The Chavacano de Ternate Criatura

Ay, naku! Ya kái el criatura na escalera.

This is a sentence I found in a book titled The Ternateños written by Esteban A De Ocamp. It is written in the Chavacano de Ternate dialect.

I found this sentence quite funny mainly because of the word criatura. I couldn’t believe that the word for a kid in the Chavacano de Ternate is criatura. Criatura in Spanish literally means creature.

I was very surprised however when a Mexican friend used this word to mean children (offspring) when we were chatting online. So I did some research on this word and it turns out that colloquially criatura means a child, or an infant.

This word however (to the best of my knowledge) never appears in the Chabacano de Zamboanga.

For everyone's benefit, the sentences that appears at the beginning of this entry means: Oh my, the child fell from the stairs!

A Pilot Study on the Dialects of Philippine Creole Spanish, Observations on

I have just read a study done by Maria Isabelita O. Riego de Dios regarding the different Chabacano dialects. In her study she compares the different words used in the Chabacano dialects of Zamboanga, Ternate, Cavite (city), and Cotabato.

Maria Isabelita O. Riego De Dios is an RVM sister and she produced a dictionary on the Chavacano de Cotabato with a Zamboangueño, Ternateño, and Caviteño Chabacano equivalents.The following are some observations on her work: A Pilot Study on the Dialects of Philippine Creole Spanish.

One of the first observations that she makes in her research are that there are words like the Cotabato and Zamboanga Chabacano gordo wherein the ‘r ‘ becomes an ‘l’ in the Chabacano dialects of Cavite and Ternate.  This is a very peculiar phenomenon but it affirms the theory that the Chabacano of Zamboanga underwent some hispanification over the last centuries. This theory appears in the study of John M Lipski on the Chabacano de Zamboanga. This also explains why a significant number of words which appear to be creolized in the Chabacano dialects of Ternate and Cavite are actually in their original Spanish state in the Chabacano of Zamboanga.

I remember writing an article in this blog about the differences between the Chabacano dialects of Cavite and Zamboanga and saying that the Chavacano de Cavite seems to sound more Spanish than our Chabacano. I received a ton of comments then from Zamboangueños that my statement was incorrect and that the Chabacano de Zamboanga is more Spanish than the Caviteño variant. So now, I am saying that I stand corrected. After researching about my lengua materna over the years, I now realize that the Chabacano de Zamboanga is more Spanish than its counterparts in Luzon. I can just picture out how happy the hispanophiles would be in Zamboanga with that statement.

Another observation De Dios makes is that the word alcansa in the Chabacano dialects of Zamboanga, Cotabato, and Cavite becomes Encansa in the Chavacano de Ternate. However, any speaker of the Chabacano de Zamboanga knows that the word encansa also exists in our Chabacano. It isn’t included in the dictionaries though because everyone knows that the real word is alcansa and so encansa is treated like it is just a different way (or a slang way) of saying alcansa. In the dictionary of De Ocampo on the Chavacano de Cavite, this word is listed as inkalsa.

The researcher also says that the word nape is different in each dialect: Tangkugu in the Chavacano de Catobato, Batuk in the Chavacano de Ternate, Selebro in the Chavacano de Cavite, and Ombrura for the Chabacano de Zamboanga. It should be noted though that the word for nape in the Chabacano de Zamboanga is also tangkugu. Camins, his dictionary, spells it as tancugu. Santos, meanwhile spells it as tancúguh. Nowhere in the Chabacano de Zamboanga dictionaries did I find the word ombrura.

This concludes my preliminary enry on De Dios' work. 

The Chabacano Nuay Nada

The Chabacano nuay nada no doubt comes from the Spanish no hay nada. No hay nada however in Spanish means there is nothing. In Chabacano, this means that something is not good or no good.

Here are some sentences using the Chabacano nuay nada.

Chabacano: Nuay nada man el mall alla.

English: That mall over there was not very nice/good.


Chabacano: Nuay nada gayod este computer de mio.

English: This computer is not worth anything/ not nice.

Among some people (especially old people), nuay nada has more or less retained its original Spanish meaning. Here is how I heard our former house maid use the Chabacano nuay nada: Nuay nada ya gayod sila (when she was talking about our neighbor). What she meant by this was what they (our neighbors) didn’t have anything anymore (in terms of material and/or financial possessions).

I doubt if there are still young Chabacano speakers today who know this other meaning of the Chabacano nuay nada. What I’m sure of is that the meaning of the Spanish hay is already lost on all Chabacano speakers. While there are people who would still spell the word nuay as no hay (which was the original Spanish spelling), they would not know the grammar behind this word.

Chabacano Weather and Seasons

In western countries, they have four seasons: winter, spring, summer, and fall or invierno, primavera, verano, and otoño in Spanish. In the Philippines, we only have two seasons: the wet and dry season or soles and tiempo de aguasero in Chabacano.

From June to December, the country is visited by more or less twenty typhoons or what they call in TV Patrol Chavacano tifun. To my knowledge though, people don’t use this word in everyday conversations. Maybe fuerte aguasero would be used more often. Most of the people however use the Tagalog word baguio (without the stress at the end).

Even the word aguasero is not that used anymore when referring to rain. Most people now use the Tagalog word ulan. A very interesting idiom using this word is: quiere cae ulan which literally means ([it] wants to fall rain). Figuratively, it means it looks like it’s about to rain. Here are some sentences using this idiom:

Chabacano: Anda pa ba kita na iglesia? Dao quiere man cae ulan.
English: Are we still going to the church? It looks like it’s about to rain.

Chabacano: Quiere cae ulan. Esta ya lang kita na casa.
English: It looks like it’s about to rain. Let’s just stay at home.

One of the reasons why I love the climate in Zamboanga city is that the temperature never goes down too low and neither does it go up too high. This is in contrast to the weather in Manila wherein during December and January, one can feel the temperature go down and during March, April, and May, one can feel the temperature go way up.

I know some people though (all of them Zamboangueños who have immigrated to Manila) who would say that it is bien caliente (very hot) in Zamboanga city. I however believe that this is an artificial feeling brought about by the fact that there aren’t many tall buildings in Zamboanga city that would provide shade from the sun in contrast to Manila.

What’s good about the weather in Zamboanga city is that it is outside of the typhoon belt. Not one typhoon has visited Zamboanga city in the past. This (I was told) was because of the mountain range that surrounds it.  We experience strong rains every now and then but not like in Manila where it is accompanied by fuerte viento or strong winds.

The Chabacano Cen

In Chabacano, not all people would know what the word dinero means. Instead, the word for money in Chabacano is cen.

I have come upon a website recently which said that the word cen is the word for money in archaic Spanish. I cannot however remember the website where I found it. In Chabacano, this word refers to money (in general).

Here are some examples of how it is used:

Chabacano: Tiene tu cen?
English: Do you have (any) money?

Chabacano: De quien money ese?
English: Whose money is that?

Chabacano: Dale conmigo cen.
English: Give me (some) money.

Since we’ve been talking about money, would you know how to say: save money in Chabacano? The idea of saving money is not present in every culture and thus cannot be translated directly to all languages. In Chabacano, we say esconde cen, or ajunta cen to mean to save money.

If you look at it, these two expressions literally mean to hide money and to collect money respectively. Figuratively though, they mean to save money. These are in fact, Chabacano idioms.

Here are some sentences using these Chabacano idioms.

Chabacano: Ta esconde ba tu cen na banco?
English: Do you save money in the bank?

Chabacano: Ajunta tu cen para puede kita compra casa algun dia.
English: You save money so that we can buy a house one day.