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
If Chabacano is the holy grail of Linguistics, the videoconference I watched calls the Chabacano spoken in Ermita the lost ark of the covenant. When the announcement that a conference on the Chabacano spoken in Ermita popped up in my newsfeed, I was very excited. The Chabacano in Ermita is probably the least studied among all the Chabacano varieties so I was happy that someone will finally be talking about it. Is it just a legend? For me, some of the Chabacano varieties such as the one spoken in Ermita and Davao are a bit like the Loch Ness monster. Just like the famous legend, there are numerous reported sightings of the Chabacano spoken in those places. When I was still working, I told my friend about the Chabacano in Ermita and she was like , 'it figures, I was passing by that area and heard some people speaking in a Spanish-like language!' When I told another friend about the Chabacano in Davao, he said he could attest to that language being real since he heard it himse