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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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Describing Negative Past Events in Chabacano

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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.


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