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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 ...

The Chabacano Guinda

I initially had a hard time looking for the word guinda in my Chabacano dictionary. I thought that this word was spelled as ginda (without the u). I even thought that this word could not come from the Spanish language since gi would be pronounced as the English hi. Then I heard the word guisa during a cooking show. Then I thought, ‘hey, guisa is derived from the Spanish guisar, wait a minute…’. It was then that I realized that ginda must be spelled as guinda.

I can’t establish though whether this word comes from the Spanish guindar as its meaning is very far from the Chabacano meaning of guinda. Wordreference.com defines the Spanish word guindar as either to pinch, swipe, win, or hang up. The Portuguese guindar’s meaning is also very far from the Chabacano meaning.

So what does the word guinda mean in Chabacano? Camins defines it as 'to get there'. Santos meanwhile defines it as 'to arrive' or 'to get there'.

Here are some sentences in Chabacano using this word:

Chabacano: Ya guinda ya ba tu na Manila?
English: Have you ever been to Manila?

Chabacano: No sabe yo donde ya guinda el mio cen.
English: I don’t know where my money went to (may mean that the speaker doesn’t know where he spent all his money on all these years or where he placed his money a while ago)

English: Ta guinda ba contigo el sueldo del tuyo marido?
Chabacano: Does your husband hand over his salary to you?

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