All I Can Handle

If you grew up in Zamboanga city, you may have heard the late mayor Maria Clara “Caling” Lobregat’s song mi ciudad de Zamboanga on radio every morning. I am not sure if it is still played by that radio station these days, but I could never forget the passion with which Caling sang this song. It might fail in comparison to no te vayas de Zamboanga in terms of popularity and to Zamboanga Hermosa in terms of importance but it is a very beautiful song that seems to speak about Zamboanga Hermosa in reminiscence. Here are the words of that song, which I copied from the website of zambotoday.com. I am not sure about its veracity though since it doesn’t sound very natural but then it is a song. It is an old song and it contains some words which are not anymore used in the modern Chabacano such as engrandece, alaba and amable which means to grow in stature, to praise and kind in Spanish respectively. Desde'l dia de mi nacimiento Hasta que ya llega yo engrandece Pirmi yo ta oi Tu

I spent new year with my friend in Camiling, Tarlac. On the way, we passed by several interesting landmarks like Hacienda Luisita. I also was treated to vistas of hills, mountains, and vast expanses of rice plantations during the bus ride. What caught my attention though while I was in Camiling was the language. Ilocano is a language spoken by around 8 Million Filipinos according to statistics in Encarta. When I went to Tarlac, it was the first time that I went to a place where Tagalog is not the common language. The friend whom I visited in Camiling speaks the language and here are some interesting observations that I made. I noticed that there are some Bisayan words in Ilocano. For example I heard her use uli (go home) and balay (house) during a conversation. These two words are actually also found in Bisaya and they mean the same thing in both languages.   The comments below seem to debunk this claim . Then of course I heard some Spanish words. When my friend was speaking to m