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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 ...
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Origins of the Chabacano Word "Karahay"


Is "karahay" a Spanish word?

Today, we are going to investigate whether the Chabacano word "karahay" came from Spanish.

"Karahay" is a word we use for "wok", "pan", or "skillet" in Chabacano. No distinctions are made in Chabacano between these things, they are all called "karahay".

I was doing research for an article when I accidentally found out that the word "karahay" also existed in the Caviteño Chabacano.

I was very surprised by this discovery because all this time, I thought that it came from Cebuano!

What is a Cebuano word doing in the Chabacano language in Cavite?

When I was still working, I remember a Cebuano-speaking colleague from Davao recognized the word "karahay" when I spoke in Chabacano with my Chabacano-speaking colleagues and this confirmed my suspicion that it was a Cebuano word. My friend from Cebu though, wasn't familiar with this word so it's probably more popular in Davao.

My investigation brought me to Filipino dishes (whose names sounded Spanish) called "Lechon de Carajay" and "Asado de Carajay". I was totally puzzled by their choice of spelling this word in Spanish.

The website containing the recipe for "Asado de Carajay" explains that the name of that dish originated from Spanish, "asado" which means “grilled” and "carajay" which is a Spanish cooking vessel that looks similar to a wok.

Is the word "carajay" really Spanish? For confirmation, we go to the DRAE. 


Upon searching for the word "carajay" though, no results came up so it doesn't look like this word is in that Spanish dictionary.

However, I found a website which talked about the oldest Spanish-Chinese dictionary recently found at the library of the University of Santo Tomas and they categorized this word as a Filipinismo. 

In other words, "carajay" is Philippine Spanish. 

Apparently, this word appeared in the Diccionario Tagálog- Hispano by Pedro Serrano Laktaw as well as the Diccionario de la lengua española.

All of my Chabacano dictionaries also spell this word in Spanish ("carajay").

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  1. AnonymousAugust 17, 2023 at 6:03 PM

    Is there a possible connection to the "karahi", which refers to a type of pan/pot from South Asia?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jerome HerreraAugust 17, 2023 at 6:54 PM

      Very possible since we have a lot of words from South Asia due to ancient trading links.

      Delete

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