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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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A Survey for Chavacano Speakers

Lisa Allen, an Undergraduate Student, School of Arts and Humanities at the Nottingham Trent University in UK is requesting Chavacano speakers to answer a short survey regarding their language. The following is her introduction to the survey:

MY RESEARCH QUESTIONNAIRE ABOUT THE USE OF ZAMBOANGUEÑO,
CURRENT ATTITUDES AND IDEAS ABOUT ITS FUTURE STATUS

First of all, thank you very much for taking the time to read this letter.

I am currently in my final year at university studying Linguistics and Spanish. As part of my linguistic studies, I have become particularly interested in researching Chavacano (mainly the variety spoken in the Zamboanga region) and promoting its existence to others here in the UK.

I have decided to base my dissertation on your language as little linguistic research has been done in this area. It is, therefore, extremely important to me to be able to receive the thoughts of, and feedback from, people in the region who have Zamboangueño as their native language and who are using it on a daily basis. It is hoped that, with your kind cooperation, I can produce a high-quality project with up-to-date live and useful data in it.

Following is a short questionnaire which comprises 10 questions. It should not take very long to answer them all and I would like to ask for your help in completing this for me. All questionnaires are completely confidential – you will not be asked to provide any personal information, your names, addresses or telephone numbers. I will only ask for your age range and whether you are male or female (for comparison). Please be assured that only I, as the person conducting the research, will be using the responses in your questionnaires for the purposes of completing my project. Your responses will not be used for any other purpose. If you have parents, grandparents, other family or friends who you think may wish to participate, their opinions would be most useful and so I would appreciate it if you could maybe forward on this questionnaire to them, or ask them the questions and complete additional questionnaires on their behalf.

Of course, if you have any questions about this project or the questionnaire itself, you may contact me at any time using one of the email addresses above. Your completed questionnaires should also be sent back to me as soon as you can using one of these email addresses. Please do not send completed questionnaires back to my dissertation supervisor, Ronan Fitzsimons. Thank you.

This research is very important to me and much of the success of it depends on the support of native speakers such as yourselves. For this reason, I am hoping for a very positive response. This is your chance to make your voices heard to an overseas audience and to show pride in your identity and language. If you would like to know the results of the questionnaires, then this can be provided in a summary form during the summer of 2015. Just indicate on the questionnaire that you are interested in receiving a summary report by email and I will send one to you. Thank you very much in advance for your support and assistance. I hope to hear from you soon!

With my best wishes to you all,

Lisa Allen
Contact emails:
laviajera@hotmail.gr
lisa.allen2009@my.ntu.ac.uk

HERE IS THE SURVEY:

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