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
The word abuya means 'to appear' in the Chabacano of Zamboanga. I initially thought that it came from Hiligaynon. However, I couldn’t have been more wrong. It turns out that it came from far Ternate in Cavite. Yes dear readers, it looks like the word abuya comes from the Chavacano de Ternate. There is a difference in spelling though. The word is not actually abuya in the Chavacano of Ternate but rather, buya . At least this is how the word appears in Esteban A De Ocampo’s The Ternateños: Their History, Languages, Customs, and Traditions. In the book, the Chavacano de Ternate word buya is defined as to float, to emerge, or to appear. De Ocampo (in his book) says that the word comes from the Spanish boyar . The problem with this theory is that there is no such word as boyar in Spanish. It is possible that boyar is an archaic Spanish word or it could be a word not used in standard Spanish. Although I don’t have any problem believing that it could be a Spanish word becaus