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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 ...

The Effects of Gentrification on the Chabacano Language

Tourists may see it as a novelty but Zamboangueňos are not amused. No pork. We do not sell pork. These are some of the things written on signs found in restaurants and wet markets in Zamboanga city. They are meant to entice a segment of the population who do not eat pork as a religious requirement.

During the Zamboanga siege, several Chabacano speaking families in Zamboanga city fled to different parts of the country (mostly to Manila). I once had a neighbor who told me that so many students from Zamboanga city transferred to their school in 2013. This vacuum has paved the way for the linguistic profile of the city to change significantly.

Owing to the decisive actions of the mayor of Zamboanga city during the Zamboanga siege in 2013, an economic boom was seen in the years after.The city today is teeming with moneyed migrants who mostly set up new businesses as well as migrant workers who work in these new establishments from nearby provinces. Among these new migrants, there are probably two different lingua francas. If we add Chabacano to the equation, it makes sense to just converse in our common language which is Tagalog. This is the reason why we can observe that the language of commerce in Zamboanga city is now Tagalog.

My dad told me that in the past, if you go to another place in the Philippines and you don't speak their language, you normally will speak in English. But this was a time when fluency in English was at an all time high and Tagalog, as a common language was not yet gaining ground. Today, almost everybody can speak Filipino (Tagalog).

There are now certain areas in Zamboanga city which have a dominant language other than Tagalog and Chabacano. At a jeepney stop in the downtown area, the conductor spoke to me in Tausug (the jeepney's destination was a barangay with a large Tausug-speaking population) which kind of made me feel like I wasn't anymore in Zamboanga city. My brother told me that he now understands why the Cebuanos are very insistent in speaking Cebuano even to those who don't speak it. Sadly, Chabacano speakers don't have the same attitude when it comes to their language. Unfortunately, Zamboanga isn't as homogenous as Cebu and there are probably more people who speak Chabacano as a second language more than native speakers.

I think the new normal is that Zamboanga city is now a quadrilingual city. Don't get me wrong. Zamboanga city was never a monolingual city to begin with but I think that the Chabacano language was always too dominant so that in the past, migrants to the city always had to learn the language. Several years ago, migrants had to learn Chabacano because it made economic sense. This was a time when not many Filipinos could speak Tagalog. Today however, almost all of us can speak Tagalog (albeit with varying degrees of fluency but certainly on a functional level), so it no longer makes sense for migrants to learn how to speak Chabacano. We are also at a point in Zamboanga city's history wherein the number of migrants are just too huge to be absorbed by the Chabacano language. In other words, the number of Chabacano, Tausug, Cebuano, and Tagalog speakers in the city are almost equal with each other that most of us result to speaking in the common language that we all speak and that is Tagalog.

Comments

  1. I am always those who never adjust to extranjeros.
    I do not care whether they understand or not.

    I never adjust to them, they are in my hometown, they must learn my language.

    Regardless the HUGE numbers of Migrants, if only we Zamboangueños do NOT accommodate them by adjusting to the l;anguage they understand, by n ow, all of them must have already adjusted to us Zamboangueño.


    The moment we adjust to the extranjeros, it becomes necessary for any Extranjeros to learn our language. But it become very important if we NEVER adjust to them.

    ReplyDelete
  2. There are now certain areas in Zamboanga city which have a dominant language other than Tagalog and Chabacano. At a jeepney stop in the downtown area, the conductor spoke to me in Tausug (the jeepney's destination was a barangay with a large Tausug-speaking population) which kind of made me feel like I wasn't anymore in Zamboanga city.


    --->>>
    This happen to me, but as always, I always responded in my own Zamboangueño Language. They will also try to response to you in Chavacano.

    All Migrants in Zamboanga City can understand Chavacano.
    Just Speak to them in our own Zamboangueño Language, eventhough they are replying in Tagalog, in Tausug, in Cebuano, et.al.

    In my case, If I do not understand a language they spoke in my own Hometown, that's the time I will demand them and say "Speak Zamboangueño".

    ReplyDelete

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