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Papiamento (or Papiamentu) is the official and most widely spoken language on the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao (the so-called "ABC islands"). Papiamento is also spoken on the island of Sint Eustatius. Papiamento is a creole language derived from the Portuguese language[2] with vocabulary influences from African languages, English and Arawak native languages.
[edit] HistoryThe historical origins of Papiamento are still not very well known. It is disputed whether Papiamento originated from Portuguese or from Spanish. Owing to the resemblance between Spanish and Portuguese, it is difficult to tell whether a particular word came from one or from the other, or even from Italian (old Genovese). Historical constraints, core vocabulary and grammatical features that Papiamento shares with Cape Verdean Creole suggest that the basic ingredients are Portuguese, and that other influences occurred at a later time (17th and 18th century, respectively). The name of the language itself comes from papear ("to chat", "to talk"), a word present in Portuguese and colloquial Spanish; compare with Papiá Kristang ("Christian talk"), a Portuguese-based creole of Malaysia and Singapore, and the Cape Verdean Creole word papiâ ("to talk"), or to Caribbean (Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Cuba) "papiar" - to talk excessively (but also, "to eat"). Spain claimed dominion over the islands in the 15th century, but made little use of them. In 1634, the Dutch-based West India Company (WIC) took possession of the islands, deporting most of the small remaining Arawak and Spanish population to the continent, and turned them into the hub of the Dutch slave trade between Africa and the Caribbean. An outline of the competing theories is provided below. [edit] Local development theoryThere are various local development theories. One such theory proposes that Papiamento developed in the Caribbean from an original Portuguese-African pidgin used for communication between African slaves and Portuguese slavetraders, with later Dutch and Spanish (and even some Aruac) influences. The Judaeo-Portuguese population of the ABC islands increased substantially after 1654, when the Portuguese recovered the Dutch-held territories in Northeast Brazil – causing most of the Portuguese-speaking Jews in those lands to flee from religious persecution. The precise role of Sephardic Jews in the early development is unclear, but it is certain that Jews play a prominent role in the later development of Papiamento. Many early residents of Curaçao were Sephardic Jews either from Portugal, Spain, or Portuguese Brazil. Therefore, it can be assumed that Ladino was brought to the island of Curaçao, where it gradually spread to other parts of the community. As the Jewish community became the prime merchants and traders in the area, business and everyday trading was conducted in Papiamento with some Ladino influences. While various nations owned the island and official languages changed with ownership, Papiamento became the constant language of the residents. [edit] African origin theoryA more recent theory holds that the origins of Papiamento lie in the Afro-Portuguese creoles that arose almost a century earlier, in the west coast of Africa and in the Cape Verde islands. From the 16th to the late 17th century, most of the slaves taken to the Caribbean came from Portuguese trading posts ("factories") in those regions. Around those ports there developed several Portuguese-African pidgins and creoles, such as Guinea-Bissau Creole, Mina, Cape Verdean Creole, Angolar, and Guene. The latter bears strong resemblances to Papiamento. According to this theory, Papiamento was derived from those pre-existing pidgins/creoles, especially Guene, which were brought to the ABC islands by slaves and/or traders from Cape Verde and West Africa. Some specifically claim that the Afro-Portuguese mother language of Papiamentu arose from a mixture of the Mina pidgin/creole (a mixture of Cape Verdean pidgin/creole with Twi) and the Angolar creole (derived from languages of Angola and Congo).Proponents of this theory of Papiamento contend that it can easily be compared and linked with other Portuguese creoles, especially the African ones (namely Forro, Guinea-Bissau Creole, and the Cape Verdean Creole). For instance, Compare mi ("I" in Cape Verdean Creole and Papiamento) or bo (meaning you in both creoles). Mi is from the Portuguese mim (pronounced [mĩ]) "me", and bo is from Portuguese vós "you".[3] The use of "b" instead of "v" is very common in the African Portuguese Creoles. Papiamento is, in some degree, intelligible with Cape Verdean creoles and could be explained by the immigration of Portuguese Sephardic Jews from Cape Verde to these Caribbean islands, although this same fact could also be used by dissenters to explain a later Portuguese influence on an already existing Spanish-based creole.[4] Another comparison is the use of the verb ta and taba ta from vernacular Portuguese tá (an aphesis of estar, "to be" or está, "it is") with verbs where Portuguese does and with others where it does not use it: "Mi ta + verb" or "Mi taba ta + verb", also the rule in the São Vicente Creole and other Barlavento Cape Verdean Creoles . These issues can also be seen in other Portuguese Creoles (Martinus 1996; see also Fouse 2002 and McWhorter 2000), but some are also found in colloquial Spanish. [edit] Present statusMany Papiamento speakers are multilingual and are also able to speak Dutch, English and Spanish. In the Netherlands Antilles, Papiamentu was made an official language on March 7, 2007.[5] Papiamento is also spoken on St. Martin and Sint Eustatius, both of which are also Dutch colony islands. Venezuelan Spanish as well as American English is a constant influence today. Code-switching and lexical borrowing among Papiamentu, Spanish and English among native speakers is common. This is perceived as a threat to the further development of Papiamentu due to a language ideology that is committed to preserving the authentic African or Creole "feel" of Papiamentu. [edit] DialectsPapiamento has two main dialects: Papiamento in Aruba and Papiamentu in Curaçao[6] and Bonaire. Although the Papiamentu in Curaçao and Bonaire are largely the same, there are still minor differences. Spoken (Aruban) Papiamento sounds much more Spanish. The most apparent difference between the two dialects is given away in the name difference. Whereas Curaçao and Bonaire opted for a phonologically based spelling, Aruba uses an etymologically based spelling. Many words in Aruba end with "o" while that same word ends with "u" in Curaçao and Bonaire. And even on Curaçao, the use of the u-ending is still more pronounced among the Sephardic Jewish population. Similary, there is also a difference between the usage of "k" in Curaçao and Bonaire and "c" in Aruba. For example: Papiamento: Palo (tree) Cas (house) Papiamentu: Palu (tree) Kas (house) Furthermore, there is also an intonation and lexical difference between Papiamento and Papiamentu[7]. [edit] Phonology
[edit] Vowels and diphthongsMost Papiamento vowels are based on Ibero-Romance vowels, but some are also based on Dutch vowels like : ee /eː/, ui /œy/, ie /i/, oe /u/, ij/ei /ɛi/, oo /oː/, and aa /aː/.[citation needed] Papiamento has the following nine vowels.[8] The orthography (writing system) of Curaçao has one symbol for each vowel.
There are dialects that exist in the island itself. An example is the arubian version of pain which is dolor is also spoken as the curacao's version just written different the R is silent in certain parts of the island. It is also written without the R. In addition to the vowels listed above, schwa also occurs in Papiamento. The letter e is pronounced as schwa in the final unstressed syllables of words such as agradabel and komader.[9] Other vowels in unstressed syllables can become somewhat centralized (schwa-like) in rapid casual speech. [edit] Stress and tonePolysyllabic words that end in vowels are stressed on the next-to-last syllable; most words ending in consonants are stressed on the final syllable. There are exceptions. When a word deviates from these rules, the stressed vowel should be indicated by an acute accent mark. The accent marks are often omitted in casual writing.[10] Papiamento words have distinct tone patterns. According to recent linguistic research, there are two classes of words: those which typically have rising pitch on the stressed syllable, and those which typically have falling pitch on the stressed syllable.[11] The latter category includes most of the two-syllable verbs in the language. Any given word's tone contours may change depending on discursive factors such as whether the sentence is affirmative, interrogative, or imperative.[12] [edit] Grammar[edit] VocabularyMost of the vocabulary is derived from Spanish and Portuguese and most of the time the real origin is unknown due to the great similarity between the two Iberian languages and the adaptations required by Papiamentu. Linguistic studies have shown that roughly two thirds of the words in Papiamentu's present vocabulary are of Iberian origin, a quarter are of Dutch origin,and some of Native American origin and the rest come from other tongues. A recent study by Buurt & Joubert inventarised several hundred words of indigenous Arawak origins[13] Examples of words of Iberian and Roman, Latin origin, which are impossible to label as either Portuguese or Spanish:
While the presence of word-final /u/ can easily be traced to Portuguese, the diphthongization of some vowels is characteristic of Spanish. The use of /b/ (rather than /v/) is difficult to interpret; although the two are separate phonemes in standard Portuguese, they merge in the dialects of northern Portugal, just like they do in Spanish. Also, a sound-shift could have occurred in the direction of Spanish, whose influence on Papiamento came later than that of Portuguese. Other words can have dual origin, and certainly dual influence. For instance: subrino (nephew): sobrinho in Portuguese, sobrino in Spanish. The pronunciation of "o" as /u/ is traceable to Portuguese, while the use of "n" instead of "nh" (IPA /ɲ/) in the ending "-no", relates to Spanish. Portuguese origin words:
Spanish origin words:
Dutch origin words:
English origin words;
Italian origin words:
Native American words:
[edit] Dictionaries
[edit] Grammar
[edit] Writing systemMain article: Papiamento orthology There are two orthographies: a more phonetic one called Papiamentu (in Curaçao and Bonaire), and the etymological spelling used in Aruba. [edit] Examples[edit] Phrase samplesNOTE: These examples are from Curaçao Papiamentu and not from Aruban Papiamento.
[edit] Comparison of vocabulariesThis section provides a comparison of the vocabularies of Portuguese, Papiamento and the Portuguese creoles of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde. Spanish also shown for contrast.
*Santiago Creole variant [edit] References
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] See also
[edit] External links Papiamento edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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