The Strange Case of Watching Regional Programming

Posible ba gayod ya man intiende y man habla Chabacano, mas quien Davaoeño yo? 

After many weeks following the Zamboanga crisis, and watching TV Patrol Chavacano, one of their regional news programs produced by ABS-CBN, it seems I now would be able to understand the context of what has been said in each report, simply because I begun to figure out the grammatical structure of the Spanish-based creole.

I don't know, but it seems I have this sort of inherent talent to pick context clues in languages that I am not familiar about. The languages of the Philippines are sort of close to each other, plus some of their words loaned from Spanish (owing to 300 years of Spanish rule) that it just needs your keen eyes and ears to learn what any local news reporter meant.

Now after a few months on exposing myself to Chavacano news reports, I begun to pick up phrases like if someone died ("con un persona el ya muri despues..."), there is rain ("...quien cay aguacero"), or the people expressed worry ("maga vivientes ta expressa lingasa..."). It's so strange I was able to understand those news leads quickly. Why is that so?

My mother tongue is Cebuano, which is generally spoken here in Davao, therefore I was initally exposed to our local news such as TV Patrol Southern Mindanao of ABS-CBN and Testigo of GMA.

But I get to be interested in the local side of the news should a local headline somewhere else becomes of national interest. For instance, during the onslaught of Yolanda (international name: Haiyan), I begun to catch up news not just from the national TV Patrol, but on its local counterpart TV Patrol Tacloban, which is broadcast in Waray-Waray, a Visayan language spoken in Eastern Visayas. They are closely related to Cebuano in grammatical structure, but with different vocabulary. Because of such facts, I was able to get some context of what the anchor was saying, and I get to know the meaning of most of the words: "yana" means "today", "tikang" means "coming from," kulop means "afternoon", tuna means "land" and so much more.

There are other regional news programming in the Philippines I have watched and I therefore conclude we share the same language family. We just speak it in a different way.

Pilipino tayo, sa isip, sa salita at sa gawa. :)


KENNETH

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