Towards an orthography for the Zamboanga apricot Written practices and standardization proposals

Zamboangueno Chabacano enjoys a vitality in the oral domain that does not correspond to the scarcity of texts published in this Creole language. However, in recent times written practices have increased in areas such as the school system, audiovisual media or the internet. These developments have brought about a new interest in the standardization of the language and the development of a stable orthography. To achieve these objectives, zamboanguenos face not only technical problems but also ideological ones, since the process of selecting or discarding linguistic features or graphemes arouses, almost inevitably, previously nonexistent tensions. This article examines the diversity of existing written practices and some orthographic standardization proposals that have emerged in recent years, paying attention to the technical details and the symbolic value of phoneme / grapheme relationships.