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
“Escuro ya. Noma sale na casa.”
This is probably something that you would hear in Zamboanga city when darkness sets in. While the streets are well lit and safe, most Zamboangueños prefer to stay indoors at night. In fact you wouldn’t see a lot of night life or business establishments that are open at night in the city. This is changing little by little though, especially with the recently opened Paseo del Mar.
Paseo del Mar is a park located near the fort Pilar. It is very popular both with the young and old. It becomes packed when the sun starts to set at around five thirty in the afternoon. I have personally witnessed the sunset at Paseo del Mar and I can really say that it was breathtakingly beautifully. For me, it can best the famous Manila bay sunset any time of the day.
The word escuro, in my opinion, may come from the Spanish oscuro. According to the book of Esteban A De Ocampo titled The Ternateños, this word also exists in the Chavacano de Ternate. He spells it as eskuro. Here are sentences using the Chabacano escuro.
Chabacano: Porque bien escuro aqui?
English: Why is it so dark here?
Chabacano: No tu lee na escuro.
English: Don’t read in the dark.
Chabacano: Bien escuro man siempre masquin de dia ya?
English: Why is it so dark even though it’s already day time?
Here are some words related to the word escuro which I got from the Chabacano dictionary of Camins:
Escurrana (dark clouds)
Escurece (to darken or darkening)
I only hear the word escurrana when I watch TV Patrol Chabacano. However, I hear escurece a lot of times, especially when I’m with a person with a malboca (which means a person who says bad words a lot *literally bad mouth). Ta escurece ya mio vista (literally my vision is darkening) is something that you would probably hear from Zamboangueños. It is something that we Zamboangueños say when we get mad and we feel like we are about to quarrel with someone. Another word that I used to hear a lot from TV Patrol Chavacano is the word escuricia or oscuricia. I often heard this during the weather forecast and its meaning is the same as escurece.
What seems to be missing from Camins’ dictionary is the word escuridad. The words oscurro and iscuro also appear (with the same meaning) in Camins’ dictionary. Escuro and iscuro though are the more used spelling/pronunciation. I personally have never heard anybody say oscurro in Chabacano.
Here is something for you to think about though. Escuro is actually the Portuguese word for dark. So there is a huge possibility that the Chabacano escuro is from Portuguese.
This is probably something that you would hear in Zamboanga city when darkness sets in. While the streets are well lit and safe, most Zamboangueños prefer to stay indoors at night. In fact you wouldn’t see a lot of night life or business establishments that are open at night in the city. This is changing little by little though, especially with the recently opened Paseo del Mar.
Paseo del Mar is a park located near the fort Pilar. It is very popular both with the young and old. It becomes packed when the sun starts to set at around five thirty in the afternoon. I have personally witnessed the sunset at Paseo del Mar and I can really say that it was breathtakingly beautifully. For me, it can best the famous Manila bay sunset any time of the day.
The word escuro, in my opinion, may come from the Spanish oscuro. According to the book of Esteban A De Ocampo titled The Ternateños, this word also exists in the Chavacano de Ternate. He spells it as eskuro. Here are sentences using the Chabacano escuro.
Chabacano: Porque bien escuro aqui?
English: Why is it so dark here?
Chabacano: No tu lee na escuro.
English: Don’t read in the dark.
Chabacano: Bien escuro man siempre masquin de dia ya?
English: Why is it so dark even though it’s already day time?
Here are some words related to the word escuro which I got from the Chabacano dictionary of Camins:
Escurrana (dark clouds)
Escurece (to darken or darkening)
I only hear the word escurrana when I watch TV Patrol Chabacano. However, I hear escurece a lot of times, especially when I’m with a person with a malboca (which means a person who says bad words a lot *literally bad mouth). Ta escurece ya mio vista (literally my vision is darkening) is something that you would probably hear from Zamboangueños. It is something that we Zamboangueños say when we get mad and we feel like we are about to quarrel with someone. Another word that I used to hear a lot from TV Patrol Chavacano is the word escuricia or oscuricia. I often heard this during the weather forecast and its meaning is the same as escurece.
What seems to be missing from Camins’ dictionary is the word escuridad. The words oscurro and iscuro also appear (with the same meaning) in Camins’ dictionary. Escuro and iscuro though are the more used spelling/pronunciation. I personally have never heard anybody say oscurro in Chabacano.
Here is something for you to think about though. Escuro is actually the Portuguese word for dark. So there is a huge possibility that the Chabacano escuro is from Portuguese.
Just wanted to say that "escuro" is an older Spanish variant of "escuro". The source is the ACADEMIA USUAL from 1783. It can be seen here in the NTLLE: http://buscon.rae.es/ntlle/SrvltGUILoginNtlle
ReplyDelete"adj. ant. V. obscuro"
Correction: "Escuro" is an older Spanish variant of **oscuro** lmao
DeleteMy bad lol
Muchas gracias!
DeleteThank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteSpanish and Portuguese used to have more common words than they have today... well they remain but seldom used.
ReplyDeleteEscuro is still valid in Spanish, despite its usage is residual and dialectal.
The most plausible theory of the portuguese origin of chavacano is the evacuation of the Ternate island ( Molucas) of the portuguese created colony of Ternate that was on those days under Spanish rule. Those people are believed to have been relocated in Zamboanga and Ternate(Cavite) and some portuguese flavour remained when try to adapt their language to Spanish.
Thanks for your comment. :)
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