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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 Chabacano 'Harta'

A few days ago, I realized that Telemundo's YouTube channel started uploading some of their telenovelas (most probably as part of their efforts to help people cope with the strict lockdowns imposed a few months ago) including one that I remember being shown in a local TV network dubbed in Tagalog a few years ago. A friend also recommended it to me in the past so I decided to watch the first few episodes to see if I would like it. I started to like the story after a few episodes and decided to watch the entire thing.

Anyway, one of the Spanish words that I found interesting was the word harto. I remember that when I was working, I heard a friend say: estoy harto de las llamadas and because I spoke Chabacano, I understood immediately what he meant. But I realized that the way they use this word in Spanish and the way we use it in Chabacano is a bit different. While the Spanish meaning of being tired or fed up of something also exists in Chabacano, we don't say things in quite the same manner. For example, in the telenovela, I would hear them say estoy harto de tus mentiras which if said in Chabacano would sound weird (hartao ya yo na de tuyo embusteria or ya harta ya yo na de tuyo embusteria). In this case, we would use the word cansao as in cansao ya yo na... I would also hear estoy harto whose direct Chabacano translation will also sound very strange.

While this word in Spanish is almost always used for negative things, it is not the case in Chabacano. Here are some (edited) sentences in Chabacano that I found in Facebook using this word:

Grabe bien duele mi cintura y rodillas. Ya harta gayod yo anoche rala coco.

Ya harta gayot yo gomita por causa con este.

Beer para na mana relacion no hay forever. Tuba para na relacion ya harta llora na dolor. Tanduay para na relacion no hay man porseguihan.

One thing that I noticed is that it's almost impossible to use this word in the present tense or in the future tense in Chabacano. Another interesting fact about this word is that we usually pronounce this with the English 'h' in Chabacano which is not silent like in Spanish.

In Chabacano, this word can be used to say that something was done repeatedly (or that you have had your fill of doing something)

Here are other examples.

Chabacano: Ya harta gayod kame baňa na rio del bata kame.

English: We used to bathe in the river a lot when we were kids.

Chabacano: Ya harta kame busca camisa para con el de mio hermana.

English: We had a hard time looking for a dress for my sister.

Santos' Chabacano dictionary defines the word harta as to get fed up/ to have had more than enough.

What about you? How do you use the word harta?

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