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 ...
Languages often surprise us in the most unexpected ways. Even with a language as familiar and personal to me as Chabacano, there are moments when a small detail suddenly reveals a bigger story connecting variants, hinting at histories, or simply reminding us how alive and adaptive languages truly are. Recently, I stumbled upon one such detail. Look! The Chabacano of Cavite City also uses the term “viña!” This instantly caught my attention because, in Zamboanga Chabacano, we have “venya,” a word I’ve only connected to the Spanish ven ya (“come now”) when I started studying Spanish as a hobby while in university. This can perhaps even be a contracted "vene ya". Whether through evolution, simplification, or just natural linguistic drift, seeing a similar form in the Cavite city variant makes the connection so fascinating. For reference, I previously wrote about the Chabacano word vene, which, contrary to what many might assume, is not a standard Spanish word. You can read that p...