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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

The Chabacano Maridable

A few days ago, I received a question from a reader of this blog on what the word maridable means.  I instantly set out to do some research on this word. While the Chabacano maridable sounds very Spanish, I was shocked to learn that it does not exist in Spanish (or at least in standard Spanish). I was able to find some websites which said that this word is an adjective related to marriage but they were all vague at best.

The Chabacano maridable is a noun meaning 'a married couple'. In Zamboanga city, its people being relatively conservative, you would still find a lot of maridables. Unmarried couples living together are still frowned upon in this part of the Philippines.

A very important grammatical point to take note is that the Chabacano maridable can only be used for MARRIED couples. It cannot be used on just any couple (i.e. unmarried couples).

Here are some sentences using the Chabacano maridable.

Chabacano: Despierto ya ba el maridable?
English: Are the couple awake yet?

Chabacano: Donde ya anda el maridable ayer?
English: Where did the couple go yesterday?

In the two sentences above, the word maridable refers to a specific couple. You will find this kind of talk in a household where there is only ONE married couple. Thus, the husband and wife would be collectively referred to as a maridable.

One can also encounter man maridable. This is the same as the Tagalog mag-asawa meaning 'a married couple'.

According to the Ternateño Chavacano dictionary by Esteban A De Ocampo that I have, this word exists in their Chavacano and it is also defined as a married couple.

If you have any grammar questions, you may post them in the comments section below.

Comments

  1. Hola Jerome.Buenos dias desde el sur de Espana.Hace tiempo que quiero felicitarte por tu blog en chabacano.Es muy interesante,ojala esta lengua no se pierda y gente joven como tu la defienda.Cuando escucho noticias o musica en chabacano,me parece que existen muchos tipos de "chabacano",algunas formas de habla son muy "castellano",facilmente entendibles y otras formas de habla son con alta influencia visaya,tagala,cebuana e inglesa y poco entendibles,mi pregunta es,urge normalizar el chabacano para que no derive en una lengua que cada persona puede hablar según le surge? Que opinion tienes. En general,por oir chabacano antiguo,este me parece mucho más proximo al castellano,y facilmente entendible,que el de muchos hablantes jovenes que parecen mezclar palabras de otros idiomas cuando no recuerdan la palabra chabacana.Un abrazo y adelante chabacano!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hola. En cuanto de la gramatica, ya existen reglas gramaticales que aunque no estan escritas en ningun sitio, los nativos del Chabacano te pueden decir si estas hablando correctamente o no. En las palabras la ortografia puede que cambie dependiente de las necesidades del hablante.

    El intercambio de codigos siempre pasa como en el caso del Taglish
    y Spanlish y no hay forma de cambiar o detener la deformacion de la lengua

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hola de nuevo,perfecto castellano! Mi nombre es Joaquín,soy profesor de espanol y muy interesado en la huella espanola en Filipinas.Perdona que insista en lo de la "normalizacion" del habla´por esa misma regla que tu dices,el chabacano,segun el hablante se podria llamar chabacanglish,cabacavisaya,chabacataglish.....no seria chabacano-puro,estaria degenerando cada dia no "evolucionando" sobre una base fija.No sé,me preocupa una "descastellanizacion" del chabacano.De nuevo un fuerte abrazo (no se si en chabacano se dice "apretao" abrazo)

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