Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Amazing Chavacano: One of the World's Two Remaining Authentic Spanish Creole Languages

I always knew about Chavacano of Zamboanga  and how it uses Spanish words, but I never really realized how close it was to the Spanish language because I never really heard it spoken nor have I read anything in this language.   As a spanish speaker and a Filipino, I was shocked to view this youtube clip of a TV News Program in Chavacano and understand mostly what they were saying even if I have never been exposed to Chavacano all my life.   (We filipinos speak 127 dialects, and about 7 major languages, depending on our regions.   It is very much alive and well with 600,000 native speakers using it for everyday life.  From what I can tell, it is a language using 80% or more of the spanish vocabulary, but using filipino-based grammar.  Hence, the lack of spanish tenses which are instead expressed in  infinitives or with suffixes and prefixes with the spanish verb, much like how we filipinos, in our other languages and dialects, use our verbs. )


Here is the TV Patrol Zamboanga TV Program. If you are a Spanish speaker, listen to it and see if you can make out what they are reporting about. Chances are you will understand 75% of it.And just for the record, Chavacano is definitely not the Spanish language, just something very very close. 

1 comment:

Dee @ A Deecoded Life said...

err...i'm basically here because i googled myself and this page showed up..which i don't understand. i mean, nowhere am i on your blog.
anyway...i read this blog and yeah, you're right. chavacano is mostly spanish words in broken grammar. i grew up in zamboanga city, by the way, and when i speak chavacano to spanish folks, they are amazed that they can sort of understand me.