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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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The Chabacano Tiene and No hay

Last week, I was listening to a friend of mine teach our colleague at work how to speak Chabacano. Now since this person spoke Spanish it made things a bit easier. It was strange to find out though that Chabacano grammar is not at all that simple.

My friend told this person that in Chabacano when asking someone if he/she has something, you simply have to say tiene + pronoun + thing. An example is this:

Chabacano: Tiene tu comida?
Spanish: Tienes comida?
English: Do you have (any) food

This person told me tiene yo pregunta (which was correct) and then I asked him cosa tuyo pregunta? This was where he made a mistake because he said no tiene yo pregunta. That was when I realized that the rule he was taught only applies to positive sentences. However, in the negative, it should be no + hay + pronoun + thing. Here is a negative response to the sample sentence above:

Chabacano: No hay yo comida
Spanish: No tengo comida
English: I don’t have any food


This article was also published in the International Year of Indigenous Languages Philippines website.
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  1. AnonymousJuly 19, 2021 at 3:23 AM

    Thank you. I've started reading the Bible in Chavacano and have been trying to figure out what "nuay" means. Your post explains it. (:

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