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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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Cooking in Caviteño Chabacano

Well, this is interesting! A cooking video in Caviteño Chabacano (Cavite city)...

Apparently, they also have the word 'saborea' in Caviteño although I don't think we use it in the same way as they do. In the Chabacano in Zamboanga city, we usually use 'saborea' to mean 'tasting (or feeling *figurative) something strongly'. For example you can say 'no hay yo saborea el cheese na pizza' which means I didn't taste the cheese in the pizza.

It also looks like they have a different way of saying 'half' when mentioning measurements in recipes. I think the girl said 'mita' (which probably comes from the Spanish 'mitad' while in the Chabacano in Zamboanga city, we say 'media' (e.g. uno y media cuchara).

While they also say 'ajos' for 'garlic', it seems that their word for 'onion' is different. In Caviteño Chabacano, onion is cebollas (sebulyas) *based on the video while in Zamboanga Chabacano, it is cebollon (sebolyon). In Zamboanga Chabacano, cebollas (sebolyas) means 'spring onion'.

Another thing that I noticed was the usage of 'gusto' which is similar to Tagalog. In the Zamboanga city Chabacano, we use 'gusta'.

Obviously, there are other differences between the two Chabacano languages like the R becomes an L and the E becomes an I but those have already been covered in other blog posts. What usually catches my attention these days are the differences between the words that we use to say the same thing.

Here is the link to the video. Enjoy!

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