Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Recently from Ryan Tamares, a link to a Langfocus-channel video on YouTube, on Chavacano, the Spanish-based creole of the Philippines (especially Zamboanga):

(#1) An admirable brief presentation on Chavacano, the Spanish-based creole of the Philippines (esp. Zamboanga); and on creole languages

Earlier on this blog, my posting of 6/1/17 “No te vayas de Zamboanga”, about a song of that name:

The original of the song was in Spanish — “No Te Vayas de Zamboanga” — or possibly in the Mindanao creole called Chavacano or Chabacano, but we sang it in English, probably in the widespread mistranslation “Do Not Go to (Far) Zamboanga”. (A more accurate translation is “Do Not Go from Zamboanga” or “Do Not Leave Zamboanga” — Zamboanga being both a place of great physical beauty and the home of the singer’s beloved.)

With a section on Chavacano, as the only Spanish-based creole in Asia.

The video in #1 is one of many on the Langfocus channel by Paul Jorgensen (“language enthusiast and Youtube content creator”), a Canadian who lives in Japan. An appreciation on Steve Dodson’s Languagehat blog on 5/10/16:

Paul Jorgensen, “university professor, language enthusiast, avid traveler, and an obsessive creator,” has a home page, an Instagram site, a Twitter feed… well, let’s just say he’s plugged in. But his main focus is his YouTube channel (“On this channel I share my love for languages as well as my tips and ideas on how to learn most effectively”); I learned about it via an e-mail from Kobi, who describes it so well I might as well just let him tell you:

By chance I found a YouTube video Basque – A Language of Mystery. Poking around I found the LangFocus YouTube site which provides articles with basic information about various languages. The site owner knows Hebrew, I can confirm that he knows it quite well, and his linguistics makes sense to me as well. There’s a video about Hindi vs Urdu and quite a few others. I have yet to explore it more, and I can tell you that it isn’t too serious but quite well done.

This entry was posted on January 9, 2019 at 2:14 pm and is filed under Languages, Pidgins and creoles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.