On Zamboanga ("Asia's Latin city") and the language Chavacano

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Na punta y sur del Zamboanga Peninsula amo el Ciudad de Zamboanga

There's an article here that might be of interest for those interested in creoles like Papiamentu and the rest, about Chavacano in the Philippines. It makes the interesting point that though there are a number of places in Asia like Macau and Goa (both Portuguese) that have a Romance language background, Zamboanga is the only one that actually uses one of these languages in daily life as the city's lingua franca. Some parts of the article:

Zamboanga bills itself Asia’s Latin City. Absolutely Latino-based is its spoken language Chabacano, a Spanish-Bisaya patois of “60-percent Español and 40-percent nativo words,” says the city brochure, a living language unique to the place and its people that continues to evolve today by absorbing words from the vocabularies of the different cultural communities who inhabit the city.

Zamboanga’s edge over other Asian cities of Latin heritage—Goa, Malacca, Macau—is language. While those Asian cities may have retained some practices and landmarks of shared Latin heritage, they have pretty much lost their Latin languages.

Chabacano remains the lingua franca uniting the fusion of diverse cultures coexisting in the city for generations. A cultural melting pot better than Zamboanga probably does not exist anywhere else in the Philippines.

Their spoken language is the definite Zamboangueño identifying mark. It perfectly encapsulates the city’s multiculturalism. With a lifestyle as charming as their native language, Zamboanga is enchantingly different from anywhere else in the Philippines.

Here's the video again that I included in the only other post I've written about Chavacano:




1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Si, Papiamentu es otra lengua muy interesante. Y el Sranan.

Novparl, fev. 09

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