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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

How to say Food & Kitchen related words in Chabacano

In the Philippines, people like to eat hot pan de sal in the morning. Filipinos consider pan de sal laden with fruit jam, peanut butter, or butter coupled with hot chocolate or coffee the perfect breakfast. But did you know that Chabacano has a different word for this type of bread?

Pan de sal is a Spanish word meaning (literally) bread of salt or salty bread but in Chabacano, we say pan salao.

Other bread types include the pan coco (coconut bread) or pan de coco. This is actually bread filled with sweet coconut. Then there's also pan monggo which is filled with sweet mung beans. Lastly, we have the pan barreta. Pan Barreta is simply the normal everyday loaf bread that we eat which is shaped like a bar, thus its name.

Let's also look into some vegetables that has a distinct Chabacano name. Red squash or the Tagalog kalabasa is called Calabasa Colorao. If you don't like Calabasa Colorao, you could probably cook Guisao Frijoles (preholes). Frijoles, in Chabacano, refers to string beans. Guisao Frijoles stir fried string beans with soy sauce, it is called adobong sitaw in Tagalog. Incidentally, the word frijol/frijoles is not really used in Castilian Spanish or the peninsular Spanish, it is widely used in LATIN American Spanish. Other Chabacano vegetables are monggo nacido (meaning born mung beans literally) and monggo grano (meaning mung bean grain literally). Monggo grano is the green mung bean and monggo nacido is the sprouted or germinated mung bean.

Then there is cebollon. Cebollon means onion in Chabacano. In Spanish, the word for onion is cebolla and in Tagalog, it is sibuyas.

Fried foods in Chabacano is just a matter of saying frito plus whatever meat it is that you are frying; so if you want to say 'fried chicken', it is frito manok in Chabacano. Grilled foods are called asao plus whatever meat you are grilling. Some people love asao pescao (fish) and asao choca (squid). In the Chavacano de Cavite, they also use the word choca for squid.

Caldo in Chabacano is soup and it can have either pork (caldo de puerco), chicken (caldo de manok), fish (caldo de pescao) or beef (caldo de vaca) as its main ingredient. We also have a dish in Chabacano, sopas (an always-plural noun) which is a soup made from corn.

Other dishes with Chabacano names are picadillo, rebozao, dule saging and endulsao. Picadillo is white squash (calabasa blanco) with ground pork. Picadillo in Spanish means minced meat. Rebosao is banana coated with caramelized sugar and Endulsao is pork sweetened by pineapples and Sprite (the soft drink). Meanwhile, dulce saging is chopped bananas in sweet syrup . Rebozar de in Spanish means to abound something with (I guess in rebozao's case, sugar) and endulzar means to sweeten something.

Lastly, I would like to add atole. Atole is actually lugaw in Tagalog. It is boiled cooked rice. It is like arroz caldo without the egg, chicken, garlic, and whatever else one puts into arroz caldo. Atole is usually eaten by sick people. Incidentally, atole in Spanish actually means 'maize drink' (corn drink).


This article was also published in the International Year of Indigenous Languages Philippines website.

Comments

  1. Pork is puerco in chavacano tnx

    ReplyDelete
  2. yo pense que no Chavacanos ta habla "Pan Salao".
    por eso mas bueno habla que en Chavacano este ta epxresa ambos "pan Salao o Pan de Sal"

    porque yo, mi familia y parientes nunca ta habla "pan salao" sino firmi kame ta habla "Pan De Sal".

    29años ya yo...
    cuando yo na elementaria pa, yo se firmi ta anda compra Pan de Sal cada aga.
    mi tata, firmi le conmigo ta hace acorda cada noche que no olvida compra "PAN DE SAL" mañana aga.

    al llega mañana o a la mañana, si ta despierta ya mi tata, hermanos, enseguidas ellos ta pregunta conmigo si ya compra ya el "PAN DE SAL".

    Gracias!;-)


    Arondayot a.k.a. Acer_Cyle

    ReplyDelete
  3. You are correct about the Spanish meaning of rebosar, but the actual word should be rebozar (with a Z), which means to coat something (food), usually in batter or breadcrumbs.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for the correct. Just made necessary changes. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Treinta'y nueve año yo y justo kay cuando bata yo, y hasta ahora, ta oi pa iyo siempre con el mi tata habla "pan salao" para referi con el pan de sal.

    ReplyDelete

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