Emotional connection and ease of learning the Spanish language among young adult Chavacano speakers

Abstract

Chavacano was the product of early Spanish colonization. It was able to adapt to the dynamic of the Philippine culture for centuries. Then, it later became a separate language spoken mostly in Cavite and Zamboanga Peninsula. This study was exploratory research that contextualize the ease of learning Spanish language based on linguistic, cultural, and emotional domains. Eight students who are native Chavacano speakers in Zamboanga City were interviewed for the study. The findings indicated that the close resemblance of lexical and phonological components of Chavacano to Spanish influenced the learning of the native speakers. Cognates played an essential role in cognition and interpreting basic words from Spanish to simpler ideas in Chavacano. Cognition guessing was determined to be a major contributor to language learning for orthographies. For native Chavacano speakers, cognition guessing was a mechanism for language learning in Spanish where learners happened to deduce the meaning of a word by comparing it to a language they know. Additionally, social-cultural relatedness between Chavacano and Spanish mediated the learning in certain manner. Learners were able to emotionally relate themselves to the culture of their target language which in turn influenced language transfer. Such mechanism was firstly observed in learning the second language but later also applied in bilingualism and foreign languages. This study established theoretical connection of ease of learning the Spanish language through phonology, lexical similarities, and its sociocultural resemblance to Chavacano.