A new window into the history of Chabacano

Abstract

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.

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