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Showing posts from November, 2009

The Little Prince By Antoine De Saint-Exupéry Is Now Available In Chabacano!

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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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7 Ways To Tell If Somebody Is A Native Chabacano Speaker

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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 time when a Spanish customer asked me to l
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Origins of the Chabacano Cosa

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A few years ago, while studying Spanish, I began to become curious about the origins of certain Chabacano words. While doing my research, I also realized that in the world of Linguistics, Chabacano is the "holy grail". And why not? It is the  only Spanish-based creole in Asia  and one of the  oldest creole languages in the world . In fact, when you search Google for the keywords Chabacano or Chavacano, you will be swamped by more than one million hits. That's how popular Chabacano is worldwide! One of the Chabacano words that I was curious about was cosa . Cosa (what) is a word that we use so many times every day in Chabacano. But have you ever stopped to think how it came about? Some people say that Chabacano vocabulary has some Italian influences . I was skeptical about it at first because as far as I know, there aren't any evidence of Italian influence in Chabacano vocabulary. But did you know that the word cosa  is also 'what' in Italian ? Here is a
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Porque by Maldita Lyrics (Original Chabacano and Translated Spanish version)

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Original Chabacano Version: Solo-solo na mi cuarto Hinde ta puede dormi Vira-vira na cabeza El dolor yo ya senti Por que pa contigo yo ya quiere? Como bula lang tu ya perde Por que contigo yo ya escoge? Ahora mi corazon ta sufri Bien simple lang yo ta pedi Era senti tu el cosa yo ya senti Ta pedi milagro, vira'l tiempo El mali hace derecho Na de mio rezo ta pedi yo Era olvida yo contigo Todo-todo yo ya dale Ahora ta arrepenti Sobra-sobra el dolencia Tormento para vivi Por que pa contigo yo ya quiere? Como bula lang tu ya perde Por que contigo yo ya escoge? Ahora mi corazon ta sufri Bien simple lang yo ta pedi Era senti tu el cosa yo ya senti Ta pedi milagro, vira'l tiempo El mali hace derecho Na de mio rezo ta pedi yo Era olvida yo contigo No tu distorba Y no atraca kay baka palmadea yo contigo Nunca acepta Si tu ay vira por el dolor ya senti Por que contigo yo ya escoge? Ahora mi corazon ta suf
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How To Say 'I Love You' And 'I Hate You' In Chabacano

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Saying I love you in Chabacano is a bit tricky. Most people just say 'I love you' (pronouncing the word love as lab ). But in songs or formal occasions, Chabacano speakers say 'I love you like this': ta ama yo contigo . Let’s dissect this sentence. Ta= Present tense indicator Ama= love Yo= I Contigo= you Again, you’ll only hear this in songs. You really won’t hear people saying to each other  ta ama yo contigo. Saying I hate you in Chabacano is also a bit difficult. In the dictionary of Santos (2010), the word hate in Chabacano is rabia or odia . However I’m not really sure how to use these two words in a sentence because to me ta rabia yo contigo or ta odia yo contigo just doesn’t sound natural. Rabiao yo contigo (which is something people frequently say in Chabacano) just doesn't convey the correct emotion because it means something like I am angry at you (milder than hate). So how do we say the English 'I hate you' in Chabacano? One of
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How to say I Miss You in Chabacano

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In Facebook groups, a lot of people, even Chabacano speakers themselves, seem to be wondering how to say 'I miss you' in Chabacano. Most Chabacano speakers get away with just saying tan miss ya yo contigo . However, the verb miss is still untranslated. The English verb to miss (someone or something) may very well be untranslatable. I googled I miss you in Tagalog  and I nearly fell off my chair when I saw what Google Translate had to say: In very formal Tagalog, one can say nangungulila ako sa iyo although it will probably make you cringe saying it. Most formal Chabacano translations of I miss you  are similar; they will make you cringe saying them. Besides, most people wouldn't understand you anyway, if you use them. In Cebuano, they actually have a translation for I miss you  and that is gimingaw kaayo ko nimo. I'm not sure though if Cebuano speakers actually say this. My friend tells me that it's more common to hear people say namiss na ta ka which if yo
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