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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 Cen

In Chabacano, not all people would know what the word dinero means. Instead, the word for money in Chabacano is cen.

I have come upon a website recently which said that the word cen is the word for money in archaic Spanish. I cannot, however, remember the website where I found it. In Chabacano, this word refers to money (in general).

Here are some examples of how it is used:

Chabacano: Tiene tu cen?
English: Do you have (any) money?

Chabacano: De quien money ese?
English: Whose money is that?

Chabacano: Dale conmigo cen.
English: Give me (some) money.

I watched an episode of Mari Mar on Youtube in Spanish wherein she referred to money as cen. I asked my Mexican friend if there are people who say the word cen instead of dinero and she jokingly told me that a poorly educated person might speak like this. 

Since we’ve been talking about money, would you know how to say: save money in Chabacano? The idea of saving money is not present in every culture and thus cannot be translated directly to all languages. In Chabacano, we say esconde cen, or ajunta cen to mean to save money.

If you look at it, these two expressions literally mean to hide money and to collect money respectively. Figuratively though, they mean 'to save money'. These are in fact, Chabacano idioms.

Here are some sentences using these Chabacano idioms.

Chabacano: Ta esconde ba tu cen na banco?
English: Do you save money in the bank?

Chabacano: Ajunta tu cen para puede kita compra casa algun dia.
English: You save money so that we can buy a house one day.

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Comments

  1. AnonymousApril 16, 2013 at 2:43 PM

    In Caviteño to save money is "gualdá cualta,"
    gualdá from Spanish guardar, cualta from Spanish cuarto (an old Spanish coin made of copper).

    I believe 8½ cuartos = 1 Spanish Real (Spanish currency until 1864).

    In modern Spanish the expression "tener cuartos" means to have a lot of money.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jerome HerreraApril 16, 2013 at 5:30 PM

    Thanks for sharing!

    ReplyDelete

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