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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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Using 'te' instead of 'tu' in Chabacano

 In Spanish, 'te' is a reflexive pronoun that is used when conjugating reflexive verbs like 'acostarse'.

While this pronoun does not behave similarly in Chabacano grammar, it is possible that it is being used as a synonym of 'tu'.

The first time I heard this was at the annual family reunions we had on my mother's side of the family every Christmas. It has been almost fifteen years since I attended one so I wasn't even sure at first if indeed I heard my uncles use 'te' instead of 'tu'.

But recently, I came across a comment on social media which confirms this.


Here are other examples:





Based on the examples above, we could theorize that the people who use 'te' are also people who use 'uste' (usted). This makes sense because I frequently heard it from my uncles who spoke to my mom (the eldest sibling). My uncles use 'uste' whenever they speak to my mother.

But are there people who use 'te' exclusively? One thing I know for sure is that it never replaces 'tu' or 'uste' altogether. In other words, I don't know anybody who uses 'te' all the time and never 'uste' or 'tu'.

Is 'te' simply a shortened form of 'uste'. This is probably the most logical explanation. Although in the second post, we see that the poster used 'de tuyo' instead of 'de uste'. This does commonly occur in spoken Chabacano though. Sometimes you hear a person use 'tu' throughout their speech but later use 'de inyo' instead of 'de tuyo'. 

This should also not be confused with 'te', which is the shortened form of 'este' that can be seen in written Chabacano.


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