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

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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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The Chabacano Expression 'Ya Tambien'

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The Chabacano expression ya tambien is very interesting. This expression looks to me like it is a direct translation of the Tagalog word nanaman. In the English language, ya tambien does not have any equivalent, the closest translation I could think of is 'again'. I am not sure if ya tambien is found in Philippine Spanish, but I have heard someone who comes from a Spanish speaking family in the Philippines use this expression when speaking in Spanish.

If you speak Chabacano, you probably know this expression as ya tamen. This is how most Chabacano speakers will pronounce and spell the expression ya tambien.

Here are some sentences using the Chabacano expression ya tambien.

Chabacano: No hay ya tambien entra escuela si Vincent?
Tagalog: Hindi nanaman pumasok sa eskwela si Vincent?
English: Was Vincent absent from school again?

Chabacano: Tiene ya tambien bomba ya rebenta na pueblo.
Tagalog: Meron nanamang bombang sumabog sa pueblo.
English: Another bomb had exploded in the downtown area.

Chabacano: Cosa ya tambien tu quiere?
Tagalog: Ano nanaman ang gusto mo?
English: What do you want now?

As you may have noticed, ya tambien is used in Chabacano whenever nanaman occurs in Tagalog.

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Comments

  1. coronadoJanuary 27, 2015 at 5:44 AM

    In Portuguese we also use the "ya tambien", although it's written as "já também". Basically it has the same meaning.

    Another nice article, my friend! =)

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  2. Chef RafiMarch 15, 2015 at 2:21 AM

    Yes I think ya también is a direct calque from Tagalog na naman to show repetition or redundancy, etc. but usually used to express the speaker's viewpoint of being excessive, so na naman is not completely synynymous with "ulit" or "muli". but I don't see how "já também" in Portuguese compares. Can you give an example, Coronado? Thanks so much for the post! I really enjoy this blog!

    ReplyDelete
  3. coronadoMarch 17, 2015 at 12:15 AM

    Well, if you look by the Spanish/Portuguese side you will notice that there have a similarity, like I told in my commentary. And assuming that the Chabacano languages has Spanish and Portuguese roots it's likely that people inspired in this to form this expression. Besides, I was telling to Jerome that in Portuguese we have an expression with a similar spelling and meaning, got it?

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  4. AnonymousJune 28, 2022 at 7:29 PM

    This is Cebuano influence, we say “na pod” and “na sad” in Cebuano which means “ya tamen”.

    ReplyDelete

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