Philippine Spanish

Not to be confused with Spanish language in the Philippines.

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

The Philippine Spanish (Spanish: Español filipino or Spanish: Castellano filipino) is a near-extinct dialect of Spanish language in the Philippines.

History

From 1565 to 1821, the Philippines was governed as a territory of the Viceroyalty of New Spain which was 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 that of 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, these 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, place names and other proper names tend to preserve the sound of /ll/ . Examples of these 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. Most common of these examples are kabayo (Spanish: caballo; horse) and sibuyas (Spanish: cebollas; onions). This is known as yeísmo, this is only happening in loanwords not in Spanish names with /ll/.

Sound of ⟨z⟩, ⟨ce⟩, ⟨ci⟩

These speakers often also distinguish between the sounds written "z, c" /θ/ and "s" /s/. However, for the non-learned population, the sound written "z, c" /θ/ is generally merged with the sound written "s" /s/. Examples of this phenomenon are the names Ciriaco [siˈrjako], sédula [ˈsedula] (Spanish: cédula; document; Philippine English: community tax certificate/residence certificate) and sinturón (Spanish: cinturón; belt). This is known as seseo, 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. In words that carry this grapheme, 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 non-learned population, Spanish is acquired through Hispanic music, or for some, especially children, by watching Dora the Explorer in Nickelodeon. For the learned population, Spanish is further enriched through watching Telenovelas from the internet or watching the cable channel of Televisión Española. This 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, of the great number of Spanish loanwords that exist in the various Philippine languages, a few are actually derived from the words of some of the Indigenous languages of the Americas that were first incorporated into American Spanish. These include but not limited to:

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.

Writing

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 also 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 currently and have always used the U.S. 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 Filipino learners of Spanish liable to mispronounce (or put the accent on the wrong syllable of) the words from where loanwords in Philippine languages come from, as they pronounce these words that way in their 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 U.S. 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.

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)