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 ...
A week ago, I met someone who was originally from Zamboanga city but has lived in Manila for most of her life. When I spoke to her daughter in Chabacano, she told me: no sabe ese man Chabacano kay aqui ese sila ya crece.
Even though I understood her perfectly, I immediately noted how she used the word crece incorrectly (at least for me) in Chabacano.
This word comes from the Spanish crecer and is usually pronounced as crici or creci in Chabacano.
In Chabacano, we normally use this word for plants or things that grow on skin like warts or hair. For example: no hay crece el de mio maga siembra.
When talking about people, we usually use 'queda grande' as in 'na Manila yo ya queda grande'. In my experience, the only time we use this word on people is when referring to their height but this is not very common.
At first I attributed it to her having lived in Manila for such a long time already but later I thought that maybe she used the word in the same way that it was being used in Spanish (since she was significantly older than me). I thought that perhaps her Chabacano is a bit fossilized having grown up in Zamboanga probably in the 1960s or the 1970s and considering the fact that Spanish was still being taught during those times in school.
A quick search online did confirm to me that the word crece in Spanish is used this way.
Of course, this is all based on my experience. It is very possible that there are people who do use this word the way that lady I met did in Chabacano.
What about you? Do you use the word crece when referring to the time before you became an adult?
I'm from Zamboanga City, we usually say as "nuay se ele engranda na Zamboanga" refering to a person and yes if you refer to plants we say "ta crisi el ciembra"
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