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
I first came across the word bangag in Manila as it is not a very common word in television (which used to be my primary source of exposure to native Tagalog speakers). It is however, common in casual conversations and I often hear it among friends in the office who work at night. To me, it often felt like this word meant something like 'being unable to think straight'. Could the Chabacano word bangak come from the Tagalog word bangag ? Since the Chabacano accent makes one unable to pronounce words ending in 'G' correctly, these words often end up being pronounced with a 'K'. So isn't it highly probable that the Chabacano word bangak came from the Tagalog word bangag ? Of course, in Chabacano, the meaning of this word is different from its Tagalog counterpart (though it could have evolved from the Tagalog meaning). This word means 'dumb' in Chabacano. However, Tagaloglang defines this word as being 'high' on drugs/alcohol. Other websi