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 ...
In the Philippines, people like to eat hot pan de sal in the morning. Filipinos consider pan de sal laden with fruit jam, peanut butter, or butter coupled with hot chocolate or coffee the perfect breakfast. But did you know that Chabacano has a different word for this type of bread? Pan de sal is a Spanish word meaning (literally) bread of salt or salty bread but in Chabacano, we say pan salao . Other bread types include the pan coco (coconut bread) or pan de coco . This is actually bread filled with sweet coconut. Then there's also pan monggo which is filled with sweet mung beans. Lastly, we have the pan barreta . Pan Barreta is simply the normal everyday loaf bread that we eat which is shaped like a bar, thus its name. Let's also look into some vegetables that has a distinct Chabacano name. Red squash or the Tagalog kalabasa is called Calabasa Colorao . If you don't like Calabasa Colorao , you could probably cook Guisao Frijoles ( preholes ). Frijoles , in C...