This is not your father's Spanglish

We're all familiar with the term Spanglish (Espanglish in Spanish) for mixing English and Spanish (Espanol) in speech. I haven't asked if they have an equivalent here in Cebu for mixing English and Cebuano. It would be superfluous. Cebuanos learn English from a young age not merely by taking English classes but by actually having their classes taught in English. The consistency of this approach varies especially with distance from metropolitan areas, it is less rigid in the province (as they call the countryside). Nonetheless such a high premium is placed on English speaking that churches will perform services in it, not to mention their whole hearted adoption of American and Australian praise music. Their native tongue is replete with Spanish. I constantly hear the word pero, Spanish for "but", when they are speaking. This is not a direct Spanish loanword. The national dialect Tagalog uses pero and even though Cebuanos eschew Tagalog (an imposed dialect) they prefer to use this word, a word from Tagalog, from Spanish. Cebtagaspanglish doesn't begin to describe it.

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