Spanish language in the Philippines

Spanish was the first official and unitary language of the Philippines, from the arrival of the Spanish in 1565 until the second half of the century XX. In addition to being official, Spanish became the common and vehicular language of the country between the end of the XIX century and the beginning of the XX. In 1863, a public education system was created that considerably boosted the knowledge of Spanish in the country. The national hero José Rizal wrote most of his works in Spanish, as did the majority of writers and thinkers of the XIX century . The Philippine Revolution was articulated in the Spanish language, and the First Philippine Republic founded in 1899 established Spanish as the official language. The first Constitution of the Philippines, as well as the Philippine national anthem, were written in Spanish. In the first half of the XX century, Spanish was widespread in large cities. It was the language of the press, culture, commerce and, to a certain extent, Philippine politics. Spanish maintained its official status (along with English and Tagalog) until 1973, a status it had had since 1571. Presidential Proclamation no. 155 of March 15 of said year 1973, still in force, orders that Spanish will continue to be the official language in the Philippines for all those official documents from the imperial era that were not translated into the national language.

After its elimination as an official language in 1973, Spanish was also eliminated as a compulsory subject at the university in 1987.

In 2009, academic and former Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was awarded the International Don Quijote Award, which recognizes the educational initiative of the Republic of the Philippines to introduce the Spanish language into national curricula, which expands the area of political, institutional and economic collaboration that is carried out in Spanish. In this sense, on February 23, 2010, during the V Spain-Philippines Tribune, an agreement was reached between the Ministry of Education of the Philippines, the Ministry of Education of Spain, the Cervantes Institute and the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation for the Development (AECID), whereby all high school students in the Philippines will study Spanish in 2012.

Today, however, Spanish remains only an optional language in Philippine school and is spoken as a second language by 3% of the country's population, having been a language spoken only by certain elites, but never learned by the total population; although some Hispanist authors such as the Filipino Guillermo Gómez Rivera maintain that it was spoken by up to 60% of the population until the beginning of the century XX.

Currently, the Spanish language is still very present both in the names and surnames of Filipinos (anthroponyms), as well as in the name of many of their localities (place names) and administrative demarcations.

History

Main Building of the University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (UST), Philippines

The Spanish language began to predominate over the many native languages of the Philippines from 1565, the date on which the expedition of Miguel López de Legazpi and Andrés de Urdaneta, coming from New Spain (today Mexico), arrives in Cebu and He founded the first Spanish settlement in the archipelago.

In the beginning, learning Spanish was optional, not mandatory. As in some places in America, the missionaries preached Catholicism to the natives in local languages. In 1593 the first local printing press was founded. In 1595 the first academic institution in the country was established, the Colegio de San Ildefonso, founded by the Jesuits in Cebu and which would later become the University of San Carlos. In Manila, the University of Santo Tomás was founded by the Dominicans in 1611. Both universities dispute the recognition of the oldest university in Asia.

Queen Elizabeth of Bourbon and Two Sicilies of Spain

In 1863, Queen Isabella II of Spain decreed the creation of a public school system in all Spanish territories. This gives rise to the creation of public schools with instruction in Spanish in most towns and cities in the Philippines. At the beginning of the XX century, Spanish remained the lingua franca of the country and the language of education, press, commerce, politics and justice.

In Manila, Spanish had become widespread with an estimated 50% of the capital's population able to communicate in Spanish by the end of the century XIX. In 1898, it is estimated that around 15 or 20% of the population of the archipelago could speak Spanish. A few years earlier the percentage would be much lower, being in 1870 around 2 or 3% according to data from the statesman Agustín de la Cavada y Méndez de Vigo. Even after the US occupation and the introduction of English as the language of instruction in public schools, and despite the death of 15% of the entire Filipino population in the Philippine-American War, the vast majority of them educated subversives and former military - and therefore most likely able to speak Spanish - continues to dominate in major cities as the primary vehicle of communication among Filipinos, until at least the second decade of the century XX, when education in a language other than English is prohibited.

The official language of all courts and their records will be Spanish until January 1, 1913. After that date, English will be the official language, but in judicial matters the Spanish language may be used, with interpreters being available and in the cases in which all the parties or lawyers stipulate it in writing, the proceedings will be carried out in Spanish. The arguments were clear:

"... The superiority of the English language is not affirmed through others possessing Literature and History, with the exception, perhaps, that it is increasingly so fast that the language of business of the world, especially in the Far East, that the leading countries in the commercial and scientific effort have almost universally done their study a part of their public school system. It is the only language that was possible to teach general throughout the Archipelago. Unfortunately, the policy of the former sovereignty here did not allow the general teaching of the Spanish language, so it was known by the comparatively few. Since the ability to use common language is one of the essential elements for the realization of the political aspirations of the Filipino people, it is important to see how far we have made progress in this direction..."

Message of the Governor-General to the Third Philippine Legislature.

On December 31, 1916, the Official Gazette (Official Gazette) was created, which would be published weekly and separately, both in Spanish and English.

Photograph of the neighborhood of Intramuros destroyed in the battle of Manila during the Second World War.

The predominance of Spanish over English continued in a steady decline until approximately the end of World War II. From then on, with already two generations educated in English, Spanish loses relevance. In addition, the destruction of the Intramuros neighborhood and La Ermita by North American aircraft during the Battle of Manila put an end to the main nucleus of Hispanic culture and Spanish language in the Philippines (some 300,000 Spanish-speakers in Intramuros alone). Although there are some family and personal exceptions, the generation born after the World War (until approximately 1950) is usually considered the last Spanish-speaking generation, at which time, after the massacre of the failed war of independence, the linguistic repression and the bombings After World War II, Spanish-speaking society is considered diluted and there is no more Spanish-speaking generational change.

Currently, fully competent Spanish-speaking Filipinos, at least at the oral level, are not monolingual in Spanish and only in exceptional cases are they under 55 years of age, due to the non-continuity of generational change in the use of the language.

Influence on other languages

There are about 8,000 Spanish roots in Tagalog, and about 6,000 Spanish roots in Visayan languages and other Philippine dialects. The number system in Spanish, the calendar, the time, etc., continue to be used with slight modifications.

Thousands of Spanish words have been preserved in Tagalog and other local languages, such as:

• bulging (‘vapor’, boat’),
• baka(‘vaca’),
• kastilà it was used to refer to the Spaniards and their language.
• kuwarta (‘quarta’),
• pear (‘perra’ or ‘monedes’),
• relós (‘reloj’, originally with the French sound of j),
• Sabon (‘jabon’; the j pronounced as the French Heh.),
• baraha (‘baraja’, deck of cards),
• lamesa/mesa (‘mesa’),
• kaldereta (‘caldereta’, meat stew’),
• Tinidór (‘tainer’),
• silya (‘silla’),
• baso (‘vaso’),
• bangkito (‘banqueta’, small chair’),

Chabacano, also called Zamboangueño (in Zamboanga City) or Chavacano, is a Creole language lexified by Philippine Spanish. The apricot was concentrated in several very specific areas, of which it only remains vital in the city of Zamboanga. Other areas where Chabacano was spoken include Isabela (Basilan) and parts of Davao in the south, and on the northern island of Luzon, Ternate, and other parts of Cavite Province.

At the beginning of the XVII century the Tagalog printer Tomás Pinpin undertook the task of writing a book in Tagalog with Latin characters using order to teach Spanish to the Tagalogs. His book, published by the Dominican press where he worked, appeared in 1610, the same year that Father Blancas de San José published the first Grammar of Tagalog .

Pinpin's text, for its part, used Tagalog to discuss Spanish. With the book, Pinpin became the first native Filipino to be a writer and publicist. As such, he is instructive when he explains his interest in translating from Tagalog at the beginning of the viceroyalty. Pinpin elaborates the translation of it rather avoiding than not rejecting the accentuation norms of the Spanish language.

Fake friends

The following words are misleading. They appear to be Spanish or are the Spanish words that changed their meaning in various Philippine languages.

• baho means 'bad bone' (appeared to 'low').
• barkada means 'pandilla' (appeared to 'barcada').
• kontrabida means 'bad' (appeared to 'against life').
• sabi means 'say' (appeared to 'know').
• Siguro means 'perhaps' (appeared to 'safe').
• syempre means 'of course' (appeared to 'always').
• pirmi in bisay and chabacano means 'always' (defeat of 'firm').
• That's enough. means 'a condition that'.
• Lupa means 'soil, earth'.
• luto means 'cooking'.
• maske/maski means 'yet' or 'yet' (appeared to 'more than').
• kubeta means 'retrete' (default of 'couple').
• kasilyas in bisay and chabacano means 'retrete' (defeated from 'casillas').
• lamierda/lamyerda means 'get out of the game' (appeared to 'the shit').
• Fuck! means 'a rice cake' (prostituta(o) and other 'mujeriego') in some countries of Hispanic America.
• Sugal means 'games of chance' (appeared to 'play').
• Mammon means 'smooth bread'.
• pear means 'dog' or 'money'.
• kasi/kasé means 'because', 'it's that' '), similar to "almost".
• I did. means 'purpose', 'use' (appeared to 'serve').
• palengke means 'market' (derivado del mexicanismo «palenque»).

However, the word that is used to designate "safe" has almost the same meaning in Spanish, since it is called "iron box".

Filipinismos (words of Filipino origin)

The following words can be found in the RAE's Dictionary of the Spanish language:

• carabao
• barangay
• I-I
• abacá
• Cogón
• sampaguita
• bagio (huracán)
• paipay
• bolo (long large blade knife, used as a weapon, to cut branches or as a tool of labrance).
• dalaga
• feluz (This is a Filipinoism not yet documented in the RAE, whose meaning is "terciopelo", which comes from the tagalo and the bisay pelusand this of the French term velours).
• dabuti, dabuten or hypercorruption of buten (in Filipino, mabuti)

Incorporations into Filipino Spanish

• Nahuatlismos, extracted from Dictionary of Filipinoisms edited 1921.

Idiomatic nationalism

Spanish in the Philippines was a vector of nationalism before two empires: Spain and the United States. The nativist attitude criticized Spanish in the Philippines as an imperial imposition; in reality, the friars and officials made an effort to learn the indigenous languages. In any case, the native elites decided to educate themselves in Spanish, and these in turn were imitated by the urban population. Considering this phenomenon, it is necessary for the student of Philippine history and culture to know a language in which an extensive amount of legal and administrative documentation was written in the Hispanic period, as well as an important corpus of historical, linguistic, and literary interest.. It contains the first great works of Philippine literature, as well as some of the most complete and detailed descriptive grammars ever written for many of the country's native languages.

This was carried out by clerics of the different orders, especially Jesuits, just as it happened in Latin America with languages such as Quechua, Guaraní or Nahuatl). The first constitution as an independent republic, its national anthem, its proclamations, its government decrees, etc. were also written in Spanish.

Solidarity

During the government of the Captaincy General of the Philippines and, to a certain extent, during the US administration, Spanish was the vehicular language that served the purpose of national unification, since Tagalog did not yet have the prominent role which he later obtained. Each region had its own language and culture, and the inhabitant of them saw themselves as Ilocano, Pampango, Cebuano, etc. That is, still without awareness of being a Filipino.

The language began to spread from the modernization decrees of the governments of Isabel II of Spain, in the middle of the XIX century. The members of the mestizo or Spanish social class that contributed to the spread of the Hispanic language and culture were known as the "illustrated." After the exit of Spain and under US domination, they gave themselves the mission of taking over from Spain in the propagation of an identity and nationality with Hispanic roots, even at the cost of confronting US designs to destroy all vestiges of Hispanic culture. in the islands.

The Hispanic cause did not prosper in the Philippines, especially after the death of a large part of those "enlightened" in the 1945 US bombing of Manila, the soul and head of the future island nation and, after the war, because said city was enlarged by migrant masses alien to any Hispanicizing sense.

At the end of the XIX century, the native writer José Rizal, with his novels Noli me tangere and El filibusterismo, published in Belgium and Germany respectively, help to highlight the Malay component in the Filipino nationalist sense, but demanding that Spain promote education and, of course, generalization of the Spanish language as a vehicle of information. From Rizal's work, the Katipunan independence group drew the most ardent slogans to combat Spanish domination.

Both novels were a plea against the defects of the Hispanic administration, especially the power conferred on the religious orders, which according to Rizal, a recognized Freemason, were oppressive. Rizal also wrote in Tagalog, his contributions to the linguistics of that native language being notorious.

The religious orders of the islands were enraged with the publication of Rizal's works, and their Provincials did not give up until they managed to get the Spanish authorities to apprehend and execute Rizal, today considered a martyr of colonialism and father of the Philippine homeland.

Age of American domination

In 1898, the constituent junta of the First Philippine Republic, active in Malolos, Bulacan, established Spanish as the first official language. Then the Spanish rule ended. Most of the media such as the press, radio, government documents and decrees, as well as education, still used Spanish. Spanish maintained its prestige and usage well into the 20th century. Some researchers claim that it took more than fifty years for English to prevail over Spanish, mainly because of the difficulty involved in learning English and (at first) because possession of Spanish was a sign of high cultural and economic status.

Although English was promoted and even forced by the US colonial administration as the language of education and government, much of the literature of the time was written in the Spanish language. The reason is that most of the elites of that generation, educated in Spanish, experienced for the first time the freedom to dissent, this time against US attempts to dismantle the Hispanic culture of the archipelago. The US military directorates harshly repressed resistance, both nativist and Hispanic.

In the Eighth Annual Report of Director of Education David P. Barrows, dated August 1, 1908, one finds the following observations about the Spanish language:

"... the adult population of the country, which includes people of mature years and of social influence, had the Spanish language as its language so that the same Spanish language remained the most important language spoken in all commercial, political and press circles."

This observation confirms the data given by lawyer Luciano de la Rosa about Spanish being the second language of 60 percent of the total population of the Philippines during the first four decades of the 1900s.

Another revealing source of the national extent in which the Spanish language was used in the Philippines is Henry Ford's 1916 Report to the President of the United States.

Although the 1903 Census, prepared by the US occupation government, implied that the Spanish language would be spoken by "only ten (10) percent of the Filipinos", the aforementioned Report of Ford gives us the lie with his observations. He says: "There is, however, another aspect to this case that must be considered. This aspect presented itself to me when I was traveling around the islands, using ordinary transport and mixing with all kinds of people from all walks of life. Although the statement is made on the basis of school statistics that there are more (numerous) Filipinos who speak English than any other language, no one has to agree with this statement if they are to rely on the testimony of what reaches their ears.. Everywhere, Spanish is the language of business and social exchange."

Spanish writer Miguel de Unamuno, in 1925

"For anyone to get prompt attention from whoever they are, Spanish turns out to be more useful than English. And outside of Manila, it is almost indispensable. Americans who travel all over the islands use it as a matter of habit."

Although some notable writers stood out during the period of Spanish colonization, especially José Rizal y Alonso, praised by Miguel de Unamuno and read today in English or native translations by all Philippine schoolchildren, the true Golden Age of Spanish In the Philippines it happens after the departure of Spain, when the native or mestizo social class that had cooperated with the colonizing work reaches its social age. The Spanish-Filipino literature that was produced at that time, and that we could call classic, is the work of "enlightened" writers such as José Rizal, Pedro Paterno, Graciano López Jaena, Jesús Balmori, Antonio M. Abad, Manuel Bernabé, Adelina Gurrea, Guillermo Gómez Windham, Claro M. Recto... To these, already well into the second half of the XX century are added Evangelina Guerrero, Federico Espino Licsi, Edmundo Farolán Romero, director of Revista Filipina and Guillermo Gómez Rivera, the latter two still active at the beginning of the century XXI.

Nationalism with Hispanic roots initially spread in Spanish, especially through the writings of Marcelo H. del Pilar (Plaridel), founder of the fortnightly publication La Solidaridad, which appeared in Barcelona and later in Madrid. The first newspaper in Spanish in Cebu, titled El Boletín de Cebu, appeared in 1886. Around 1915, due to pressure from US interests, local newspapers began to publish sections in English. In Cebu, where there were also groups of Hispanics, the writer José del Mar won the Zóbel Prize in 1965 with his work Perfiles, established to contribute to the maintenance of Spanish as the cultural language of the islands.

Ironically, most of the Philippine literature in the Spanish language was published during the days of American rule. One of the most notorious native Spanish writers, Claro M. Recto, continued to write in Spanish until 1946. Other well-known writers who used Spanish in that period were the poets Isidro Marfori, Cecilio Apóstol (author of Pentélicas, 1941), Fernando María Guerrero (Crisálidas, 1914), Flavio Zaragoza Cano (Songs to Spain and From Mactán to Tirad) and others.

Among the newspapers published in Spanish, El Renacimiento, La Democracia, La Vanguardia, El Debate, El Pueblo de Iloílo, El Tiempo and La Voz de Manila among others. Three magazines, The Independent, Philippine Free Press and Philippine Review were published with sections in both Spanish and English.

Current situation of Spanish in the Philippines

Speaker Statistics

Currently about 2 million Filipinos speak Spanish as a second language, or with very limited proficiency based on Chabacano Creole, and there would be about 4,000 native speakers, almost all descendants of Creole families; these numbers do not include Chabacano speakers. Spanish was the official language until the promulgation of the 1973 Constitution and a compulsory subject in universities until 1987.

The official statistics of the 1990 census indicated that there were only 2,657 speakers of Spanish as their mother tongue and another 689,000 of Chabacano (Creole lexified by Spanish), but they do not specify the speakers of Spanish as a second or third language, nor the speakers of Chabacano as a second language. The figures on the total number of speakers are not very specific, some of them are cited in the following table:

In any case, many of these statistics are biased and are usually based on historical data for Spanish, for example, during the 50s–70s it was said that 3% of Filipinos were Spanish-speaking; On the other hand, in old statistics, Creole (chabacano) used to be considered as Spanish.

The reality is that the use of Spanish by people born after the Second World War is anecdotal, among those born before 1945 there is a significant use, but this is a population group that decreases strongly from year to year for reasons now a natural death. It could be estimated, perhaps somewhat optimistically, that 10% of the population born before 1945 have the ability to communicate in Spanish, although almost all those born before that date are capable of saying some phrases in Spanish. Taking into account that there are some 5 million Filipinas over the age of 65, it is reasonable to think that those over 71 are one million, of which 10% are able to communicate fluently in Spanish, a maximum of about 100 000 Filipinos would be able to speak Spanish, not counting the speakers of Chabacano, a language too different to allow communication with Spanish. If we think of the historical 3–6% we should lower the figure to 50,000; this figure of course does not include Filipinos who have learned Spanish academically, but who do not use it, nor have they ever used it in their daily lives.

Teaching Spanish

The main Philippine languages have an important base of their vocabulary in Spanish, reaching around 20% in some, so Spanish is considered an easy language to learn.

At least 41,000 people study Spanish in the country, according to the Instituto Cervantes. There are 13,500 Spanish students in secondary. To these must be added some 16,000 university students of Spanish, some 3,000 at the Cervantes Institute, and finally some 11,500 in private centers. There is currently a Cervantes Institute in Manila, but the teaching work of the Cervantes Institute in Manila will be reinforced in the archipelago with the opening of three Cervantes classrooms in the cities of Zamboanga, Makati and Cebu.

The Instituto Cervantes de Manila and the Department of Education of the Embassy of Spain in Manila, the Philippine Academy of the Spanish Language, as well as various groups of Hispanists, have started a new wave that promotes the learning of the Spanish language in the country. Among them, the former president of the Philippines Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The objective is to ensure that in this country, as has already been achieved in Brazil, Spanish can return to formal education, and even make it an official language again.

However, for Spanish to return to compulsory education in public schools, the constitution would have to be reformed as the then President Corazón Aquino did (on that occasion to suppress it).

The former president of the Philippines, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, asked the Government of Spain to collaborate in her efforts to reintroduce the language in schools in that country. After successive contacts between the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, the head of the Philippine Ministry of Education and the management of the Instituto Cervantes, in November 2008 the Government of the Philippines announced to great fanfare the reincorporation of Spanish in secondary education by mid-2009 This announcement was interpreted by many official and communication media as the return of Spanish to public schools in the Philippines. Even in the most sensationalist media, there was talk of an unusual resurgence of interest in Spanish in the Philippines and of a hypothetical return to official status of Spanish in that country. What is clear is that new perspectives were opened for the Spanish language in the Philippines. In 2009, the Filipino academic and president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was awarded the Don Quixote International Prize, for introducing the teaching of the Spanish language in national curricula.

The beginning of the restoration of Spanish in public education in the Philippines began in June 2009, but the process has not been rapid. The project began with a pilot test in which the Instituto Cervantes de Manila would be in charge of training 34 teachers in the previous two months with an intensive 240-hour course, to continue their training over the Internet, throughout the course. These teachers taught the first classes to the 1,190 students selected for the project, in 17 centers, one in each province.

Currently, Spanish is the second most studied European language in the Philippines. In secondary education, the subject of Spanish is taught in the third and fourth grades in a total of 82 public schools in the 2018-2019 school year, distributed in the 17 administrative regions of the Philippines.

On September 11, 2012, the Philippine Secretary of the Department of Education, Armin Luistro announced an agreement with the Chilean government to teach Spanish to Filipino school teachers.

The Spanish used in the Philippines

Because the Philippines was administered by the Viceroyalty of New Spain during the viceregal period, Filipino Spanish (in Cebuano: Katsilang Filipinhon; in Filipino: Kastilang Filipino) has a greater affinity with the Mexican standard than the European one. For example, lisping is hegemonic. However, vosotros is used and lleísmo is observed.

Today there is a tendency among the new generations of speakers (that is, those who learn the language as a foreign language) to use grammatical and lexical features closer to the European standard. This is due to the confluence of the presence of the Cervantes Institute and the disappearance of the native standard. Despite this, variations, especially in pronunciation and intonation, abound.

Hispanic Cultural Relations

Location of Spain and Philippines.

Currently, the culture of the Spanish language in the Philippines is championed by the Instituto Cervantes. One of his reading initiatives meant that, during March and August 2009, the Manila subway carried the poems in English and Spanish of fifteen Spanish, Filipino and Latin American poets printed on the trains.

An important advance in relations between the Philippines and the rest of the Hispanic countries has been the participation of the Philippines in the Ibero-American summits since 2009, as an associate member.

Within popular culture, there are some successful singers and musical groups in Spanish^{[cita required]}, such as: Luis Eduardo Aute, Josh Santana, Antonio Morales, Conchita Panadés, Bambú, Isabel Granada, Imago, Miguel Morales, Pilita Corrales, Asin, Pupil, Yano and Sponge Cola.

Every June 30, the Hispanic-Filipino Friendship Day is celebrated, which aims to rescue the existing historical and socio-cultural ties between Spain and the Philippines, including language.

Literary Awards in Spanish in the Philippines

• Zóbel Prize, founded in 1920, is the oldest literary award instituted in the Philippines. He was last handed over in 2000 as a "Hispanity Prize" and from that date the prize is asleep.

One of the most active social centers, as stated in its statutes:

strengthen and maintain Hispanic-Philippine relations to preserve the existing Spanish culture and the ideals of Hispanicity in the Philippines.

is the Spanish Casino in Manila, created in 1844, where the Zóbel Prizes are awarded.

• José Rizal Award for Letters Philippines, founded in 2015 by the Juan Andrés Institute for Comparatism and Globalization. Delivered in its first edition to Guillermo Gómez Rivera Quis ut Deus, anthropological and political novel that is the memory of Filipino culture.

• Rafael Palma Award, founded in 2019 by the University of the Philippines and the Philippine Journal, literary award for Filipino students.

• Antonio Abad Prize.

Spanish-language media

During the first decade of the XXI century, there was a radio program on the Philippine state broadcaster BBS, called Filipinas, Ahora Mismo that broadcast 1 hour a day in Spanish (Monday to Friday), on 6 local stations, since March 2007. It has also existed for some years of the century XXI a digital newspaper in Spanish called e-dyario., which finally is not published today. Since 1997 there has been the electronic publication Revista Filipina founded and directed by Edmundo Farolán and currently directed by Edwin Lozada.

A new online magazine La Jornada Filipina, founded by Arvyn Cerezo, has been launched on September 15, 2020.

A phenomenon that is breaking out with force is the broadcast in Spanish of Latin American telenovelas.

There are daily television news in the tacky language.