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 ...
Today, I found a video on YouTube where they translate a common announcement heard in airport terminals into Chabacano. I knew right away that it was in Spanish and was not one bit of an iota Chabacano. The funny thing was that a commenter said that it was old Chabacano and was how his grandmother spoke Chabacano. I also asked a friend to watch it and I was surprised when he also commented that it was probably old Chabacano.
Did Zamboangueños speak Spanish?
It is most probably true that before the twentieth century, there were many Spanish speakers in Zamboanga city. The same was probably true in major cities at that time like Cebu and Manila. My parents did tell me that my grandparents spoke in Spanish amongst themselves but were they fluent in it? My guess is that they spoke it after a fashion and perhaps inserted a Spanish phrase here and there. If it's the current generation of Zamboangueños who say that their grandparents spoke in a Spanish-like Chabacano, were they actually speaking Chabacano or was it a Chabacano heavily-laced with Spanish? The present generation's grandparents would have lived during the 1900s to the early 2000s and would have been very much acquainted with Spanish.
I now realize that one of the reasons why Zamboangueños (at least millenials) tend to say that Spanish is old Chabacano is simply because they can't recognize Spanish. Hence, when represented with a video in Spanish claiming to be Chabacano, they tend to rationalize that it is probably old Chabacano. In fact, before I started studying Spanish as a hobby, I think I probably would also say that a video in Spanish (wherein I could recognize only some of the words) was probably the Chabacano that they spoke in the past.
During one of my vacations in Zamboanga city, a family friend gave me a book in Spanish. She said that it was in old Chabacano (probably because she bought it in a bookstore in Zamboanga city?).
The generation before us, boomers, could certainly distinguish Spanish from Chabacano since they learned it in school (even if they never spoke it). My generation had very limited exposure to Spanish so we are unlikely to be able to make a distinction between Chabacano and Spanish. Hence, if placed in a situation wherein we were asked whether a video in Spanish was Chabacano, we are a hundred percent likely to say that it is probably the Chabacano spoken in the past.
A confirmatory test can de done by showing (millenial) Chabacano speakers a video in Spanish and asking them if it were Spanish. If they insist that it's old Chabacano, then perhaps they are remembering their grandparents speaking Spanish or perhaps a Spanish-like Chabacano. Respondents can also be grouped by age and their responses compared to test this theory.
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