1. By Rochelle Brooks April 27, 2006
Papiamentu
By Rochelle Brooks
April 27, 2006

4. Introduction
Papiamentu (also called Papiamento) is spoken in the Netherland Antilles Islands (Aruba, Bonaire & Curaçao)
Portuguese and Spanish based and is also lexically influenced by English, Dutch and Native American languages
Around 200,000 speakers

5. Origin of Papiamentu (one theory)
Derived from earlier Pidgin Portuguese
Contact between Portuguese and West African Languages in the mid-1400’s
Portuguese colonialized coast of West Africa
A new language evolved containing African language structure & Portuguese vocabulary
Slave trade between Portugese colonies and the Americas brought the language to the Caribbean
After the Dutch conquered the islands in 1623, there was influence of Dutch vocabulary

6. Origin of Papiamentu (another theory)
Emerged in the second half of the 17th century
Sephardic Jews were expelled from formerly Dutch Northern Brazil and arrived on Curaçao from 1659
Papiamentu stabalized around 1700 and spread to Bonaire and then to Aruba by the end of the century

7. Sociolinguistic Background
At the end of the 18th century there were 16,000 blacks on Curaçao (slaves and freedmen)
5500 whites (including 1500 Sephardic Jews)
Of the 2400 slaves in 1683 only 25% worked in the plantations
In the 1700’s most plantations had 5 slaves or less

8. Sociolinguistics
Dutch is the official language, but Papiamentu is not related to it structurally
There is no continuum with Dutch on one end and Papiamentu on the other
About 90% of the population of the islands speak papiamentu natively
In 1936 a law banned it from all schools on the islands

9. Sociolinguistics
Although Dutch is the official language, the most common languages in business and industry are English and Spanish
Papiamentu is spoken by all social classes and has unusually high prestige for a creole
Highly developed writing system and is widely used in the media (newspapers, tv, radio)

10. Linguistic Features SVO language Tense mode and aspect markers:
-ta present progressive
-tabata imperfect past
-a perfective, past
-lo future, potential
-sa habitual

11. Syntax
Papiamentu permits the order IO-DO, which is not allowed in Spanish or Portuguese
To indicate time and aspect, P uses tense markers which stand on their own
Maria a duna Wanchu un buki
Eng: Mary TNS give John a book
‘Mary gave a book to John’

12. Morphology
Most times the morpheme that indicates plurality has the same form as the third personal pronoun:  nan - (they); muchanan - (children)
The nouns do not denote plurality when prefaced with a word with plural meaning:
 un homber - ‘one man’
dos homber - ‘two men’
un hende - ‘one person’
hopi hende - ‘many people’

13. Phonology
There are ten vowels in Papiamentu (the spelling is in parentheses)
i y(ü) u
e Ø(ù) o
E(è) (O)ò a

14. Phonology
Although none of Papiamentu’s parent language use tones, they are present in P to distinguish between minimal pairs:
papa with high low pattern: ‘porridge; the Pope’
papa with low high pattern: ‘dad’
Also, there are many bisyllabic words which can only be distinguished by their tones. Usually a low high pattern is a verb and a high low pattern is a noun

15. Phonology Examples: biaha (low high) ‘to travel’ (high low) ‘voyage’
warda (low high) ‘to wait, to keep, to guard’
(high low) ‘guard service, guard post’

16. Other interesting features
Passive construction similar to European lexifiers
(agent is optionally realized in a PP)
E pòtrèt aki a wordu saká dor di e mucha hòmber
the picture here PAST be taken through of the child male
‘The picture was taken by the boy’
The PP is introduced by dor di or pa, a passive auxiliary appears (wordu or ser) and the verb appears in the passive participle form

17. Bibliography
Arends, J et al (Ed.) (1995). Pidgins and Creoles: an introduction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Holm, John (1989). Pidgins and Creoles. (vol. 2). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hymes, Dell (Ed.) (1971). Pidginization and Creolization of Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.