What's On & Expat - Philippines

Camins’ Chabacano de Zamboanga Handbook contains a Chabacano-English-Spanish dictionary

Mayor Celso L. Lobregat gives a copy of Camins’ Chabacano handbook and dictionary to Ms. Acosta during her recent visit to Zamboanga City. (Photo by Emma Milabel Richter)
 

If you are a Spanish or Latin American expatriate or tourist in the Philippines, there’s one place you should by all means visit. I refer to Zamboanga City where you need not bother speaking English. You may conveniently talk your own Spanish language because the Zamboangueños speak a Spanish-based language called Chabacano.
  Mayor Celso L. Lobregat of Zamboanga City has been distributing copies of a Chabacano de Zamboanga handbook and dictionary written by Bernardo Camins. He has also encouraged the flourishing of literature in this language. He has circulated CDs containing folk songs in Chabacano. “I want Chabacano to live on in the
 

succeeding generation of Zamboangueños. It is a priceless legacy which we must never lose,” Lobregat told this writer during a recent interview in his office in Zamboanga City. “Linguists say Chabacano is 60 percent Spanish and 40 percent indigenous,” the mayor added.
  Dr. Anicia del Corro, a linguistics scholar of international repute, says that Chabacano is a language, not a dialect. “Chabacano is a creole language, meaning to say it is the offshoot of two different languages belonging to two different [linguistic] families.” To specify, Chabacano has its roots in Malay, which is Oriental and Castilian, which is European.