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Showing posts from September, 2013

The Little Prince By Antoine De Saint-ExupƩry Is Now Available In Chabacano!

While Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) written by Antoine De Saint-ExupĆ©ry 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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Chabacano in the Age of Facebook

It's very interesting how Facebook has crept into our daily lives, making it a necessity, an infrastructure even. I mean how many successful companies today exist that don't have Facebook pages?  Some studies even claim that we spend at least eight hours on average every month on Facebook but let's face it, for most of us, we're on Facebook far more than just eight hours a month. One thing that I'm sure many don't know is that Facebook is helping Chabacano form a standard when it comes to its orthography. Chabacano has been a spoken language for the longest time. This accounts for the fact that there are no standards when it comes to spelling in Chabacano. The author, Camins, who wrote a Chabacano dictionary, even said that one of the problems that he encountered while writing his dictionary was how to spell the Chabacano words. Let's now take a look at some examples of different ways on how Chabacano words are being spelled today. One of the places...
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The Chabacano Vez

While most people in Zamboanga city pronounce the spanish word vez as bes , there are still many of us who spell it with a 'v' at the beginning and a 'z' at the end. What is curious is the fact that there are some phrases using this word that conforms with Spanish grammar and there are those that don’t. First, let us enumerate these phrases: *Otra vez (again) Una vez (once) Dos veces (twice) Primera Vez (first time) Ultimo Vez (last time) Cuanto veces (how many times…) As you may see in the list above, the phrase otra vez (again) conforms with Spanish grammar. We can see that instead of otro, we use otra as vez is a feminine noun. This goes the same for una vez , dos veces , primera vez . However this is not true in ultimo vez and cuanto veces . So why this linguistic anomaly? It sounds to me like these spanish-sounding phrases were implanted in Chabacano during a period of hispanization of the Chabacano de Zamboanga during the 19th century ...
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Origins of the Chabacano Tormenta

According to the DRAE (Spanish dictionary) , the word tormentar (same as atormentar ) means 'to torment' or 'to plague'. In his Chabacano dictionary, Camins’ defines the verb tormenta as to suffer much. Santos’ Chabacano dictionary meanwhile defines this word as 'to torment', 'to torture', and 'to have a hard time'. In my opinion, Santos’ dictionary is more contemporary and updated than that of Camins’ because in modern Chabacano, the word tormenta is largely used to mean to have a hard time or to experience difficulty in doing something. This usage though may be colloquial and might be considered incorrect if you ask old Chabacano speakers. To most young Chabacano speakers though, this meaning of tormenta is the only one they would know. The rest of the meanings of tormenta (to suffer much, to torment, and to torture) would likely be unknown to them. Here are sentences using the word tormenta (using the definition 'to have difficul...
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A New Breed of Chabacano Speakers

During the first ten years of the new millennium, the call center industry experienced exponential growth. Along with the many US-based companies outsourcing their customer service operations in the country comes the need for Spanish-speaking employees. This is because of the huge number of Hispanics in the US who have a hard time speaking English. In the Philippines, there aren’t many Spanish speakers so call center companies tap on the Chabacano-speaking population of Zamboanga city and hire them for Spanish customer service positions. These call center companies are typically based in Manila. Aside from the ZamboangueƱos’ capability to adapt the Spanish language quickly (I know of one Pampanga-based call center which hired a lot of ZamboangueƱos and trained them to speak Spanish for only one month šŸ˜±), ZamboangueƱos’ proficiency in English is at par (and at times even better) than that of  ManileƱos (owing largely to the very many good schools in the city like the Ateneo de ...
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Porque by Maldita Lyrics (Original Chabacano and Translated Spanish version)

Here are the original lyrics of the song Porque by Maldita as well as a rough Spanish translation below. Original Chabacano Version: Solo-solo na mi cuarto Hinde ta puede dormi Vira-vira na cabeza El dolor yo ya senti Por que pa contigo yo ya quiere? Como bula lang tu ya perde Por que contigo yo ya escoge? Ahora mi corazon ta sufri Bien simple lang yo ta pedi Era senti tu el cosa yo ya senti Ta pedi milagro, vira'l tiempo El mali hace derecho Na de mio rezo ta pedi yo Era olvida yo contigo Todo-todo yo ya dale Ahora ta arrepenti Sobra-sobra el dolencia Tormento para vivi Por que pa contigo yo ya quiere? Como bula lang tu ya perde Por que contigo yo ya escoge? Ahora mi corazon ta sufri Bien simple lang yo ta pedi Era senti tu el cosa yo ya senti Ta pedi milagro, vira'l tiempo El mali hace derecho Na de mio rezo ta pedi yo Era olvida yo contigo No tu distorba Y no atraca kay baka palmadea yo contigo Nunc...
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A Christmas Greeting in Chabacano

In the Spanish-speaking world, the popular greeting during Christmas time is f eliz navidad . There's even a popular Christmas song with this title. In the Chabacano-speaking world, however, the more common greeting is f elices pascuas as shown below in a Facebook greeting by the present mayor of Zamboanga city in her Facebook page. Owing to the fact however that some Chabacano speakers tend not to pronounce the letter 's', this gets spelled as  Felices Pascua at times, as is the case in the greeting below. Source: Facebook page of the mayor This also happens with f eliz cumpleanos . In Chabacano, people tend to say f eliz cumpleano , without the 's' at the end. Now if you are wondering why we say f elices pascuas  instead of f eliz navidad in Chabacano, here is a possible explanation. In case you haven't noticed, there's a tiny inscription in the photo that reads v aya con dios . This is the mayor's sort-of slogan which literally means ...
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How To Say 'I Love You' And 'I Hate You' In Chabacano

Saying I love you in Chabacano is a bit tricky. Most people just say 'I love you' (pronouncing the word love as lab ). But in songs or formal occasions, Chabacano speakers say 'I love you like this': ta ama yo contigo . Let’s dissect this sentence. Ta= Present tense indicator Ama= love Yo= I Contigo= you Again, you’ll only hear this in songs. You really won’t hear people saying to each other  ta ama yo contigo. Saying I hate you in Chabacano is also a bit difficult. In the dictionary of Santos (2010), the word hate in Chabacano is rabia or odia . However I’m not really sure how to use these two words in a sentence because to me ta rabia yo contigo or ta odia yo contigo just doesn’t sound natural. Rabiao yo contigo (which is something people frequently say in Chabacano) just doesn't convey the correct emotion because it means something like I am angry at you (milder than hate). So how do we say the English 'I hate you' in Chabacano? One of...
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