Describing Negative Past Events in Chabacano

You might have heard that to form the past tense in Chabacano, you just need to add the past tense marker ya to the infinitive. But alas, Chabacano is not that simple a language. In this article, we shall look at how to form negative statements about the past in Chabacano.

They did not go to school.

Let's try to translate the simple and very unassuming English sentence above in Chabacano. If you are a Spanish speaker trying to learn Chabacano, you probably would have thought that the Chabacano translation of the English sentence above is no sila ya anda na escuela but here is the right way to say it: no hay sila anda na escuela. As you can see, there is no need for the past tense marker ya to form negative statements about the past in Chabacano. 

But what about negative statements in the future and past tenses? Here is the same sentence above but in future and present tense.

Future tense: Hende sila ay anda na escuela.

Present tense: Hende sila ta anda na escuela.

Here are more examples:

Past Tense: No hay yo lava mano.

Future tense: Hende yo ay lava mano.

Present tense: Hende yo ta lava mano.

Past Tense: No hay yo lleva lapiz.

Future tense: Hende yo ay lleva lapiz.

Present tense: Hende yo ta lleva lapiz.

Past Tense: No hay conmigo dale cen el de mio nana.

Future tense: Hende conmigo ay dale cen el de mio nana.

Present tense: Hende conmigo ta dale cen el de mio nana.