Ermita Chabacano: The Lost Ark of Chabacano

If Chabacano is the holy grail of Linguistics, the videoconference I watched calls the Chabacano spoken in Ermita the lost ark of the covenant.

When the announcement that a conference on the Chabacano spoken in Ermita popped up in my newsfeed, I was very excited. The Chabacano in Ermita is probably the least studied among all the Chabacano varieties so I was happy that someone will finally be talking about it.

Is it just a legend?

For me, some of the Chabacano varieties such as the one spoken in Ermita and Davao are a bit like the Loch Ness monster. Just like the famous legend, there are numerous reported sightings of the Chabacano spoken in those places. When I was still working, I told my friend about the Chabacano in Ermita and she was like, 'it figures, I was passing by that area and heard some people speaking in a Spanish-like language!' When I told another friend about the Chabacano in Davao, he said he could attest to that language being real since he heard it himself when he went there.

I was very happy when a friend of mine invited me to go to Cavite to look for Chabacano speakers. I was very giddy when I was able to strike a conversation with some tricycle drivers in Ternate and an old man in Cavite city. It was a very surreal experience and somehow made those two languages real for me and not just a myth.

Is it really a language?

When I read studies about Chabacano, my impression is that the Ternate, Cavite, Ermita and Zamboanga varieties are the major varieties and that each are considered to be a separate language. What I realized from the conference was that the Ermita and Cavite variety are very similar to each other. This led me to reread the articles I wrote several years ago about the Ermita, Ternate and Cavite Chabacanos. That was when I realized that these languages are very similar to each other and could actually pass as being one and the same with minor differences. I guess I never realized this when I went to Cavite because the Ternate and Cavite accents were so different from one another and I never bothered in the past to compare these varieties side by side (only with the one in Zamboanga).

Similarities

Some of the words presented during the conference that made an impression on me were andinantes and pono (because we also use these in the Zamboanga variant), conversa (because although we use it in the Zamboanga variant, the other Manila Bay variants use platica), and mana (which in the Zamboanga variant is thought of as an old way of saying maga).

Another thing that struck me was camina camina which is a case of reduplication. I always thought this came from Cebuano/Hiligaynon but apparently not.

Is she the last Mohican?

The speaker in the video, professor Daisy Lopez was quick to point our that she cannot be considered a speaker of the Ermita Chabacano since she does not speak it inside of a community. It's like saying that you speak Latin. You don't actually speak it, you simply KNOW it. Nobody speaks Latin in this day and age.

Attitude towards Chabacano

Unfortunately, among Spanish-speaking Filipinos, there seems to be a disdain towards Chabacano. I remember reading an article a long time ago where the former beauty queen and Tourism secretary, Gemma Cruz Araneta said that she hated hearing Chabacano and it was only when she went to Mexico that she learned to appreciate it (upon hearing some words like ansina being used in Mexico).

My friend in the office who hails from a Spanish-speaking family once told me that his sister calls Chabacano el español barbarizado.

Meanwhile a Zamboangueño friend in the office said that when his Chabacano-speaking friend became fluent in Spanish, he altogether simply stopped speaking Chabacano because in his mind, it was just incorrect to continue speaking it.

I also heard a guy at the office said to his coworkers that one of their colleagues lived in a faraway town in Cavite and could speak Chabacano and when asked by one of his coworkers what Chabacano was, he said that it was a kind of Spanish spoken by squatters (by this he meant low-lifers).

Even among non-Spanish speakers who speak Chabacano, this attitude is rampant. In Ternate, one of the Chabacano speakers told us that they don't teach Chabacano to their kids anymore because they might get bullied in school because of their accents.

Interestingly, my friend in Zamboanga city who speaks Tagalog with her daughter gives the same reason why she doesn't teach her Chabacano.

The Tagalization of the Chabacano in Zamboanga

It's funny because the speaker refers to the Manila Bay variants as the Tagalization of Spanish while the Mindanao variants are the Visayanization of Spanish. However today, we will observe that the Cebuano/Hiligaynon  influence in the Chabacano spoken in Zamboanga is slowly being replaced by Tagalog. This is very evident especially in the particles being used so that little by little the Chabacano in Zamboanga is starting to look a bit like its cousins in Manila.

Guia

As was mentioned in the conference, the Ermita Chabacano poem "Quilaya Bos" was dedicated to the Our Lady of Guidance. Apparently, it is Ermita's counterpart of the Our Lady of Pillar in Zamboanga city. In fact, the church in Ermita is a shrine to the Our Lady of Guidance. And just like the strong tradition of naming females as "Pilar" in Zamboanga city, it looks like the same was also true in Ermita. The speaker said that her mother's name was "Guia" which also happens to be my grandmother's name.