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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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Chabacanizing Tagalog Expressions and Slang


A week ago, I was quite surprised when my friend greeted me, cosa man el noticia? I found this strange because I have never heard this greeting in Chabacano. I, however, realized that it is a direct translation of a very popular Tagalog greeting in Manila, anong balita?

 Come to think of it there are a lot of Chabacano words which sounds as if they are direct translations from Tagalog. A couple of examples are:
TagalogChabacano
Patay-GutomMuerto-Hambre/Muertoy Hambre
Mukhang PeraCaray Sen
Feeling MagandaSenti Guapa

 The 'y' in cara is added most probably because Chabacano sometimes follows Cebuano grammar and whenever a Tagalog word ends with a -ng, the Cebuano equivalent ends in a 'y'.

 The Chabacano caray is a very useful bit of vocabulary because you can use it whenever you wish to say that something or someone looks like __________. Here are other examples of the word caray being used in Chabacano.

 Tagalog: Mukhang Baboy
Chabacano: Caray Puerco
English: (Someone) looks like a pig.

 Tagalog: Mukhang Mabigat
Chabacano: Caray Pesao
English: (Something) looks heavy

 Tagalog: Mukhang Mayaman
Chabacano: Caray Rico
English: (Someone) looks rich

 One Tagalog slang from Manila creeping into Chabacano is kumusta naman.

 Here is a dialogue that explains this slang.

 -Maputik ang daan.
-E di magsuot ka ng tsinelas.
-Kamusta naman ang mga paa ko noon?

 -Malodo el camino.
-Na usa tu chinelas.
-Na quetal man mio pies si man chinelas yo?

 -The road is muddy.
-Why don't you use slippers?
-But what would happen to my feet then?

 If you're going to notice, these new implants in Chabacano are fairly new expressions and slang in the Tagalog language. It seems to me, Chabacano is experiencing quite an evolution yet again. But here’s where we separate Chabacano from the other languages. Instead of just opting to use the popular new Tagalog expressions and slang from Manila in its original form, we choose to adopt these words in our language (no matter how weird the translation sounds). Its capacity to adapt amidst the ever-changing linguistic composition of far more influential languages is what keeps our language from suffering the fate of other languages. This is truly what makes Chabacano de Zamboanga unique.


This article was also published in the International Year of Indigenous Languages Philippines website.
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  1. יאן סבייסקי דייוטSeptember 11, 2014 at 9:06 PM

    Caray Pesao?

    ¿Jendêh ba gaja más propio habla "Hechura'y pesao"?

    El "caray pesao" gale, sabe yo que tiene ese "apóstrofo" antes el letra "y" como "Cara'y pesao, cara'y sen, cuento'y loco, etcétera"...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jerome HerreraMay 2, 2017 at 5:11 PM

      I'm not sure. Because Mukhang is not a contraction of 2 words, or is it? I mean mukhang in tagalog is never written as mukha'ng as far as I know.

      Delete
  2. JaimeCJanuary 13, 2018 at 5:38 PM

    I have a theory. "cara'y pesao" sounds like perfect Spanish from certain regions. Sounds like "Cara de pesado" but D's tend to dissapear and some E's tend to transform into I's, so "cara'y pesao" makes perfect sence and it would be a contraction of "cara de" > "cara'y". And also saying something has "cara de" in Spanish is exactly like the way is used in Chavacabo, at least in Mexico.

    ReplyDelete

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