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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

How To 'Say I Told You So' And 'So What' In Chabacano

It is often hard to translate expressions from one language to another. In this post, we shall learn how to say the English expressions 'I told you' so and 'so what' in Chabacano.

Let us first see how these expressions would look like in other languages. In Tagalog, 'I told you so' would be sabi ko na nga ba and 'so what' would be ano ngayon or ano naman ngayon. In Spanish, I think these could be translated to ya decia yo and y eso que respectively, based on my chat conversations with a Mexican friend.

In Chabacano, 'I told you' so can be translated as habla ya gayod yo while 'so what' could be said as cosa man ahora, y despues, or simply acabar. The Chabacano habla ya gayod yo can also mean I knew it.

Here are some dialogues using these expressions:

Mario:  Pilar, ta habla yo contigo, pensa pensa anay tu antes de compra un coche. Si queda malo el coche, caro con ese manda compone. Y hinde broma el paga cinco mil cada mes para lang na un coche.

Plar: Ay, cosa man ahora. Yo man paga, hinde man tu.

Mario: Na yo ta habla lang.
_______

Pilar: Mario, puede ba tu conmigo dale presta cen?

Mario: Porque man? Cosa ya pasa? Porque tu necesita cen?

Pilar: Na ya falta ba mio cen para na pago del coche.

Mario: Ay na, ya habla ya gayod yo ese contigo. Pero no quiere tu conmigo cree.
_______

Pilar: Mario, sabe ba tu, ya admiti ya daw si Paulo ayer que mareng ele.

Mario: Ha? Ansina? Na, ya habla ya ba gayod yo.
_______

Mario: Oy Paulo, ya habla conmigo si Pilar ayer, mareng daw tu.

Paulo: Acabar? Cosa man ahora?

Here is the English translation.

Mario:  Pilar, I'm telling you, think about it first before buying a car. if the car breaks down, it's expensive to get it fixed. And paying five thousand each month just for a car is not a joke.

Plar: So what? I'm the one who's going to pay for it, not you.

Mario: I'm just saying...
_______

Pilar: Mario, can you lend me money?

Mario: Why? What happened? Why do you need money?

Pilar: It's just that I lack money for my car payment.

Mario: See., I told you so.
_______

Pilar: Mario, you know what? Paolo already admitted yesterday that he was gay.

Mario: Oh really? I told you so!
_______

Mario: Hey Paulo, Pilar told me yesterday that you were gay.

Paulo: So what?

I hope you enjoyed the article. 😀

Comments

  1. I'm a big fan of your posts. Just a suggestion for this one: It might be better to put the phrases you're emphasizing inside quotation marks? It was a little difficult distinguishing these from the rest of the sentence. Thank you.

    For example, the following paragraph, would read better as:
    In Chabacano, "I told you so" is known as "habla ya gayod yo" while "so what?" could be said as "cosa man ahora, y despues?" or simply "acabar." The Chabacano "habla ya gayod yo" can also mean, "I knew it."

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Anonymous. Thanks for your suggestion. Im a bit lazy to do these things but Ill try hehe.

    ReplyDelete

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