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This study presents the most comprehensive inventory of lexical similarities between Chabacano and Luso-Asian creoles to date. Certain formal similarities, especially regarding function words, have not gone unnoticed in the past, but for the most part have been treated as coincidences. Less attention has been paid to cases of parallel formal and semantic innovation involving content words. Taken together, these data suggest a non-coincidental lexical component shared between Luso-Asian creoles and the multi-directional propagation of features across Ibero-Asian creoles. This notion is further supported if we consider the well-known cultural, commercial and demographic connections between the Philippines and the Portuguese colonies in Asia. At the individual level, discarding a Spanish etymology in favor of a Portuguese one is a very problematic endeavor that often leads to inconclusiveness. However, we argue that the sheer number of shared retentions and innovations presented in this study can only be accounted for by factoring in some degree of language contact. Luso-Asian elements must have seeped into Chabacano at the time of its genesis and at later stages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is disagreement as to the formation period of Chabacano, Philippine Creole Spanish. This article examines lexical items that have been claimed to stem from an early period of formation of Chabacano (Jacobs & Parkvall 2020). As a response to these claims, we show with ample dialectological and diachronic evidence that Chabacano items ansina 'this way, like this,' endenantes 'a little while ago', onde 'where,' and vos '2sg' are compatible with any period of formation for the Creole. Consequently, the presence of these lexical items in the Chabacano varieties does not link their formation to a hypothetical proto-Creole created before 1640, nor does it lend proof to the hypothesis that the current varieties descend directly from it. In general, we argue that creoles require as rigorous diachronic and diatopic studies as their lexifiers to show the maturity of Creole Studies as a field of inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors respond to comments by Mauro Fernández and Eeva Sippola to their article about the origin of Chabacano, or Philippine Creole Spanish language. Topics discussed include a series of papers which contain a genesis scenario for Chabacano, the main purpose of the reply from Fernández and Sippola, and the systematic resemblance between the three varieties, namely Philippine Creole Spanish, Ternateño and Caviteño.

This article argues that the three existing varieties of Chavacano are descendents of one and the same proto-variety. While their direct relatedness used to be agreed upon, it has recently been questioned to differing extents by Lipski (e.g. 1992, 2010, 2013) and Fernández (e.g. 2006, 2011). There is a large gap in Chavacano research insofar as systematic attempts at verifying or falsifying the alleged kinship between the varieties are missing to date. This article makes a first such attempt and argues that the varieties are indeed genetically related. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Chavacano emerged around the beginning of the 17th century. • The language was formed in the Manila/Cavite area. • The creole emerged among Spanish soldiers and non-European groups in their service. • Chavacano subsequently diffused to Ternate and Zamboanga. • Caviteño, Ternateño and Zamboangueño descend from the same proto-creole. Abstract This paper revisits the origins of the Philippine Spanish Creole language Chavacano. Earlier work saw Chavacano as the result of relexification of an originally Portuguese-lexicon creole towards Spanish within an immigrant group known as the Mardikas in the 17th century. Their language would subsequently have spread from their new home town to the other locations where it is currently spoken. More recently, however, it has been claimed that Chavacano emerged independently in different places, in the second half of the 18th century, and that the creators were people of mixed Chinese-Filipino origin. We take issue with both the older and the more recent hypothesis, arguing the varieties are indeed related, and that proto-Chavacano emerged around the beginning of the 17th century in the Manila/Cavite area among Spanish military forces and various non-European groups in their service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cavite Chabacano, an endangered creole language spoken in Cavite City, Philippines, has dialectal variation that can be traced to the settlement patterns established by the Spanish during the colonial era. This study focuses on Cavite Chabacano speakers’ metalinguistic awareness of dialectal variation, what their attitudes are toward it, and how they believe the different dialects are influenced by the superstrate Spanish or the substrate Tagalog. Participants’ comments during a map-labeling task show where Chabacano is still believed to be spoken and reveal that they have high metalinguistic awareness of variation in the vowel system and in second person pronoun usage. The Chabacano spoken in the San Roque district is perceived to have the closest relationship to Spanish, despite having more substrate influence in the vowel system. This study demonstrates the usefulness of perceptual dialectology for endangered language documentation and for studying variation and language attitudes in small communities and creole or other multilingual settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories about the origin of the Spanish-lexified creoles of the Philippines known as Chabacano have been based on scarce historical samples. This article presents two early Chabacano texts that are more than twenty years older than the ones that have been available so far: 'La Buyera', from 1859 and 'Juancho', from 1860. Based on a comparison with historical and contemporary sources pertaining to Philippine-Spanish contact varieties, the texts are placed in their linguistic and sociohistorical context. A linguistic analysis of the texts reveals a clear pattern of creole features and suggests that there was probably sociolinguistically motivated variation in different settings where the Chabacano varieties emerged. The results of the analysis confirm that Chabacano existed as a crystallized variety by at least the mid-19th century and was not restricted to interactions between servants and Spanish-speaking masters or to commercial contexts. Rather, it was already a language used for social and intimate relations and daily interactions in diverse neighborhoods of Manila. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In bilingual contact environments, personal pronoun systems are relatively impervious to replacement or borrowing. Several Creole languages contain hybrid personal pronoun paradigms, but the language contact environments that resulted in creolization and mixed pronominal systems are no longer in effect, and the mechanisms of pronominal replacement remain unknown. The present analysis is based on data from Zamboangueño Chabacano, a variety of Philippine Creole Spanish that has already undergone at least one set of pronominal replacements in its history, substituting Spanish-derived plural pronouns with pronouns taken from Philippine languages. Due to recent migration, Zamboangueño Chabacano is now in contact with Tagalog, and younger speakers are incorporating the Tagalog second-person singular respect-neutral pronoun ikaw into the Chabacano system. The insertion of ikaw restores the respectful–respect-neutral pronominal distinction originally present in Spanish and found in Philippine languages but lacking in Chabacano. The ease with which a Tagalog pronoun is entering Chabacano is attributed to long-standing popular views that Zamboangueño Chabacano is already a mixed-up language—often regarded as “broken Spanish”—devoid of its own grammar and therefore readily susceptible to any and all intrusions. The use of ikaw as an in-group marker among Zamboangueño youth further aids the addition of the Tagalog pronoun to the Chabacano paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study concerning the basic morphological and syntactic structure of a variety of Philippine Spanish-based Creole (Chabacano) spoken in the small town Ternate close to Manila. Ternateño shows a relatively stable vitality spoken by some thousands of speakers, although the language of the young generation shows characteristics of mixing and the speech community has partially been becoming a minority through large scale immigration. Result of the a study shows that there is need for further study of Ternateño as well as its sociolinguistic setting, its origin and its comparison with other varieties of Chabacano and the Portuguese-based Creoles in Southeast Asia. The study aims to determine the historical relations the Ibero-romance creoles in Asia.