WikiPortallus: Spanish in the Philippines.html

Spanish was the first official language of the Philippines since the early days of colonization in 1565, through independence and proclamation of the First Philippine Republic (1899), American rule and commonwealth (until 1946), and until the change of constitution in 1973.¹

Spanish was the language of government, education and trade throughout the Spanish colonial period and became the unifying language for Filipinos in the 19th century. The national hero José Rizal and other Ilustrados wrote most of their works in Spanish, which was the language of the Philippine Revolution. Spanish was also the official language of the independent Philippines, according to the Malolos Constitution government of 1899.²

Following the Philippine-American War, the U.S. Taft Commission allowed their guests to use the language of their choice.³ However, Spanish became increasingly marginalized at an official level, with public schools and Philippine press being forced to switch to English under the threat of legal punishment.^{citation needed} Spanish continued to be the language of business, religion, culture, and to a certain extent politics until the 1940s and by a minority until the 1970s. However, as new generations of Filipinos educated in English and influenced by American pop culture became adults, the use of Spanish gradually declined. Spanish remained an official language until ratification of a new constitution in 1973.¹

There are thousands of Spanish loan words in 170 native Philippine languages. According to the 1990 Philippine census, there are 2,658 native Spanish speakers in the Philippines; an additional 607,200 speak Chabacano, a Spanish-based creole. The Instituto Cervantes in Manila puts the number of Spanish-speakers in the Philippines in the area of two to three million. These numbers however, refer to Filipinos with a reasonable command of the language, not exclusively fluent Spanish speakers.

History

The Spanish colonial period

Spanish was first introduced to the Philippines in 1565, when the conquistador, Miguel López de Legazpi founded the first Spanish settlement on the island of Cebu. The Philippines, ruled first from Mexico City and later from Madrid, was a Spanish territory for 333 years (1565–1898).

Although the language was not compulsory during most of the Spanish colonial period, Spanish was at one time spoken by around 60% of the population, and about 10 to 15% spoke it as a first language. This happened at the end of the 19th century following the establishment of a public school system in Spanish, in 1863. This fact, often ignored in modern history books, had an important repercussion on Philippine society. It increased the level of education of Filipinos, and eventually led to the rise of the Ilustrado Class. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Philippines was one of the most advanced countries in Asia according to European writers and travellers of the time.

Spanish was the first and only language of the Filipino-Spanish mestizos and the Spaniards in the Philippines. Initially, the stance of the Roman Catholic Church and its missionaries was to preach to the natives in local languages, not in Spanish. The priests learned the native languages and sometimes employed indigenous peoples as translators, creating a bilingual class known as ladinos. Before the 19th century, the natives generally were not taught Spanish. However, there were notable bilingual individuals such as poet-translator Gaspar Aquino de Belén. Gaspar produced Christian devotional poetry written in the Roman script in the Tagalog language. Pasyon is a narrative of the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ begun by Gaspar Aquino de Belén, which has circulated in many versions. Later, the Spanish ballads of chivalry, the corrido, provided a model for secular literature. Verse narratives, or komedya, were performed in the regional languages for the illiterate majority.

In the early seventeenth century a Tagalog printer, Tomas Pinpin, set out to write a book in romanized phonetic script to teach Tagalogs how to learn Castilian. His book, published by the Dominican press where he worked, appeared in 1610, the same year as Blancas's arte. Unlike the missionary's grammar (which Pinpin had set in type), the Tagalog native's book dealt with the language of the dominant rather than the subordinate other. Pinpin's book was the first such work ever written and published by a Philippine native. As such, it is richly instructive for what it tells us about the interests that animated Tagalog translation and, by implication, Tagalog conversion in the early colonial period. Pinpin construed translation in ways that tended less to oppose than to elude the totalizing claims of Spanish signifying conventions.^{clarification needed}.

First Philippine universities

In the 16th and 17th centuries, the oldest educational institutions in the country were set up by Spanish religious orders. These schools and universities played a crucial role in the development of the Spanish language in the islands. The University of San Carlos in Cebu, was established as the Colegio de San Ildefonso in 1595 by the Jesuits. In 1611 the Universidad de Santo Tomas, considered as the oldest existing university in Asia, was inaugurated in Manila by the Dominicans. In the 18th century, fluent male Spanish speakers in the Philippines were generally the graduates of these schools, as well as of the Colegio de San Juan de Letran, established in 1620. In 1706 a Convent School for Philippine women known as Beaterios was established. It admitted both Spanish and native girls, and taught Religion, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic with Music and Embroidery. Female graduates from Beaterios were fluent in the language as well. In 1859 the Ateneo de Manila University was established by the Jesuits.

Spanish public school system

In 1863, Queen Isabel II of Spain decreed the establishment of a public school system, following the requests of the Spanish authorities in the islands, who saw the need of teaching Spanish to the wider population. This measure was at the vanguard of contemporary Asian countries, and led to an important class of educated natives which sometimes followed their studies abroad, like national hero Jose Rizal, who studied in Europe. This class of writers, poets and intellectuals is often referred to as Ilustrados. It also led to extraordinary levels of Spanish fluency for that time, which probably exceeded 60% of the population, Spanish being either a first, second or third language. Ironically, it was during the initial years of American occupation in the early 20th century, that Spanish literature and press flourished. This was the result both of a large Spanish-speaking population, as well as the partial freedom of press which the American rulers allowed.

The role of Spanish in rising nationalism

Before the 19th century, Philippine revolts were small-scale and did not extend beyond linguistic boundaries. Thus, they were thus easily neutralized by Spanish forces⁴. With the spread of Spanish through a free public school system (1863) and the rise of an educated class, nationalists from different parts of the archipelago were able to communicate in a common language. Propagandists spread nationalism through Spanish, which became this lingua franca of the Philippines. José Rizal's novels Noli Me Tangere and El filibusterismo, Graciano López Jaena's satirical articles, Marcelo H. del Pilar's anti-clerical manifestos, the bi-weekly La solidaridad (published in Spain), and other materials in awakening nationalism were written in Spanish. The Philippine Revolution fought for reforms and later for independence from Spain. However, it did not oppose Spain's cultural legacy or the Spanish language. In fact the country's first constitution of 1899 chose Spanish as the official language. According to Horacio de la Costa, nationalism would not have been possible without Spanish. It was also Spanish that united the linguistically diverse Filipinos,⁴ by then increasingly aware of nationalistic ideas and independence movements in other countries.

Spanish was used by the first Filipino patriots like José Rizal, Andrés Bonifacio and Emilio Aguinaldo, who chose Spanish as the national language of independent Philippines. Spanish was used to write the country's first constitution, the Constitución Política de Malolos, the original national anthem, (Himno Nacional Filipino), as well as nationalistic propaganda material and literature, like José Rizal's Noli Me Tangere. Indeed, Philippine nationalism was first propagated in the Spanish language.

During the Spanish colonial era, and also through the early American period, Philippine nationalism, government reforms, the country's first constitution and historic novels were written in Spanish. While not widely understood by the majority of the population, Spanish at this time was nonetheless the unifying language since Tagalog was not as prominent or ubiquitous as it is today and each region had their own culture and language, and would rather speak in their local languages. Before the spread of Filipino nationalism, denizens of each region still thought of themselves as Ilocano, Cebuano, Bicolano, etc., and not as Filipinos.

Throughout the colonial era the term Filipino referred only to Insulares, or Philippine-born Spaniards. The majority of the pre-Hispanic native population were referred to as Indios. The Indios in turn referred to the Insulares as Kastila or Katsila.

The Spanish-speaking Ilustrados, literally "The Enlightened Ones", which included Insulares and Mestizos as well as Indios, were the educated elite who promoted and propagated nationalism and a modern Filipino consciousness.

José Rizal propagated Filipino consciousness and identity in Spanish. One material highly instrumental in developing nationalism was the novel Noli Me Tangere (Latin for "Do not touch me") which exposed abuses of the Spanish government and clergy. Rizal also promoted the use of the indigenous languages. The novel Noli Me Tangere's very own notoriety among the Spanish authorities, government and clergy, propelled its popularity even more among Filipinos. Reading it was forbidden because it exposed and parodied Spanish clergy and government authority.

The Ilustrados and later writers formed the basis of a Philippine classical literature which developed in the 19th century.

The American period

With the era of the Philippines as a Spanish colony having just ended, a considerable amount of media, newspapers, radios, and government proceedings were still written and produced in Spanish. Ironically, the public school system the Americans established served to further promote Spanish-language literacy among the masses. Even in the early 20th century a hegemony of Spanish was still in force.

Although the English language had begun to be heavily promoted and used as the medium of education and government proceedings, the majority of Spanish literature by indigenous Filipinos was produced at this time. Among the great Filipino literary writers of the period were Fernando Ma. Guerrero, Rafael Palma, Cecilio Apóstol, Jesús Balmori, Manuel Bernabé, Trinidad Pardo de Tavera and Teodoro M. Kalaw.

This explosion of Spanish language literature occurred because the upper class minority were educated in Spanish. For the first time, Filipinos experienced a greater degree of freedom of expression and even support, since the Spanish authorities weren't too receptive to Filipino writers and intellectuals during most of the colonial period. As a result, Spanish became the most important language in the country despite that the majority was composed of non-Spanish speaking natives.

The new Philippine Republic established Spanish as the official language in the constitution of 1898, drawn up during the Constitutional Convention in Malolos, Bulacan. The language had been taught freely since 1863, when a Spanish public school system was set up for the entire population, including natives. The Philippine Republic decided to continue this policy of free universal education, and the officialization of Spanish aimed to increase its speakers so it would serve as a common language in a nation of over 80 different local languages, each with its many dialects.

In his 1898 book “Yesterdays in the Philippines”, the American Joseph Earle Stevens wrote: Spanish, of course, is the court and commercial language and, except among the uneducated native who have a lingua of their own or among the few members of the Anglo-Saxon colony, it has a monopoly everywhere. No one can really get on without it, and even the Chinese come in with their peculiar pidgin variety.⁵

While the 1903 census officially reported the number of Spanish-speakers at only 1% of the population, it only considered those who were monolingual in the language and had Spanish as their one and only tongue, ie. Peninsulares (Spanish-born Spaniards), Insulares (Filipino-born Spaniards), and other Europeans (Filipino-born, Spanish-speaking Italian families, among others). It completely disregarded the bilingual Spanish-mestizo and multilingual Chinese-mestizo and Chinese minorities who - although spoke two or more languages - utilized Spanish as their primary language of business and culture. Furthermore, the indigenous Filipino illustrado class, who were academically instructed in the Spanish language, also used Spanish as their primary language despite having any one of the many native languages as their mother tongue. These together would have placed the numbers at 10% of the 8 million Filipinos of that era as Spanish-speakers.

Manuel L. Quezon brought a Spanish dictionary to the United States when he was in exile, as he was more fluent in the language.

Decline of the Spanish language

Spanish declined in the 20th century due to the introduction of the English language, lacked of promotion to the public sphere and guidance by the Philippine Government.

In 1973, Spanish lost its official status as an official language of the Philippines.¹

Today

Today, Spanish is recognized as an auxiliary language in the Philippine constitution. A great portion of the history of the Philippines is written in Spanish and, up until recently, many land titles, contracts, newspapers and literature were still written in Spanish. In 2007, Philippine president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo announced that Spanish is to be re-instated as an official language of the Philippines. Spanish is offered as a subject in Philippine schools, and universities.

Spanish as is used in the Philippines

Since the Philippines was a former territory of the Viceroyalty of New Spain (1565-1821) for most of the Spanish colonial period, Spanish as was spoken in the Philippines had a greater affinity to Mexican Spanish rather than that of European Spanish.

Phonology

When pronouncing Spanish words (such as names of people or places), there are tendencies among the majority non-Spanish-speaking population to:

Vocabulary

There are Native Americanisms, archaisms and borrowings from indigenous Philippine languages. In fact, of the great number of Spanish loan words that exist in the various Filipino languages, a few are actually of Nahuatl origin that were first incorporated into Mexican Spanish, and which do not exist in European Spanish. These include nanay(nantl), tatay (tatle), bayabas [from guayaba(s), guava], abokado (avocado), papaya, zapote, etc.

Writing

Diacritic marks are almost always left out, save for the tilde on the ñ. Spanish words however are vocally stressed as they would be by Spanish speakers, by older generations and an increasing number of younger Filipinos.

Philippine computer keyboards currently and have always used the US standard layout, which includes neither ñ nor combining diacritics. Typewriters sometimes include the ñ but not accented vowels.

Influence on the languages of the Philippines

There are approximately 4,000 Spanish words in Tagalog, and around 6,000 Spanish words in Visayan and other languages. The Spanish counting system, calendar, time, etc. are still in use with slight modifications. Archaic Spanish words have been preserved in Tagalog and the other vernaculars such as pera (coins), sabon jabón (at the beginning of Spanish rule, the j used to be pronounced as [ʃ], the voiceless postalveolar fricative or the "sh" sound) - soap], relos reloj (with the j sound) - watch], kwarta (cuarta), etc. The Spaniards and the language are referred to as either Kastila or Katsila (especially in most Visayan languages) after Castilla or Castile, the original Spanish Kingdom under which Spain was unified in 1492, which later became a Spanish region.

Chavacano, also called Zamboangueño, is a Spanish-based creole language spoken mainly in the southern province of Zamboanga and, to a much lesser extent, in the province of Cavite in the northern region of Luzon. Chavacano became the main language in the Zamboanga peninsula as a result of the migration into the area of a large number of workers who came from different linguistic regions to build military and other Spanish establishments.

Meaning changes

While many Spanish words have made their way to Philippine languages, many of these words have had a shift in meaning from the original Spanish. This has resulted in false friends, related words that exist in two languages with different meanings. A sampling of these words are shown below:

False cognates

The following words do not fall under false friends. They are still a source of confusion:

List of Spanish words of Philippine origin

Although the greatest linguistic impact and wordloans have been from Spanish to the languages of the Philippines, the Filipino languages have also loaned some words to Spanish.

Following are some of the words of Philippine origin that can be found in the DRAE (the dictionary published by the Royal Spanish Academy):

Spanish in the Philippines.html

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