Cover not available
Article published In:
Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages
Vol. 33:1 (2018) ► pp.1–47

Folk perception of variation in Cavite Chabacano

| University of Bremen, Germany
Cavite Chabacano, an endangered creole language spoken in Cavite City, Philippines, has dialectal variation that can be traced to the settlement patterns established by the Spanish during the colonial era. This study focuses on Cavite Chabacano speakers’ metalinguistic awareness of dialectal variation, what their attitudes are toward it, and how they believe the different dialects are influenced by the superstrate Spanish or the substrate Tagalog. Participants’ comments during a map-labeling task show where Chabacano is still believed to be spoken and reveal that they have high metalinguistic awareness of variation in the vowel system and in second person pronoun usage. The Chabacano spoken in the San Roque district is perceived to have the closest relationship to Spanish, despite having more substrate influence in the vowel system. This study demonstrates the usefulness of perceptual dialectology for endangered language documentation and for studying variation and language attitudes in small communities and creole or other multilingual settings.
Keywords: Chabacano, creoles, perceptual dialectology, folk perception, metalinguistic awareness, language attitudes, language documentation, language endangerment
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Sociohistorical background
  • 3.Previous literature
    • 3.1Metalinguistic awareness and language attitudes in creole and endangered contexts
    • 3.2Linguistic variation in Cavite Chabacano
  • 4.Methods
    • 4.1Participants
    • 4.2Elicitation methods
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Chabacano-speaking areas of Cavite City
    • 5.2Metalinguistic commentary on variation in Cavite Chabacano
      • 5.2.1Variation in the vowel system
      • 5.2.2 ‘Intonation’, punto, tono, and ‘accent’
      • 5.2.3Other phonological differences
      • 5.2.4Second person pronouns
      • 5.2.5Lexical variation
    • 5.3Social evaluations of perceived linguistic variation
  • 6.Discussion
    • 6.1Folk perception of linguistic features and observed production
    • 6.2Linguistic variation and identity in the sociohistorical context of Cavite
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 7 May 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.00001.les
References (82)
References
Asociacion Chabacano del Ciudad de Cavite. 2008. Diccionario Chabacano del Ciudad de Cavite. Cavite City: Office of the City Mayor.Google Scholar
Barajas, Jennifer. 2014. A sociophonetic investigation of unstressed vowel raising in the Spanish of a rural Mexican community. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University dissertation.Google Scholar
Bartens, Angela. 2005. The loss of linguistic pluralism: Creoles as endangered languages. UniverSOS 21. 55–68.Google Scholar
Benson, Erica J. 2005. Folk perceptions of dialects in Ohio. In Brian D. Joseph, Carol G. Preston, & Dennis R. Preston (eds.), Language diversity in Michigan and Ohio: Towards two state linguistic profiles, 35–60. Ann Arbor: Caravan Books.Google Scholar
Bentivoglio, Paola 2003. Spanish forms of address in the sixteenth century. In Andreas Jucker & Irma Taavitsainen (eds.), Diachronic perspectives on address term systems, 177–193. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Borromeo, Soledad Masangkay. 1974. El Cadiz filipino: Colonial Cavite, 1571–1896. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley dissertation.Google Scholar
Borromeo-Buehler, Soledad. 1985. The ‘inquilinos’ of Cavite: A social class in nineteenth-century Philippines. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 16(1). 69–98. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bradley, David. 2013. Language attitudes: The key factor in language maintenance. In David Bradley & Maya Bradley (eds.), Language endangerment and language maintenance: An active approach, 1–10. New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bucholtz, Mary. 2003. Sociolinguistic nostalgia and the authentication of identity. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7(3). 398–416. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bucholtz, Mary, Nancy Bermudez, Victor Fung, Lisa Edwards, & Rosalva Vargas. 2007. Hella Nor Cal or totally So Cal? The perceptual dialectology of California. Journal of English Linguistics 35(4). 325–352. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cordero-Fernando, Gilda. 1992. Philippine food and life. Manila: Anvil.Google Scholar
Cortés, Jerónimo de Fuentes. 1659. Planta del puerto y punta de Cavite, en el estado en que están sus fortificaciones en 18 de junio de 1659. Sevilla: Archivo General de Indias.Google Scholar
Doeppers, Daniel F. 1972. The development of Philippine cities before 1900. The Journal of Asian Studies 31(4). 769–792. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Drager, Katie & James Grama. 2014. ‘De tawk dakain ova dea’: Mapping language ideologies on Oʻahu. Dialectologia 121. 23–51.Google Scholar
Escalante, Enrique R. 2005. Chabacano… for everyone: A guide to the Chabacano language. Manila: Baby Dragon Printing Press.Google Scholar
Fernández, Mauro. 2010. Las cartas de Pardo de Tavera a Schuchardt sobre el ‘español de cocina’ de las Islas Filipinas. Grazer Linguistische Studien 741. 239–272.Google Scholar
. 2011. Chabacano en Tayabas: Implicaciones para la historia de los criollos hispano-filipinos. Revista Internacional de Lingüistica Iberoamericana (España) 9(1). 189–218.Google Scholar
. 2012. Leyenda e historia del chabacano de Ermita. UniverSOS: Revista de Lenguas Indígenas y Universos Culturales 91. 9–46.Google Scholar
Fernández, Mauro & Eeva Sippola. 2017. A new window into the history of Chabacano: Two unknown mid-19th century texts. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 32(2). 304–338. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fortuno-Genuino, Cecilia. 2011. Is Chabacano dying? In Ambeth R. Ocampo (ed.), Selected papers from Philippine-Spanish Friendship Day conferences, 2009, 1–25. Manila: National Historical Commission of the Philippines.Google Scholar
Fought, Carmen. 2002. California students’ perceptions of, you know, regions and dialects? In Daniel Long & Dennis R. Preston (eds.), Handbook of perceptual dialectology, Volume 21, 113–134. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gal, Susan & Judith T. Irvine. 1995. The boundaries of languages and disciplines: How ideologies construct difference. Social Research 621. 967–1001.Google Scholar
Garcia Serrano, Miguel. 1622/1904. Letter from Archbishop Miguel Garcia Serrano to the King. In Emma Blair & James Robinson (eds.), The Philippine Islands, 1493–1898, volume XX1, 76–105. Cleveland: The Arthur H. Clark Company.Google Scholar
Garrett, Paul B. 2006. Contact languages as ‘endangered’ languages: What is there to lose? Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 21(1). 175–190. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gealogo, Francis A. 2005. Population history of Cavite during the nineteenth century. The Journal of History 51(1). 308–339.Google Scholar
German, Alfredo B. 1932. The Spanish dialect of Cavite. Manila: University of the Philippines MA thesis.Google Scholar
Gonzalez, Andrew. 1970. Acoustic correlates of accent, rhythm, and intonation in Tagalog. Phonetica 221. 11–44. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1998. The language planning situation in the Philippines. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 19(5). 487–525. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hardacker, Erin P. 2012. The impact of Spain’s 1863 educational decree on the spread of Philippine public schools and language acquisition. European Education 44(4). 8–30. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Holmquist, Jonathan C. 1985. Social correlates of a linguistic variable: A study in a Spanish village. Language in Society 14(2). 191–203. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2005. Social stratification in women’s speech in rural Puerto Rico: A study of five phonological features. In Lotfi Sayahi & Maurice Westmoreland (eds.), Selected Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics, 109–119. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Ing, Roseller. 1968. A phonological analysis of Chabacano. London: University of London PhD thesis.Google Scholar
. 1976. Sources and variants of Chabacano consonants. Studies in English Literature & Linguistics 11. 17–22.Google Scholar
Irvine, Alison. 1994. Dialect variation in Jamaican English: A study of the phonology of social group marking. English World-Wide 15(1). 55–78. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2004. A good command of the English language: Phonological variation in the Jamaican acrolect. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 19(1). 41–76. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2008. Contrast and convergence in Standard Jamaican English: The phonological architecture of the standard in an ideologically bidialectal community. World Englishes 27(1). 9–25. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jeon, Lisa & Patricia Cukor-Avila. 2015. ‘One country, one language’?: Mapping perceptions of dialects in South Korea. Dialectologia 141. 17–46.Google Scholar
Lacoste, Veronique & Christian Mair. 2012. Authenticity in creole-speaking contexts: An introduction. Zeitschrift fur Anglistik und Amerikanistik. 60(3). 211–215.Google Scholar
Lefebvre, Claire. 1974. Discreteness and the linguistic continuum in Martinique. Anthropological Linguistics 16(2). 47–78.Google Scholar
Lesho, Marivic. 2013. The sociophonetics and phonology of the Cavite Chabacano vowel system. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University dissertation.Google Scholar
. 2015. Rhotic variation in Cavite Chabacano. Presented at the Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics summer meeting. Graz, Austria, July 7–9.Google Scholar
Lesho, Marivic & Eeva Sippola. 2013. The sociolinguistic situation of the Manila Bay Chabacano-speaking communities. Language Documentation & Conservation 71. 1–30.Google Scholar
. 2014. Folk perceptions of variation among the Chabacano creoles. Revista de Crioulos de Base Lexical Portuguesa e Espanhola 51. 1–46.Google Scholar
Lipski, John, Peter Mühlhausler & F. Duthin. 1996. Spanish in the Pacific. In Stephen A. Wurm, Peter Mühlhäusler, & Darrell T. Tryon (eds.), Atlas of Languages of Intercultural Communication in the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas, 271–298. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1986b. The Portuguese element in Philippine Creole Spanish: A critical reassessment. Philippine Journal of Linguistics 171. 1–17.Google Scholar
. 1987. El español en Filipinas: Comentarios sobre un lenguaje vestigial. Anuario de lingüística hispánica 31. 123–142.Google Scholar
Llamado, Librada C. 1972. The phrase-structure rules of Cavite Chavacano. Philippine Journal of Linguistics 31. 67–95.Google Scholar
Lance, Donald M. 1999. Regional variation in subjective dialect divisions in the United States. In Dennis R. Preston (ed.), Handbook of perceptual dialectology, Volume 11, 283–314. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Long, Daniel & Dennis R. Preston (eds.). 2002. Handbook of perceptual dialectology, Volume 21. Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mase, Yoshio. 1999/1964. Dialect consciousness and dialect divisions: Examples in the Nagano-Gifu boundary region. In Dennis R. Preston (ed.), Handbook of perceptual dialectology, Volume 11, 71–100. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McCarthy, William J. 1995. The yards at Cavite: Shipbuilding in the early colonial Philippines. International Journal of Maritime History 71. 149–162. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Medina, Isagani R. 2001. Growth of towns and parishes in Cavite, 1571–1880. In Mirana R. Medina (ed.), Ang Kabite sa gunita: Essays on Cavite and the Philippine revolution, 43–55. Diliman, Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.Google Scholar
Miranda, Gervasio. 1956. El dialecto chabacano de Cavite. Dumaguete City: n.p.Google Scholar
Mitchell, David, Marivic Lesho, & Abby Walker. 2017. Folk perception of African American English regional variation. Journal of Linguistic Geography 5(1). 1–16. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mühlhäusler, Peter. 1983. Learning to speak about speaking in a pidgin language. In S. A. Wurm (ed.), Papers in pidgin and creole linguistics no. 3 (Pacific Linguistics Series A – No. 65), 93–103. Canberra: Australian National University.Google Scholar
Mühleisen, Susanne. 2001. Is ‘Bad English’ dying out? A diachronic comparative study of attitudes towards Creole versus Standard English in Trinidad. Philologie im Netz 151. 43–78.Google Scholar
Nearey, Terrance M. 1977. Phonetic feature systems for vowels. Edmonton: University of Alberta dissertation.Google Scholar
Niedzielski, Nancy. 1999. The effect of social information on the perception of sociolinguistic variables. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 18(1). 62–85. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pangilinan, Gervasio E. 1926/2001. The historic Cavite (La histórica Cavite). Cavite: Cavite Historical Society.Google Scholar
Parodi, Claudia & Otto Santa Ana. 1997. Tipología de comunidades de habla: Del español rural al estándar. Nueva revista de filología hispánica 45(2). 305–320. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Penny, Ralph. 2000. Variation and change in Spanish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Preston, Dennis R. 1986. Five visions of America. Language in Society 151. 221–40. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(ed.). 1999. Handbook of perceptual dialectology. Volume 11. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2002. Perceptual dialectology: Aims, methods, findings. Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs 1371. 57–104.Google Scholar
2010. Perceptual dialectology in the 21st century. In Christina Ada Anders, Markus Hundt, & Alexander Lasch (eds.), Perceptual dialectology: Neue Wege der Dialektologie (Linguistik-Impulse & Tendenzen 38), 1–30. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Ramos, Felicidad G. 1963. A contrastive analysis of the sound system of the Cavite Chavacano and the English languages. Manila: Abad Santos Educational Institution MA thesis.Google Scholar
Rensink, W. G. 1999/1955. Informant classification of dialects. In Dennis R. Preston (ed.), Handbook of perceptual dialectology, Volume 11, 3–8. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rickford, John R. 1985. Standard and non-standard language attitudes in a creole continuum. In Nessa Wolfson & Joan Manes (eds.), Language of inequality, 145–160. Berlin: Mouton Publishers. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reid, Lawrence A. 1973. Diachronic typology of Philippine vowel systems. In Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.), Current Trends in Linguistics 11: Diachronic, areal, and typological linguistics, 485–506. The Hague and Paris: Mouton and Co. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Riego de Dios, Maria Isabelita O. 1989. A composite dictionary of Philippine Creole Spanish (PCS). Studies in Philippine Linguistics 7(2). 1–210.Google Scholar
Roberts, Sarah J. 2004. The role of style and identity in the development of Hawaiian Creole. In Geneviève Escure & Armin Schwegler (eds.), Creoles, contact, and language change: Linguistic and social implications, 331–350. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schachter, Paul & Fe T. Otanes. 1972. Tagalog reference grammar. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Scott, William Henry. 2010. Barangay: Sixteenth century Philippine culture and society. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.Google Scholar
Tejada, Juan Somodevilla. 1663. Plano de la ensenada y plaza de Cavite con sus fortificaciones y las cercanías de la misma donde se localizan los pueblos de San Roque, Cavite el Viejo y la Estanjuela y las bocas de los ríos Binacaya, Bacoor y Cavite el Viejo. Sevilla: Archivo General de Indias.Google Scholar
Villavicencio, D. Manuel & José Riudavets. 1874. Plano del puerto de Cavite con sus ensenadas de Cañacao y Bacoor y parte de la bahía de Manila hasta Parañaque. Madrid: Dirección de Hidrografía. [URL] (26 March 2016)
Wassink, Alicia Beckford. 1999. Historic low prestige and seeds of change: Attitudes toward Jamaican Creole. Language in Society 28(1). 57–92. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wickberg, Edgar. 2002. The Chinese in Philippine life, 1850–1898. Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press.Google Scholar
Winford, Donald. 1976. Teacher attitudes toward language varieties in a creole community. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 81. 45–76.Google Scholar
Wolfram, Walt. 2007. Sociolinguistic folklore in the study of African American Vernacular English. Language and Linguistic Compass 1(4). 293–313. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yan, Qingyang. 2015. The perceptual categorization of Enshi Mandarin regional varieties. Journal of Linguistic Geography 3(1). 1–19. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yap, Fe Z. Aldave. 1970. The sounds of Pilipino: A descriptive analysis. Manila: United Pub. Co.Google Scholar
Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Jourdan, Christine
2021. Pidgins and Creoles: Debates and Issues. Annual Review of Anthropology 50:1 ► pp. 363 ff. DOI logo
Lee, Nala H
2021. Utilizing the Matched-guise as a Method of Examining Perceptual Change in an Endangered Creole. Applied Linguistics 42:2 ► pp. 207 ff. DOI logo
SIPPOLA, EEVA & MARIVIC LESHO
2020. Contact-induced Grammatical Change and Independent Development in the Chabacano Creoles. Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 97:1 ► pp. 105 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.