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 ...
Most people (even native Chabacano speakers) fail to realize that there is a distinct Chabacano accent. This accent is more pronounced among people who live in the rural areas of Zamboanga city who speak with a drawl. These people are mostly referred to as de monte (from the mountains), de arriba or de alla-alla . The Chabacano accent is a telltale sign of a native speaker of the Chabacano language. You know you're a native Chabacano speaker when you do the following things: 1. You drop the 's' in certain Chabacano words The hallmark of the Chabacano accent is the dropping of the letter 's'. When you hear somebody pronounce words like escuela , pescao , fiesta , dos , and tres as eh-cuela , peh-cao , fieh-ta , doh , and treh respectively, that is a native Chabacano speaker! This feature of the Chabacano accent might come from Spanish where they also sometimes drop their 's'. At work, there was a t...