Nonstandard Chabacano

Well, I have to admit it. When I first encountered the term con or kun on Facebook several years ago, I was also confused. I initially thought it was the Tagalog kung and perhaps some people were chabacanizing the spelling and that was why I was seeing people spell it as either con, cun, kon, or kun.

I was even going to write about it here because it was a new word for me. Later, I realized it was the Cebuano word for if.

I posted something in Facebook which contained this word and someone sent me a message reacting negatively to it and branding it as a "palabra de calle".

I guess it has become one of those nonstandard words which people use frequently but will never enter a Chabacano dictionary. For example, even as a kid, I would frequently hear the pronouns ka and ikaw being used but you will never see these words in Chabacano dictionaries.

But what I'm curious about is when this trend started. I have not lived in Zamboanga city since 2007 so I'm not really abreast with all the changes taking place in Chabacano. I do go home from time to time but not regularly. 

A seventeen-year-old Chabacano speaker who reads this blog told me that he has been using this word ever since he was a kid. Since they shut down CERN only recently, I asked another person my age just to make sure I was not suffering from the Mandela effect.

In fact, I asked three different people and everyone confirmed that this has been in use for a long time already in Chabacano. So, apparently, I just never noticed it. One of them who is in her 60s told me that it started in the 90s and just like me, she incorrectly identified it as the Tagalog kung. Another person who is much older said that this has been in use since he was in high school in the 70s.

Aside from the word kun, I also noticed from this video that the usage of pag from Tagalog is already a thing in Chabacano. Pag is a synonym of the Tagalog kung.