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 post here:
https://bienchabacano.blogspot.com/2010/12/disappearing-ds-in-chabacano.html
Since it’s been a while since I last wrote about the Manila Bay variants of Chabacano, I also want to note a small but important update regarding spelling conventions on this blog.
In the past, I used ChaVacano for Cavite, Ternate, and Ermita and ChaBacano for Zamboanga as a way to differentiate the variants in writing.
However, I’ve since shifted to using ChaBacano for all variants, simply for the sake of uniformity.
It also avoids the impression that I’m prescribing how speakers of the Manila Bay varieties should spell or “standardize” their language. The change is purely practical on my end to avoid confusion and to make things easier when I'm comparing different variants.
Conclusion
Tiny discoveries like venya and viña may seem small, but they offer beautiful glimpses into how interconnected and yet how distinct our Chabacano communities truly are. These shared forms remind us that our language continues to evolve, surprise, and reveal its story piece by piece. And as always, I’m happy to keep documenting these little ripples wherever they appear.
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