tungemål wrote:That's interesting. Also the Philippines. They didn't adopt Spanish, probably because there were too few Spanish settlers, unlike e.g. Mexico.
My memories of school history lessons are hazy but the narrative I've heard goes like this:
1) Indeed very few Spanish settlers in the Philippines, as we were a far-flung colony and not a prize colony like Mexico. As such, not enough boots on the ground for the Spanish Crown to have a strong grip on government administration, so the Spanish presence in most areas of the Philippines was predominantly composed of local priests and religious orders.
2) The Spanish priests actively discouraged teaching Spanish to the vast majority of native 'Indios', instead, choosing to learn local languages to spread Catholicism. Only the rich elite (who could attend schools established by religious orders) and native priests were fluent in Spanish.
3) Towards the end of the Spanish rule in the Philippines, the Spanish crown established a public school system and prioritized the teaching of Spanish, which was too late because...
4) The Americans became our new colonial masters and set up a wide of network public schools (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomasites), bringing over teachers from the US to train Filipino teachers using English.
The Philippines is very interesting linguistically- naturally has lots of languages since it's archipelagic, they were not wiped out by Spanish due to the above circumstances, compared to many of its neighbouring countries, has an advantage in English because of colonization, there is some linguistical disconnect from our own history because so many of the primary sources are in Spanish: current Filipinos can only read the translated works of our national heroes because the originals are in Spanish.
