes prevalent in the native community. One such example is
the disengendering made by Zamboangueño and other Philippine Spanish
Creole to the very gendered Spanish lexicon.
Looking at language as a model for culture, Zamboangueño then is a
“record-model” of the long contact between Asians and Westerners under a
particular set of circumstances. This model is not to be seen as a western
language bastardized by the eastern natives, a Spanish imperfectemente
according to Whinnom. Rather, it is a clear proof of eastern principles
nativizing the western influence. Zamboangueño then is a language, if seen
under the light of the substrate Philippine languages organizing and making
sense of the majorly Spanish vocabulary.

Theory on the formulation of Zamboangueño (Lipski)

Lipski will differ from Whinnom’s theory on the emergence of
Zamboangueño. Whinnom claims that Zamboangueño was a result of the
same process Ternateño underwent. That is, a group of garrison soldiers
comprised of Mexicans, Visayans, and Tagalogs – most probably speaking
Ermitaño or Caviteño – who intermarried with the Zamboanga natives and
used the creole language as their primary medium of communication.
According to Whinnom, Zamboangueño experienced a semi-independent
growth; semi-independent because of the assumed transfer of Ermitaño and
Caviteño native speakers which spurred the birth of Zamboangueño.
On the other hand, Lipski proposes that Zamboangueño is not merely
an offspring of the Luzon contact vernaculars. Whinnom considers the

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similarities and differences of the Luzon contact vernaculars to
Zamboangueño as a result local accretions in different areas and not as
separate processes. Again, he sees the development of the contact
vernacular in Zamboanga as a mirror of what happened in Ternate. Lipski
admits that the three contact vernaculars share significant structural
similarities so a totally independent theory of creolization is not possible.
However, he argues that Zamboangueño did not just simply evolve from a
transplanted Luzon-based creole in Zamboanga. Zamboangueño underwent a
much more complicated process of development. Below is his explication.
If contact vernaculars would possess words majorly from the western
parent language and some from the language of the natives, then it is
puzzling why the Visayan words in early Zamboangueño are actually
Hiligaynon and not from the contiguous Visayan provinces to Zamboanga.
Lipski points out to the role of Iloilo at that time as the stopover for ships
travelling from Manila to Zamboanga. Ilonggos were picked up in the process
of these travels and stopovers. And also, a great number of workers for the
building of the military defenses in Zamboanga were recruited from the Panay
island. The existence of Hiligaynon terms could be the effect of these events.
The presence of these migrants from Iloilo added to the number of parties
affecting the process of Zamboangueño’s development.
Lipski also cites Warren to complicate things even more. From the 17th
to 19th century, Muslim slave raiding was rampant, and the slaves were taken
from all over the Luzon, Visayas, and Southeast Asian islands. These slaves
were held captive in Jolo, an island very close to the Zamboanga peninsula.
Many of them managed to escape to Zamboanga, and upon entering the
Spanish military base, some were forced to labor for a new master. Because
of this, their stay at Fort Pilar went longer than they planned, and this also
prompted the formulation of the Spanish contact vernacular.
The Ilonggo migrants, slaves from Jolo, Mexican-Tagalog-Visayan
garrison troops, and the natives of Zamboanga would surely comprise a
community with diverse languages. Zamboangueño then was developed to
serve as the common language for these groups.

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 How is it that Spanish ultimately filled the lexicon of Zamboangueño
and not another language when the Spaniards did not comprise the majority
of the population? According to Lipski, Philippine languages had already
began absorbing Hispanisms by 16th century. Ironically, these Spanish loan
words were the ones shared and mutually intelligible to the Filipinos from
different ethno-linguistic groups, and most probably understood by the
Spanish garrison as well. And so, Spanish would clearly be the base of
Zamboangueño’s lexicon and the meeting point of these diverse groups.
Lipski categorizes this as the first stage of Zamboangueño, where its lexicon
is “consisted of mainly Spanish items, and of only the broadest Philippine
common denominators such as the plural particle mga, interrogative particle
ba, plus a few Ilonggo words.”
Around 1800s, the presence of civilian native Spanish speakers
increased in Zamboanga. This helped further the lexification process of
Zamboangueño from Spanish.
By the end of the 19th century up to the turn of the 20th, a large number
of Cebuano speakers migrated to southwest Mindanao. They were able to
establish significant social and economic influence in Zamboanga City and
from them came more of the Visayan accretions. During this rising influence
of the Central Visayans was also the decline of Spanish influence in
Zamboanga. And so, Zamboangueño’s lexical expansion skewed towards
Cebuano. The Tausug who had been in Zamboanga for the longest time
ironically did not have any influence on the language.
From the events mentioned above, it is very apparent how
Zamboangueño went through a number of relexification states due to
migrations of different groups in Zamboanga at different periods. At the very
onset, Zamboangueño did not arise as a creole from purely Spanish roots,
unlike what happened in Ternate. What converged to create the contact
vernacular was not a homogenous Spanish group meeting a homogenous
native community. Instead, what happened in Zamboanga was a meeting of
heterogenous groups from all over the country which needed a common
language to communicate. Surprisingly, this common language banked on

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Spanish terms for its lexicon because most of the mutually intelligible words of
the different Philippine languages were the Spanish loan words. It must also
be taken into consideration how a number of soldiers and migrants, though
not so significant, were also native speakers of Ermitaño and Caviteño. And
with the arrival of more Spanish native speakers, the lexicon was developed
to look and sound more Spanish although the structure was dominantly
Philippine. The next great migration from the Central Visayas once again
made an impact on the lexicon of the contact vernacular.
Lipski’s theory on the formulation of Zamboangueño would push for an
almost independent growth of the language, rather than a semi-independent
one. It debunks Whinnom’s hypothesis that Zamboangueño was a mere
continuation of Caviteño and Ermitaño. Moreover, Zamboangueño is unlike
Ternateño which began already as a true creole. Zamboangueño was rather a
“natural common intersection of grammatically cognate Philippine languages
which had already incorporated a lexical core of Spanish borrowings.”
Ternateño, on the other hand, just gradually added Philippine elements later
on to its exclusively Spanish lexicon. However, these Philippine additions did
not alter the basic patterns already present in Ternateño. On the contrary,
Zamboangueño was a “hybrid pan-Philippine contact language whose
Spanish items had already been filtered through Philippine languages, and
which was therefore a Philippine language in the structural sense at every
point during its existence.”

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Simplified grammatical structure analysis
Below is a simplified explanation of Zamboangueño grammar vis-à-vis
Spanish and Tagalog taken from the three primary references mentioned in
this paper. The data presented is modified by inputs from a native speaker of
Zamboangueño.

I. Articles
Spanish: el, la
Zamboangueño: el
Tagalog: ang

Spanish: La mujer esta caminando.

Zamboangueño: Ta camina el mujer.
Tagalog: Naglalakad ang babae.

It is very apparent how the gendered Spanish articles are disengendered in

Zamboangueño, like that in Tagalog and the other Philippine languages.
Notice that mujer (woman) uses the article el which is supposed to be a
masculine article in Spanish. This applies to all cases in Zamboangueño.

Moreover, Zamboangueño would easily sound like Spanish to someone not

privy to the language. However, it must be pointed out how Zamboangueño
follows the Tagalog Verb-Subject-Object (VSO) word order instead of Spanish
which begins with the subject. This VSO word order is shared with other
Philippine languages as well.

II. Pluralization
Spanish: los/ las + -s/ -es
Zamboangueño: -s/ -es/ maga
Tagalog: mga

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Spanish: Las mujeres estan caminando.
Zamboangueño: Ta camina el maga mujeres.
Ta camina el los mujeres.
Tagalog: Naglalakad ang mga babae.

In this section, we can see that the mga of Tagalog is equivalent to the maga
of Zamboangueño. Maga is added to pluralize a word but also at the same
time, -s/ -es is added to the word just like in Spanish. There is also an
alternative way of pluralizing by using el los then add -s/ -es to the word. Still,
this is different from the Spanish standard way of pluralizing words. Note that
masculine los is used for the feminine mujeres.

III. Nouns
Spanish: flor flores
Zamboangueño: flores maga flores
Tagalog: bulaklak mga bulaklak

Spanish: uva uvas

Zamboangueño: uvas maga uvas
Tagalog: ubas mga ubas

Spanish words have been adopted and used in Zamboangueño – also in

Tagalog and other Philippine languages – in a way that defies Spanish
grammatical rules. Flor is the singular flower in Spanish, while flores is the
plural. In Zamboangueño, flores pertains to a single flower and adding maga
will transform it into plural. In other words, the borrowed Spanish term has
been owned by Zamboangueño, cutting off the connection of the word to the
Spanish grammatical context. It was treated as if it originated in the
Philippines. Other similar cases to this phenomenon are: uvas, manzanas,
etc.

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The Zamboangueño native speaker I interviewed also widened the scope of
the language by identifying its two situational uses: formal and informal. For
casual conversations, they would most normally say “siete mujer” (seven
women). This is again not in accordance with Spanish grammar adding -s/ -es
to a plural word. However, she pointed out that in formal events, they use
“siete mujeres” as the formal form of Zamboangueño. Meaning, the native
speakers are cognizant of Spanish grammatical rules yet reserve conformity
to those rules only during formal occasions. Not included in the studies of
Whinnom, Forman, and Lipski, Zamboangueño has a casual and formal
sphere.

IV. Adjectives
Spanish: La mujer religiosa
Zamboangueño: El religiosa mujer
Tagalog: Ang relihiyosang babae

Spanish: Las viejas religiosas

Zamboangueño: Los religiosa vieja
Tagalog: Ang mga relihiyosang matatanda

Spanish: Los viejos religiosos

Zamboangueño: El maga religioso viejo
Tagalog: Ang mga relihiyosong matatanda

In the examples given above, grammatical gender has once again been
downplayed in Zamboangueño adjective use. Also, the use of masculine
religioso for viejo and feminine religiosa for vieja is very similar to Tagalog’s
santong lalaki and santang babae. A certain level of gender compatibility still
exists in Zamboangueño and Tagalog – which most commonly occurs with
Spanish loan words – but in general, gender consciousness is still much
downplayed in the languages.

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In addition, it must be noted that Zamboangueño does not pluralize its
adjectives unlike Spanish. The base noun and adjective words are kept
singular while it is the articles which becomes pluralized, seen in las, los, and
maga.

V. Pronouns
Spanish Zamboangueño Tagalog
Singular
1 yo yo ako
contigo kitá (inclusive)
2 tu itu/tu ikaw/ka
usted usted
vos
3 el/ella ele siya
Plural
1 nosotros kita tayo (inclusive)
kami kami (exclusive)
2 vosotros kamo kayo
ustedes ustedes
3 ellos/ellas sila sila

Masculine and feminine el/ella and ellos/ellas are lost in Zamboangueño. The
singular personal pronouns are Spanish derived, yet their plural forms are the
Visayan personal pronouns.

Also worth nothing is how the Tagalog first person inclusive kitá is expressed
with the same subliminal meaning – the melding of I and you in kita – in
Zamboangueño’s contigo. Kita is a pronoun with no direct translation in
Spanish and English. Although contigo is of Spanish origin, it is Filipino in
usage. It gained a new use when transplanted to Zamboangueño.

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Spanish nosotros does not delineate between a we that includes or a we that
excludes the person talked to. Zamboangueño expresses this intricacy in the
inclusive kita and exclusive kami. This trait exists in Tagalog and other
Philippine languages as well.

Heirarchy by rank and age is shared by all three languages. When talking to
someone deemed higher, usted is used in Spanish and Zamboangueño, and
kayo in Tagalog. Meaning, all three linguistically show awareness of social
heirarchies. However, Zamboangueño possesses a feature not existing in the
other two. Vos is especially used when talking to someone younger or lower in
position.

VI. Verbs
Spanish: amar comer
Zamboangueño: ama come
Tagalog: mahal kain

Verbs derived from Spanish are the Spanish infinities minus the r. In the
examples given above, ama and come will then serve as the base words to
which particles will be added to change tense.

Past tense: ya + verb ya ama ya come

Present tense: ta + verb ta ama ta come
Future tense: verb base ama come

Verb tenses and inflections would actually be much simpler in Zamboangueño

than Spanish or Tagalog. According to Whinnom, this is a common trait
among contact vernaculars. Grammatical rules of the parent and substrate
languages are simplified in the contact venaculars.

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VII. Prepositions
Like English, Spanish will have a number of prepositions to pertain to specific
locations of objects. On the contrary, Zamboangueño shares the same feature
of Tagalog, one word for multiple English and Spanish prepositions: sa. This
sa of Tagalog has its equivalent na in Zamboangueño.

VIII. Reduplication
Zamboangueño also features the characteristic reduplication in Tagalog. Ano-
ano in Tagalog is cosa-cosa in Zamboangueño. Kain-kain is come-come.
Reduplication of words is also a feature of the other Philippine languages.

All the grammatical points listed above show how Zamboangueño

makes sense of its majorly Spanish lexicon – which in fact has also been
“nativized” in the process – through Philippine grammatical categories.
Spanish grammatical rules would certainly seem “bastardized” and
“clumsified” in Zamboangueño. However, Zamboangueño does not use
Spanish grammatical structure but Philippine. And using Philippine standards,
the contact vernacular is in no way a bastard language for it follows a
coherent grammatical structure based on Philippine languages.

Philippine Spanish Creole or Filipinized Spanish Creole?

I am making a distinction between a Philippine Spanish Creole and a
Filipinized Spanish Creole. In my own interpretation, Philippine Spanish
Creole is the “Spanish-ization” of a native language in the Philippines. This
suggests the active role of Spanish in shaping a native Philippine language
into its form, although the resulting language will seem “awkward and clumsy”
when judged using its terms. A Spanish Creole in the Philippines implicitly
suggests a forceful influence from outside passively absorbed by the natives.
And since the foreign language was necessarily simplified for the sake of the
natives, the new language is seen as bastardized and third rate. Because of
its large lexical contribution, Spanish would seem to have dominated the
influenced native Philippine language.

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 On the other hand, Filipinized Spanish Creole is the “Filipinization” of
Spanish influence, the subtle conforming of the foreign influence to the native
Philippine language structures. Spanish influence is certainly not dismissed.
There is influence but it is not a one way process. Seen and phrased this way,
the natives would be the active actor in this process of assimilation, and not
just the passive receivers (Rafael 1988). They are the ones that shaped
Spanish in accordance to the innate structure of their native language.
Therefore, it is the Philippine grammatical structure dominating Spanish and
making sense of the words adapted from the foreign language. This is not
readily decipherable to everyone, for the naked eyes and ears would more
easily give attention and importance to words than to subtle grammatical
structures. But at the end of the day, words are easily borrowed from one
language and could be replaced by another. The native grammatical structure,
on the other hand, could not be as easily replaced. Thus, the Spanish lexicon
in Zamboangueño is like imported crops planted to the immovable soil of
Philippine grammatical structure. This is another way of putting Mulder’s
(1994) concept of “grafting” in the process of cultural influences.
Why is there a need to reinforce the dominance of Philippine
grammatical structure over the majorly Spanish lexicon in Zamboangueño, or
other Chavacano dialects? Following Wilhelm von Humboldt’s language as a
worldview paradigm and Edward Sapir-Benjamin Lee Whorf’s theory of
linguistic relativity, Zamboangueño would possess the same or a very similar
worldview as the other Philippine languages because of their shared
grammatical structure (Lee Whorf 1956).
More than the lexicon, it is the grammatical structure which carries the
thought structure which the speaker uses to view and organize the perceived
world in his mind. Case in point, some languages manifest more gender
consciousness than others as seen in their grammatical structures. When the
gendered Spanish language made contact with a Philippine vernacular, the
less gendered native vernacular prevailed over the foreign and subjected the
foreign unto its rules.

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 Another case, it would be very natural and easy for Zamboangueño to
use Cebuano plural personal pronouns for they possess concepts akin to the
natives and not existing in Spanish: kita and kami, the inclusive and exclusive
we. According to Enriquez (1989), the Filipinos have a consciousness of the
in-group and out-group. This is very apparent when a Filipino, even if they are
in friendly terms, would not share sawsawan with someone from the out-
group. This consciousness is linguistically expressed in the inclusive kita and
kami of Zamboangueño, also a feature of the other Philippine languages.
According to Alegre (1993), English is a language of responsibilities
while Filipino is a language of relationships. English always has the “I” or ego
doing something for the “you” or non-ego. The boundaries between the ego
and other is very defined and their relationship is always mediated. I love you,
there is the I doing the act of love to the you. In Filipino, this is expressed as
Mahal kita. In kitá, the boundary delineating the I from you is erased and a
more immediate relationship is established and expressed linguistically. In
Zamboangueño, Mahal kita is Ta ama yo contigo. Notice that there is still the
existence of yo (I), yet contigo connotes a certain sharedness and oneness
because of the prefix con-. Mais con yelo, corn with ice; Ta ama yo contigo, I
with you. This is not exactly Tagalog’s kita but it is very close. The use of
contigo here is different than Spanish, most especially if we analyze the
Spanish for I love you. In Spanish, it is Te amo; the I and you are not
verbalized yet grammatically, there is an assumed I that does the action to the
you. This is an almost similar case to English.
In short, Zamboangueño, although could be easily mistaken as
Spanish, is as much a Philippine language as Tagalog or Cebuano in terms of
worldview, manifested not just in the lexicon but more especially in the
grammatical structures.

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Bibliography

Alegre, E. (1993). Pinoy forever: Essays on culture and language. Pasig City:
Anvil Publishing, Inc.

Enriquez, V. G. (1989). Indigenous psychology and national consciousness.

Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and
Africa.

Forman, M. (1972). Zamboangueño Texts with Grammatical Analysis. [Ann

Arbor Mich.].
*This book is produced by microfilm-xerography in 1973 by University Microfilms. This
is Forman’s dissertation for Cornell University.

Lee Whorf, B. (1956). Language, Thought, and Reality. United States of

America: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Lipski, J. (2001). The Place of Chavacano in the Philippine Linguistics Profile.

Pennsylvania State University: Department of Spanish, Italian, and
Portuguese. Retrieved February 2, 2015 from
http://www.sociolinguistica.uvigo.es/descarga_gratis.asp?id=55

Mulder, N. (1994). Inside Philippine Society: Interpretations of Everyday Life.

Quezon City: New Day Publishers.

Rafael, V. (1988). Contracting Colonialism. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila

University Press.

Whinnom, K. (1956). Spanish Contact Vernaculars in the Philippine Islands.

Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

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