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 ...
The Philippine venao has been spotted once again.
Upon hearing that the once-thought-to-be-extinct Philippine deer has made a comeback, I was reminded of one of the conversations from a letter in 1883 sent to Hugo Schuchardt (a German linguist) by Jacinto Juanmartí, a priest, wherein the venao, or the Philippine deer, was mentioned.
According to the distribution map of the Philippine deer, or the Rusa marianna, on Wikipedia, this animal was definitely present in almost the entire Philippine archipelago.
Funny enough, the conversation from 1883 starts out like most conversations today do: Cosa el ulam?
Here is the original text.
-Cosa el de iño ulam
-no hay nada ñora, yá andá gane yó na tiangui endenantes, no hay gayot nada que puedé comprá.
-Yá jablá comigo sí Nita, taba dao tá llevá pescao el maga moro?
-Nosé ñora, cay yó aga pá estaba allá, y no hay man yó mirá ní un pescao
-Sí Biboy yá andá vá na sugut mirá venao?
-Nóse ñora, tallí man cajá si Nita, preguntá usté si yá andá ó no hay.
-No hay dao allí
-Ná, no ay vá ustedes conversá del pescao?
-Yá conversá gane camé peró gendé na su casa sinó enfrente del escuela
-Ná, entonces esperá yá lang quitá luego sí llegá si Biboy cay siguro gendé cajáa ay paltá venao, cay cada véz man silá andá na Sugut, siempre ta trae uno.
-Si no puedé yó luego llegá aquí banda caniño, evos yá lang comprá magá tres libra de carne venao; já Ninang?
-Ñora
-Ay andá yá yó.
But can you imagine testing the reading comprehension of kids today with a Chabacano text like this? They would probably go insane!
The dialogue starts out with the lady telling her companion, who asked her what their ulam was, that there was none and that, in fact, she went to the market to buy food, but there was nothing to be bought.
The lady is told that the Moros will be bringing fish to the market, but she says that she had been there since early morning and that there was not a single fish.
But have no fear! Biboy is expected to bring VENAO later in the day. The ñora asks Ninang to pasabuy some three pounds of VENAO meat.
Just based on the pronouns used, we already know who the superior or older person is. The ñora, who uses evos and caniño with Ninang, is clearly older or perceived as having more authority.
In case you're too young to remember or know, answering someone with a simple “ñora” is how you answered in the affirmative (found in the last part).
Personally, I love the word venao because it is so Chabacano (bien Chabacano). In Spanish, the word for deer is venado, but it becomes venao in Chabacano, much like words such as cansado become cansao.
When I first read this transcript back in 2014, I immediately thought that maybe it was a mistake because there were no deer in the Philippines. Later, I realized that they were probably hunted down to extinction because I remembered there were still wild boars when I was a kid, and I even ate puerco de monte meat!
I mean, if you told a Gen Zer today that there used to be wild boars in this country, they probably also wouldn’t be able to believe it.
There are several words in this dialogue that, unless a Chabacano speaker has had some Spanish lessons, would not be known to them.
One of those is trae. The word trae is no longer heard today, although lleva is widely used. In Spanish, there is a distinction between these two words, but in modern Chabacano, we use lleva exclusively.
Also unknown to many Chabacano speakers today is nose (no se), because we say “no sabe yo” in Chabacano.
Another lexical curiosity we see here is the use of the word “del” to mean “about” (conversa del). Today, we usually use porcausa or, in formal settings, acerca or sobre.
There are also some word choices which are archaic such as "mira venao". In fact, I'm not sure if it means to search for deer (as in 'to hunt for deer') or maybe Biboy is a deer meat trader and he is simply buying deer meat from hunters. Perhaps this is one of those reading comprehension questions that we can use to mess up the minds of the Gen Zers.
This is an excerpt of a Chabacano dialogue found in a letter sent to Hugo Schuchardt (a German linguist) in 1883 by Jacinto Juanmartí, a priest. The letter contained a transcript of five Chabacano dialogues that took place somewhere near Pollok (Polloc), in Cotabato. Even though it was recorded in Cotabato (where there exists a variant of Chabacano), it is very much evident, even to modern-day Chabacano speakers, that this is definitely the same Chabacano spoken in Zamboanga. The text is obviously written using Spanish spelling and may contain misspellings.
Sources:
https://www.iucnredlist.org/
DENR MIMAROPA
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