Philippine Spanish

This article is about the Spanish dialect called Philippine Spanish.

Not to be confused with Spanish language in the Philippines.

Spanish language
Overview
Pronunciation History Orthography Braille Varieties Names given to the Spanish language
Grammar
Determiners Nouns Pronouns Adjectives Prepositions Verbs conjugation irregular verbs

Primary dialects of Spanish

Philippine Spanish (Spanish: Español filipino, Castellano filipino) is a variant of standard Spanish spoken in the Philippines mostly by Spanish Filipinos.

Background

See also: Spanish Filipino and Chavacano

Philippine Spanish
Español filipino Castellano filipino
Native to	Philippines
Region	Manila
Ethnicity	Spanish Filipino
Native speakers	(439,000 (2007) with "native knowledge" cited 1990 census) 2,700
Language family	Indo-European Italic Romance Western Ibero-Romance West Iberian Spanish Philippine Spanish
Writing system	Latin (Spanish alphabet)
Official status
Official language in	Philippines
Regulated by	Academia Filipina de la Lengua Española
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	None

Philippine Spanish is a Spanish dialect of the Spanish language in the Philippines. The variant is very similar to Mexican Spanish, because of Mexican and Latin American emigration to the Spanish East Indies over the years.

Philippine Spanish is spoken mostly among Spanish Filipinos.

It is the language used by the likes of Jose Rizal, Andres Bonifacio, Antonio Luna, Pilita Corrales, Ian Veneracion, Marian Rivera, to name but a few famous Spanish Filipinos.

History

See also: Spanish East Indies and Captaincy General of the Philippines

From 1565 to 1821, the Philippines which were a part of the Spanish East Indies, were governed by the Captaincy General of the Philippines as a territory of the Viceroyalty of New Spain centered in Mexico. It was only administered directly from Spain in 1821 after Mexico gained its independence that same year. Since the Philippines was a former territory of the Viceroyalty of New Spain for most of the Spanish colonial period, Spanish as was spoken in the Philippines had a greater affinity to American Spanish rather than to Peninsular Spanish.

Phonology

See also: Mexican Spanish, Castilian Spanish, and Standard Spanish

See also: Spanish phonology

Sound of ⟨ll⟩

For Filipinos who studied Spanish in formal institutions, the tendency is to follow the Iberian dialect of the Spanish language called Castilian Spanish. Thus, speakers will tend to employ the distinction between the sounds written "ll" /ʎ/ (or more accurately, /lj/) and "y" /j/.

With regard to the consonants, placenames and other proper names tend to preserve the sound of /ll/. Examples are Cordillera (Filipino: Kordilyera), ballena (Filipino: balyena; whale), Padilla, Relleve, Villanueva and Arellano. However, there still exist some few words where the sound of [j] is utilised. The most common examples are kabayo (Spanish: caballo; horse) and sibuyas (Spanish: cebollas; onions). Known as yeísmo, it is happening only in loanwords, not in Spanish names with /ll/.

Sound of ⟨z⟩, ⟨ce⟩, ⟨ci⟩

Speakers often also distinguish between the sounds written "z, c" /θ/ and "s" /s/. However, for the less educated population, the sound written "z, c" /θ/ is generally merged with the sound written "s" /s/. Examples are the names Ciriaco [siˈrjako], sédula [ˈsedula] (Spanish: cédula; document; Philippine English: community tax certificate/residence certificate) and sinturón (Spanish: cinturón; belt). Known as seseo, it is common in Andalusian, Canarian, and most Latin American Spanish dialects.

Sound of ⟨j⟩, ⟨ge⟩, ⟨gi⟩

The sound called 'jota' is non-existent in any of the Philippine languages. Filipinos usually realize the sound as [h]. Therefore, names such as 'José' are pronounced [hoˈse] instead of [xoˈse]; [h] is common in Andalusian, Canarian, and some Latin American Spanish dialects.

For most of the less educated population, Spanish is acquired through Hispanic music, or for some, especially children, by watching Dora the Explorer in Nickelodeon. For the educated population, Spanish is further enriched through watching Telenovelas from the internet or watching the cable channel of Televisión Española. That results in the lack of general characteristics that describe its phonological system.

Vocabulary

See also: List of Spanish words of Indigenous American Indian origin

Old Mexican Spanish words entered into the lexicon of the indigenous languages of the Philippines. In fact, a few of the great number of Spanish loanwords that exist in the various Philippine languages are actually derived from the words of some of the Indigenous languages of the Americas that were first incorporated into American Spanish. Examples:

PHILIPPINE LOANWORD	ORIGIN	VIA MEXICAN SPANISH	ENGLISH EQUIVALENT
tsokolate	Nahuatl: xocolatl	chocolate	chocolate
sayote	Nahuatl: chayotl	chayote	chayote
kamote	Nahuatl: camotl	camote	sweet potato
bayabas	Arawakan: guayabo	guayaba	guava
papaya or kapayas	Cariban: papaya	papaya	papaya
singkamas	Nahuatl: xicamatl	jícama	Mexican turnip

Even words of Nahuatl origin penetrated into the Philippine languages such as nanay [from (Nahuatl: nantl); (mother)] and tatay [from (Nahuatl: tatl); (father)] as a direct result of the Manila galleon. Peninsular Spanish started to influence the vocabulary of Philippine languages after the Philippines was administered directly from Spain.

Orthography

See also: Spanish orthography

Diacritic marks are almost always left out, save for the tilde on the ñ, because of the use of American standard machines and because of the disallowance of using these marks by English-language media companies. Typewriters sometimes include the ñ, but they do not include accented vowels. Computer keyboards have always used the US standard layout, which includes neither ñ nor combining diacritics. Spanish words, however, are vocally stressed as they would be by Spanish speakers. However, the absence of these diacritic marks makes Filipinos studying Spanish liable to put the accent on the wrong syllable of words from which loanwords in Philippine languages, as the words are pronounced as in mother languages.

As of 2012, of the younger generation of Filipino Hispanophones are following the Spanish orthographic convention of typing letters with diacritic marks (acute accents and diaeresis) as well as the inverted question and exclamation marks and the rest of the special characters and symbols found in Spanish orthography on their US standard layout computer keyboards by using the AltGr key, Modifier key, Code page 437, Code page 850, Microsoft Windows Alt Key Numeric Codes for character shortcuts, or the US-International keyboard layout.

Microsoft Windows Alt Key Numeric Codes for the Spanish language:

NUMERIC CODE	CHARACTER DISPLAYED	NAME	NUMERIC CODE	CHARACTER DISPLAYED	NAME
Alt 0193	Á	uppercase A with accute accent	Alt 160	á	lowercase a with acute accent
Alt 144	É	uppercase E with acute accent	Alt 130	é	lowercase e with acute accent
Alt 0205	Í	uppercase I with acute accent	Alt 161	í	lowercase i with acute accent
Alt 0211	Ó	uppercase O with acute accent	Alt 162	ó	lowercase o with acute accent
Alt 0218	Ú	uppercase U with acute accent	Alt 163	ú	lowercase u with acute accent
Alt 666	Ü	uppercase U with umlaut	Alt 129	ü	lowercase u with umlaut
Alt 165	Ñ	uppercase N with tilde or eñe	Alt 164	ñ	lowercase n with tilde or eñe
Alt 167	º	masculine ordinal indicator	Alt 166	ª	feminine ordinal indicator
Alt 680	¿	inverted question mark	Alt 685	¡	inverted exclamation mark
Alt 174	«	left angle quote or left guillemet	Alt 175	»	right angle quote or right guillemet
Alt 0128	€	euro sign	Alt 158	₧	pesetas (out of circulation)

For the numero signs such as n.^o and N.^os, superior ordinal letters such as 1.^o, 2.^a and 3.^er, superior letters such as F.^ca, D.^a, F.^co, M.^a and f.^do, and superior numbers such as €8⁵⁰, you may use the superscript (hold down the Ctrl, the Shift and the =) and underline (highlight the text then hold down the Ctrl and the letter U) keyboard shortcuts.

Current Status

Spanish was the language of government, education and trade throughout the three centuries (333 years) of the Philippines being part of the Spanish Empire and continued to serve as a lingua franca until the first half of the 20th century. In the last decades its use has declined. New developments in the Philippines are slowly reversing this trend.

Spanish Renaissance

In December 2007, former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed a directive in Spain that require the teaching and learning of the Spanish language in the Philippine school system starting in 2008.

The presidential decision had immediate results. The Under-Secretary of the Department of Education, Vilma L. Labrador, circulated a Memorandum (17/XII/2007), on the "Restoration of the Spanish language in Philippine Education". In it, the Department mandates secondary schools to offer basic and advanced Spanish.

Exponential Growth

There has been a resurgence of learning Spanish among Filipinos.

The main reason is not even cultural, its economic.

Due to the huge demand for Spanish speakers among Business Process Outsourcing companies in the Philippines, Filipinos are flocking to Instituto Cervantes and other language centers in order to learn Spanish.

See also

• Spanish in the Philippines

External links

• The Teaching of Spanish in the Philippines, UNESCO, February 1968
• List of Tagalog words of Spanish origin, self-published, tripod.com
• Semanario de Filipinas, Philippine Weekly news blog
• E-Dyario Filipinas, online newspaper
• Alas Filipinas, the first and only Spanish blog in the Philippines
• Revista Filipina, online magazine
• Cohen, Margot. Filipinos Learning Not to Scorn Spanish. Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, Yale University. April 2010.
• Asociacion Cultural Galeon de Manila, Spanish-Philippine cultural research group based in Madrid (in Spanish and English).
• Círculo Hispano-Filipino (in Spanish and English)
• Website of Kaibigan Kastila
• Spanish Made Easy and Practical For Filipinos
• Spanish Program for Cultural Cooperation
• Casino Español de Manila
• Casino Español de Cebú
• Instituto Cervantes de Manila
• Documentary "El Idioma Español en Filipinas" (Spanish)