The Chabacano Fuguera

In the Philippine Folk Tales translation project I am working on, one of the words I came across while editing the submitted translations is 'a fire created with trees' (fire built with wood from tree trunks). Originally translated as simply 'fuego', I decided I wanted a different word that will make the story flow more smoothly. Then suddenly, I remembered the word 'fuguera' which I wrote about before in this blog.

I checked Camins' Chabacano dictionary, but this word is unlisted. However, it definitely appears in Santos' dictionary.

'Fuguera' is defined as a bonfire or any blaze produced by burning things heaped together in the Chavacano de Zamboanga Compendio y Diccionario by Rolando Arquiza Santos.

In the dictionary published by the city hall, this word appears as 'fugera'. Meaning they treated it as a native word even though it suspiciously rhymes with the Spanish 'hoguera' (which means the same thing!). I mean think about it, 'hoguera' in Chabacano will definitely be pronounced as 'uguera' and can easily be misheard as 'FUGUERA'.

Based on the recommended orthography by the local government (which the dictionary they published embodies), all words should be spelled etymologically or based on how they are spelled in the originating language. If fugera were treated as a Chabacano word originating from the Spanish language, the spelling would have been 'FUGUERA'.

I still have not been able to decipher the spelling system they used but it sounds to me like a hybrid one since the F in 'fugera' was retained and was not changed into a P.

There are typos in the dictionary, but I can feel it in my bones that there is a system behind all the inconsistencies. For example, when I was editing one of the translations and came across the word 'que ver', I had a strong hunch that it would be spelled as one word in the pink dictionary (quever) and true enough, when I checked, they did spell it as one word. 

And I do agree that spelling it as one word makes sense since the meaning has already veered away from the Spanish meaning. I spelled this word as 'que ver' in El Diutay Principe.

Anyway, I promised myself that I'll be following the spelling used in the city hall's dictionary no matter how painful it is. So fugera it is!