Zamboangueño
On June 23, 1635, Zamboanga City became a permanent foothold of the Spanish government with the construction of the San José Fortress. Bombardment and harassment from pirates and raiders of the sultans of Mindanao and Jolo and the determination to spread Christianity further south (as Zamboanga was a crucial strategic location) of the Philippines forced the Spanish missionary friars to request reinforcements from the colonial government. The military authorities decided to import labor from Luzon and the Visayas. Thus, the construction workforce eventually consisted of Spanish and Mexican soldiers, masons from Cavite (who comprised the majority), sacadas from Cebu and Iloilo, and those from the various local tribes of Zamboanga like the Samals and Subanons. Ethnolinguistic differences made it difficult for one tribe to communicate with another. To add to this, work instructions were issued in Spanish. The majority of the workers was unschooled and therefore did not understand Spanish but needed to communicate with each other and the Spaniards. A pidgin developed and became a full-fledged creole language still in use today as a lingua franca and/or as official language, mainly in Zamboanga City. When Sultanate of Sulu gave up its territories (Sulu Archipelago and North Borneo) to Spain within late 1700s, Spanish settlers and soldiers brought the language to the region until Spain, Germany, and United Kingdom signed an agreement named Madrid Protocol of 1885 that recognized Spanish rule of Sulu Archipelago but Spain gave up all control in North Borneo. Chavacano becomes a lingua franca of Sulu Archipelago (composing of Sulu, Tawi-tawi, Basilan); although North Borneo (now Sabah) was ceded by Spain to United Kingdom, Chavacano has still a little impact in its town Semporna. From then on, constant Spanish military reinforcements as well as increased presence of Spanish religious and educational institutions have fostered the Spanish creole.
Chavacano or Chabacano originated from the Spanish word chabacano which literally means "poor taste", "vulgar", "common", "of low quality", "tacky", or "coarse". During the Spanish colonial period, it was called by the Spanish-speaking population as the "lenguaje del calle", "lenguaje de parian" (language of the street), or "lenguaje de cocina" (kitchen Spanish to refer to the Chabacano spoken by Chinese-Filipinos of Manila, particularly in Ermita) to distinguish it from the Spanish language spoken by the peninsulares, insulares, mestizos, or the elite class called the ilustrados. This common name has evolved into a word of its own in different spellings with no negative connotation, but to simply mean as the name of the language with that distinct Spanish flavor. However, most of its earlier speakers were born of mixed parentage – Chinese migrants and Spanish and Latin American soldiers and civil servants during the Spanish colonial period.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chavacano
