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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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Origins of the Chabacano Hechura

Last Saturday, I was reading a book while the TV was on a channel showing a preacher answering questions about the Bible. The bible verses he was quoting were in Spanish. So I was absentmindedly listening to the bible verses in Spanish when one word that he mentioned caught my attention: hechura.

The reason why that word interested me was because there is a similar word in Chabacano although we used it differently. Most people will probably know this word as ichura. It is spelled as ichura in Camins' dictionary. Here are some examples of how this word is used in Chabacano.

Chabacano: Cosa hechura del tuyo tata?
English: How does your father look like?

Chabacano: Ansina hechura de tuyo.
English: That’s how you look like.

Chabacano: Cosa hechura del casa de ila? Vale ba?
English: What does their house look like? Is it nice?

As you can see, the word hechura in Chabacano is used to mean 'to look like'. It can be used either on people or on things.

The meaning of the Spanish hechura has a very similar meaning to its Chabacano counterpart. In Spanish, hechura means form, shape or build of a person. Hechura (I believe) comes from the word hecho which means a completed act.

The word also exists in Tagalog but is spelled as itsura and is pronounced as ichura.


This article was also published in the International Year of Indigenous Languages Philippines website.
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