Caling's Chabacano

Yesterday, my friend and I went to the National Library. I decided to check out some books on Zamboanga city as well as Chabacano.

I was very amused to see this message from the late mayor Maria Clara Lobregat on one of the books.

My immediate reaction whenever I see this kind of Chabacano is disdain because it feels very pretentious but I realize now that this kind of Chabacano should not be invalidated and is an important part of our history.

Growing up in the 90s, my only exposure to the Spanish language were the Spanish words and phrases that I saw in Archie Comics.

This is not the case for older Chabacano speakers and even some Chabacano speakers my age. Some Chabacano speakers today, were still exposed to Spanish speaking-grandparents and had a Spanish subject in school.

For this group of people, a Chabacanized Spanish is probably what written Chabacano should be like.

I get shocked whenever I see people claiming that this is what "real" Chabacano sounds like. But it all makes sense now. For some people, this is probably how they remember people in authority speak Chabacano.

I would not go as far, however, as to say that this was mainstream in the past. I doubt if there ever was a time when most people spoke or wrote Chabacano like this.

If you know Spanish and Chabacano and you read Caling's message, you will immediately recognize it as Spanish that was Chabacanized. I think I'm gonna ask Mauro Fernandez but this may also be classified as Philippine Spanish. 

One thing I'm sure of is that this is not standard Spanish because the word "puede" was not conjugated and because of how the word "con" was used (in "rendir las gracias"). The verb "conducta" also does not exist in Spanish.

Meanwhile, there are several spelling mistakes observed such as lievan (llevan), sirvir (servir), quero (quiero), and organisacion (organizacion).

In this interview, it was evident that she was not confident with her Spanish although the journalist politely brushed away her self-deprecating comments.

I was a teenager when Caling was mayor of Zamboanga City so I can't remember if she spoke this way but I wager that she didn't since people tend to write differently from the way they speak.

Anyway, I'm glad I did not censor this kind of Chabacano in Voces del Alma. There were a lot of Chabacano poems in that book that mixed Spanish with Chabacano. Some mixed entire Spanish sentences and some had Spanish phrases.

I realized, later on, that Chabacano poems were basically non-existent so we are still trying to explore different styles in writing Chabacano poetry. 

We must also remember that poems are different from conversations. Just like songs, grammar rules can be relaxed for poems to make everything fit.