Chabaca-yes, Chabaca-no

I was born and raised in Cavite City where, aside from Tagalog and English, many native-born people (including this writer) spoke a dialect unique to it, as well as to Ternate (also in Cavite province) and Zamboanga City and its environs, and that is a sort of pidgin Spanish called “Chabacano” (alternatively spelled as “Chavacano”).

The late great Nick Joaquin (aka Quijano de Manila) once told me when he was alive (of course, had he told me when he was already dead, it would have been really scary) that there used to be another version, called Chabacano Ermitaño, spoken in Ermita before the Japanese invasion.

That version became extinct after the residents thereof were dispersed after Liberation, when the Americans carpet-bombed Manila back into the 17th century, and the genteel neighborhoods of Ermita and Malate became ghettos. A portent of things to come when you have America as a military “ally.”

Anyway, the variation spoken in my city was called “Chabacano Caviteño (for very obvious reasons) and though there may be some differences in grammar and vocabulary with the other forms, a speaker can generally make himself understood by those from Ternate and Zamboanga City.

An oftentimes hilarious example of a distinction in vocabulary between the Chabacano in Cavite City and Ternate is the word for “to smoke.” If I asked you in Chabacano Caviteño whether you smoked, and offered you a cigar or cigarette, I would say

“Chabacano is part of my city’s intangible cultural heritage. Our officials should step in to preserve it, ‘ora ya.’

“In Spanish, ‘chabacano’ colloquially meant ‘in poor taste,’ ‘vulgar’ or ‘common.’

“Ta fuma tu?” (do you smoke) or “Quieri tu fuma?” (Would you like to smoke?). The verb is from the Spanish “fumar,” meaning “to smoke.” A Ternateño speaker would, on the other hand, ask “Chupa tu?” from the Spanish verb “to suck.” In today’s colloquialism, the query would make a lady either blush, or slap you in the face.

My Madrileño friend, Raul Buendia, when first told about the existence of Chabacano, said that in Spanish, “chabacano” colloquially meant “in poor taste,” “vulgar” or “common.” I suppose that is how our former Spanish overlords called it because, as I said, it was a form of coarse Spanish that only the low-brow indios spoke, having picked up Spanish words and phrases here and there and utilizing Tagalog sentence constructions in place of real Spanish grammar and syntax.

Thus, instead of conjugations, it used prefixes and suffixes to indicate tenses. For instance, in Spanish (which I also speak with some degree of proficiency), when you wanted to say “I went to the market early,” you would say, “Fui al mercado antes,” but in Chabacano, it’s “Ya anda yo na plaza temprano.” The verb “ir” (to go) is not conjugated in Chabacano, but the prefix ya is used to indicate past tense. Note also the term for “market” in Chabacano is not “mercado” as Spanish speakers would say it, but “plaza.”

Thus, for those who are curious as to whether a Chabacano speaker would have an easier time learning Spanish when it was mandatory in college, the answer is we had a worse time of it than those who didn’t know Chabacano.

Note that Chabacano is spoken only in places where, in the 19th century, the galleon trade flourished, thus in the aforementioned coastal towns with big and busy ports. Unfortunately, while the dialect is thriving in and around Zamboanga City, with hundreds of thousands of speakers (enough to have Chabacano radio and television stations, and an ample supply of Chabacano hit songs, including rap), it is becoming extinct in Cavite City and possibly Ternate. The latest census placed its speakers at only 2,000 persons, when in the 1970s more than half the city spoke it. My generation is probably next to the last to speak it fluently.

Chabacano is part of my city’s intangible cultural heritage. Our officials should step in to preserve it, “ora ya,” otherwise “mana cabron ilos, manu rayu, cara’y chonggo, iho de granputa!” Please don’t ask me to translate that…