Why Filipinos Don't Speak Spanish Anymore?

When I was growing up I wondered why I only speak Tagalog (our national language), Cebuano (our regional dialect) and English (our medium of instruction) while not speaking a single word of Spanish (our supposed mother tongue). Though I must admit I do know some Spanish words but of course when I'm cursing at someone.

¿Hablas español?

When I was growing up I wondered why I only speak Tagalog (our national language), Cebuano (our regional dialect), and English (our medium of instruction) while not speaking a single word of Spanish (our supposed mother tongue). Though I must admit I do know some Spanish words but of course when I'm cursing at someone.

We do know that most of us have Spanish surnames with mostly American first names. That is why many Filipinos in America are difficult to recognize and even classified as "Latinos." It's either you're classified as Chinese, Mexicans, Vietnamese, and sometimes Native Americans. No wonder, Filipino-Americans are not well represented in the United States.

But going back to the question, Why Filipinos don't speak Spanish anymore? Despite the effort to reconnect to Spain and its culture we seem to forget our Spanish language even though the remnants of Spanish culture are still staring us in our face. Some of us may speak closer to Spanish like the creole language of Chavacano in Zamboanga. Few schools are offering Spanish language classes because of the fact that many people who want to learn a foreign language wanted the in-demand ones like Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and French.

Our interest in the Spanish language seemed to be absent. Sometimes former Spanish colonies like Mexico, Argentina, and Cuba have also asked why their fellow Filipino cousin has turned its back from its Spanish past and embraced the Gringo culture. That's a simple assumption that we have became traitors to our own past. Indeed that echoed Jose Rizal's famous statement “Ang hindi lumingon sa pinanggalingan ay hindi makakarating sa paruruonan” (those who don’t look back to where they come from cannot reach their destination).

Filipinos are Asians with a Spanish soul

In a practical way, many of us think in this way "Why do we have to learn Spanish when we don't encounter Spanish people every day?" Seriously, there are about 700 million Spanish speakers around the world and that means they are seven times larger than all the Filipinos!

One interesting analogy why the non-speaking of Spanish in the Philippines remains a hot topic today is the case of Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Both countries (though Puerto Rico is not considered as such) have been under Spanish control for more than 300 years and both were under American rule but the difference is that the Philippines gained independence from the United States in 1946 while Puerto Rico remains an American territory until this day. So with this in mind, people without the knowledge of the Philippines and Puerto Rico would probably believe that Puerto Rico would not speak Spanish anymore because it's under U.S. control while the Philippines would still speak Spanish because of the fact it gained independence from the U.S. 60 years ago.

WRONG! As a matter of fact, Puerto Ricans still speak fluent Spanish even though they are all American citizens. The Filipinos hardly speak Spanish even though the language has Spanish loan words and phrases. The question is, what happened? In my opinion, even though we gained independence from the United States, our country has lost its connection with Spain and with the various Spanish-speaking countries. We also fell in love with American pop culture and so Spanish has become irrelevant to the new generation as many of them speak more English than Spanish. In Puerto Rico's case, they never lost their Spanish connection because of its proximity to large Spanish-speaking countries like Mexico and Cuba.

Recently, we only attribute Spanish to some cheesy Mexican telenovelas with bizarre lip-synched dialogues. We only know so-called conyo-Spanish (pseudo-Spanish).

In tracing back our love affair with Spain, we have to go back in time and picture out the time when Filipinos spoke Espanol, our lingua franca for the next 350 years. The Spanish established schools to teach the Spanish language (to the extent of basic literacy) and Catholic catechism. We were taught to only understand the church sermons and basic laws that concerned ordinary citizens. In this case, not all Filipinos speak Spanish very well, and to the point, only the illustrados know how to write as well. Because of this, the majority of the archipelago's population is illiterate.

Just imagine the people around you speaking Spanish

However, as the number of schools increased Spanish literacy improved. The rise of the middle class was attributed to this, the growth of opportunities has brought about the urgent need for reforms. The men that urged such reforms were well educated like Jose Rizal, Juan Luna, Graciano Lopez Jaena, and many others. But the new opportunities come with a price. These men became enemies of the state overnight and so many of them went into hiding. But the consequence also blossomed Spanish literature in the Philippines. As a matter of fact, most great works attributed to Jose Rizal are in Spanish.

The remnants of the Spanish language took root in almost all dialects in the country while some creole language remained such as Chavacano and its variances. This creole language was developed by ordinary people in an effort to communicate with their Spanish overlords. The conditions in the forts of Zamboanga and Cavite were difficult and that communicating with people of different backgrounds was important, because of this a pidgin language was developed. Such language later developed into Chavacano, which is still spoken today.

Certain Spanish words have changed their meaning in the Philippine setting in the course of time. It has become so Filipinized that some people think it's not a Spanish word at all. Take for example the Spanish "azar," which means luck or chance but the Filipino "asar" means to annoy.

During the height of the use of the Spanish language in the Philippines, all historical documents in this era are written in Spanish. Spanish was used to write the Constitution of Biak-na-Bato, Malolos Constitution, the original national anthem, (Himno Nacional Filipino), as well as nationalistic propaganda material and literature, like Rizal's Noli Me Tangere. In fact, Rizal propagated Filipino consciousness and identity in Spanish.

During the early decades of the American period, Spanish was still widely used by the majority of the population as many of the people are still learning English. Although the English language had begun to be heavily promoted and used as the medium of education and government proceedings, the majority of literature produced by indigenous Filipinos during this period was in Spanish with the likes of Fernando Ma. Guerrero, Rafael Palma, Cecilio Apóstol, Jesús Balmori, Manuel Bernabé, Trinidad Pardo de Tavera and Teodoro M. Kalaw. Ironically, there was a growing interest in Spanish language literature because the Philippine middle and upper classes were educated in Spanish. As a result, Spanish had become the most important language in the country despite roughly half of the population not speaking the language.

The decline in Spanish language use started when the children taught in English during the early American period became adults. They started to feel that learning Spanish is impractical and the medium of instruction has shifted into English. American pop culture was the way and so the Spanish became marginalized. After the war, most of the Spanish-speaking population like the Spanish mestizos went elsewhere.

One thing that made our Spanish experience more interesting is that we gave the Spanish some words in Philippine origin such as abaca (abaca), baguio (typhoon), carabao (water buffalo), bolo (big knife) and sampaguita (flower). The Spanish in turn transplanted Nahuatl words into our vocabulary such as nanay (from nantl -- mother), tatay (from tatle -- father), bayabas (from guayabas -- guava), papaya, zapote, etc.

But the question remains, ¿Hablas español?