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The Little Prince By Antoine De Saint-Exupéry Is Now Available In Chabacano!

While Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) written by Antoine De Saint-Exupéry in 1943 now has over 300 translations in different languages worldwide and is now considered the world’s most translated book (not counting religious works), there have been surprisingly only two translations of his book in the Philippines (Filipino and Bicol). El Diutay Principe is only the third edition featuring a Philippine language. The Little Prince is a classic French novella about a pilot who gets stranded in the desert after a plane crash and encounters a little fellow who asks him to draw a sheep for him. Through the course of their meeting, the pilot rediscovers the true meaning of life and what people should value the most. When I came across the book in 2013, I found that I could relate very well to the negative image given to “growing up” in the book. When the idea to translate the book into my mother tongue was presented to me, I didn’t think twice. I thought, ‘a lot of people my
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Origins of the Chabacano Aton and Amon

Aside from Spanish, Nahuatl, and Portuguese, the Hiligaynon (Ilonggo) language also made some notable contributions to Chabacano. Some of these words are amon and aton.

Having made the acquaintance of a Hiligaynon speaker recently, I made it a point to ask her to provide me with Hiligaynon sentences using amon and aton so that I could compare how similar the Chabacano and Hiligaynon languages are.

Ilonggo: Sa amon lang kamo makaon.
English: Just eat at our (place).
Chabacano: Alla lang ustedes come con amon.

Ilonggo: Amon na ya.
Rough translation in English: That is ours.
Chabacano: De amon ese.

Ilonggo: Sa aton balay sila matulog.
English: They will sleep at our house.
Chabacano: Na de aton casa sila dormi.

Ilonggo: Aton-aton lang ni.
English: This is just between you and me.
Chabacano: De aton-aton lang este.

As you can see, there's great similarity on how the two languages use these two words.

In Zamboanga city, one will observe that there is a great number of people whose roots are from Iloilo and this might explain the manifestation of many Hiligaynon words in the Chabacano language. Coincidentally, Zamboanga and Iloilo were both very important cities in the Philippines during the early 20th century but declined in economic importance after the second world war, the former due to the deteriorating sugar economy and the latter because of the rise of insurgency in the region.

This article was also published in the International Year of Indigenous Languages Philippines website.
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  1. יאן סבייסקי דייוטApril 8, 2017 at 7:38 PM

    However, many so Zamboangueño Linguists, wrongly identity these infleunces to came from Cebuano.

    There was even a chance I saw a comment from a certain Zamboangueño linguist (I won't mention his name) whop said the word TATA "padre" and NANA "madre" evolved from the Tagalog word "Tatay" and "Nanay"respectively.

    But if we have happen to know that Mexicans also use the word "TATA" for father and "NANA" for mother, and these words came from Nahuatl language - just like other terms today, e.g. Avocado, Zacate, etcétera.

    Anyhow, I'm just only disappointed reading such statement or opinion from a linguist per se, who most of his works, make comparisons closely and solely between Tagalog and Cebuano, without looking the bigger picture of other languages influences.

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