A Spanish creole (Spanish: criollo), or Spanish-based creole language, is a creole language (contact language with native speakers) for which Spanish serves as its substantial lexifier.
A number of creole languages are influenced to varying degrees by the Spanish language, including varieties known as Bozal Spanish, Chavacano, and Palenquero. Spanish also influenced other creole languages like Annobonese, Papiamento, and Pichinglis.
Any number of Spanish-based pidgins have arisen due to contact between Spanish and other languages, especially in America, such as the Panare Trade Spanish used by the Panare people of Venezuela[1] and Roquetas Pidgin Spanish used by agricultural workers in Spain. However, few Spanish pidgins ever creolized with speakers of most pidgins eventually adopting Spanish or other language as their main tongue.
Spanish creole languages
Bozal Spanish
Bozal Spanish is a possibly extinct Spanish-based creole language that may have been a mixture of Spanish and Kikongo, with Portuguese influences.[2] Attestation is insufficient to indicate whether Bozal Spanish was ever a single, coherent or stable language, or if the term merely referred to any idiolect of Spanish that included African elements.
Chavacano (also Chabacano) is a group of Spanish-based creole language varieties spoken in the Philippines that emerged during the 18th century following the colonization of the Spaniards in the Philippines. While Chavacano refers to a large number of varieties, there are three main varieties: Ternate, Manila/Cavite, and Zamboanga.Ternate and Manila/Cavite are Northern dialects from Manila Bay on Luzon Island, while Zamboanga is a Southern dialect from Mindanao Island; both of these dialects are genetically related. The variety found in Zamboanga City has the largest number of speakers and is considered to be the most stable while the other varieties are considered to be either endangered or extinct (i.e. Ermitaño).
Creole varieties are spoken in Cavite City and Ternate (both on Luzon); Zamboanga, Cotabato and Davao (on Mindanao), Isabela City and other parts of province of Basilan and elsewhere. According to a 2007 census, there are 2,502,185 speakers in the Philippines. It is the major language of Zamboanga City.[citation needed]
While the different varieties of Chavacano are mostly intelligible to one another, they differ slightly in certain aspects such as in the usage of certain words and certain grammatical syntax. Most of the vocabulary comes from Spanish, while the grammar is mostly based on the Austronesian structure. In Zamboanga, its variant is used in primary education, television, and radio. Recently English and Filipino words have been infiltrating the language and code-switching between these three languages is common among younger speakers.
The name of the language stems from the Spanish word Chabacano which roughly means "tasteless", "common", or "vulgar", this Spanish word, however, has lost its original meaning and carries no negative connotation among contemporary speakers.[citation needed]
The village was founded by fugitive slaves (Maroons) and Native Americans. Since many slaves had been only slightly exposed to contact with European people, the palenqueros spoke creole languages derived from Spanish and from their ancestral African languages.
Spanish speakers are unable to understand Palenquero. There is some influence from the Kongo language of the Democratic Republic of Congo. In 1998, only 10% of the population younger than 25 spoke Palenquero. It is most commonly spoken by the elderly.
The Annobonese Creole, locally called Fa d'Ambö (Fa d'Ambu or even Fá d'Ambô) is a Portuguese-based creole, similar to Forro, with some borrowings from Spanish. It is spoken by 9,000 people on the islands of Ano Bom and Bioko, in Equatorial Guinea. In fact, Fa d'Ambu shares the same structure of Forro (82% of lexicon).
In the 15th century, the island was uninhabited and discovered by Portugal but, by the 18th century, Portugal exchanged it and some other territories in Africa for Uruguay with Spain. Spain wanted to get territory in Africa, and Portugal wanted to enlarge even more the territory that they saw as the "New Portugal" (Brazil). Nevertheless, the populace of Ano Bom was against the shift and was hostile toward the Spaniards. This hostility, combined with their isolation from mainland Equatorial Guinea and their proximity to São Tomé and Príncipe—just 400km from the island—has assured the maintenance of its identity.
Fa d'Ambu has gained some words of Spanish origin (10% of lexicon), but some words are dubious in origin because Spanish and Portuguese are closely related languages.
↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Panare Trade Spanish". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
1 2 Clements, J. Clancy. "Bozal Spanish of Cuba", The Linguistic Legacy of Spanish and Portuguese, Cambridge University Press, 2009. 9780511576171
↑ Lipski, John M. (2007). "9. Afro-Bolivian Spanish: The survival of a true creole prototype". Creole Language Library. 32: 175–198. doi:10.1075/cll.32.12lip.
A pidgin, or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from several languages. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the country in which they reside. Linguists do not typically consider pidgins as full or complete languages.
Papiamento or Papiamentu is a Portuguese-based creole language spoken in the Dutch Caribbean. It is the most widely spoken language on the Caribbean ABC islands, with official status in Aruba and Curaçao. Papiamento is also a recognised language in the Dutch public bodies of Sint-Eustatius and Saba.
Portuguese creoles are creole languages which have Portuguese as their substantial lexifier. The most widely-spoken creoles influenced by Portuguese are Cape Verdean Creole, Guinea-Bissau Creole and Papiamento.
Forro Creole or Sãotomense is a Portuguese creole language spoken in São Tomé and Príncipe. It is also called by its native speakers as sãotomense creole or santomense creole.
In addition to its classical and literary form, Malay had various regional dialects established after the rise of the Srivijaya empire in Sumatra, Indonesia. Also, Malay spread through interethnic contact and trade across the south East Asia Archipelago as far as the Philippines. That contact resulted in a lingua franca that was called Bazaar Malay or low Malay and in Malay Melayu Pasar. It is generally believed that Bazaar Malay was a pidgin, influenced by contact among Malay, Hokkien, Portuguese, and Dutch traders.
Chavacano or Chabacano is a group of Spanish-based creole language varieties spoken in the Philippines. The variety spoken in Zamboanga City, located in the southern Philippine island group of Mindanao, has the highest concentration of speakers. Other currently existing varieties are found in Cavite City and Ternate, located in the Cavite province on the island of Luzon. Chavacano is the only Spanish-based creole in Asia. The responsible for this Spanish creole was Don Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuera, then governor of Panama, and also responsible for settling Zamboanga City by employing Peruvian soldiers and colonists. There was an Asian-American route, which led to traders and adventurers carrying silver from Peru through Panama to reach Acapulco, Mexico before sailing to Manila, Philippines using the famed Manila galleons.
Portuñol or Portunhol is a portmanteau of the words portugués/português ("Portuguese") and español/espanhol ("Spanish"), and is the name often given to any non-systematic mixture of Portuguese and Spanish. Close examination reveals it to be "a polyvalent term (portuñol/portunhol) used to describe a wide range of phenomena, including spontaneous contact vernaculars in border regions, errors produced by speakers attempting to speak the second language (L2) correctly, and idiosyncratic invented speech designed to facilitate communication between the two languages."
Annobonese Creole is a Portuguese creole known to its speakers as Fa d'Ambu or Fá d'Ambô. It is spoken on the Annobón and Bioko Islands off the coast of Equatorial Guinea, mostly by people of mixed African, Portuguese and Spanish descent. It is called annobonense or annobonés in Spanish.
Palenquero or Palenque is a Spanish-based creole language spoken in Colombia. It is believed to be a mixture of Kikongo and Spanish. However, there is no sufficient evidence to indicate that Palenquero is strictly the result of a two-language contact. Palenquero is the only surviving Spanish-based creole language in Latin America, if Papiamento is excluded. Over 6,600 people spoke this language in 2018. It is primarily spoken in the village of San Basilio de Palenque which is southeast of Cartagena, and in some neighbourhoods of Barranquilla.
Ternate, officially the Municipality of Ternate, is a 4th class municipality in the province of Cavite, Philippines. According to the 2020 census, it has a population of 24,653 people.
Semporna is the capital of the Semporna District in the Tawau Division of Sabah, Malaysia. Its population was estimated to be around 35,301 in 2010.
Guinea-Bissau Creole, also known as Kiriol or Crioulo, is a creole language whose lexicon derives mostly from Portuguese. It is spoken in Guinea Bissau, Senegal and The Gambia. It is also called by its native speakers as guinensi, kriyol, or portuguis.
Around 99.2% of Colombians speak the Spanish language. 65 Amerindian languages, 2 Creole languages, the Portuguese language and the Romani language are also spoken in the country. English has official status in the San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina Islands.
A lexifier is the language that provides the basis for the majority of a pidgin or creole language's vocabulary (lexicon). Often this language is also the dominant, or superstrate language, though this is not always the case, as can be seen in the historical Mediterranean Lingua Franca. In mixed languages, there are no superstrates or substrates, but instead two or more adstrates. One adstrate still contributes the majority of the lexicon in most cases, and would be considered the lexifier. However, it is not the dominant language, as there are none in the development of mixed languages, such as in Michif.
Pichinglis, commonly referred to by its speakers as Pichi and formally known as Fernando Po Creole English (Fernandino), is an Atlantic English-lexicon creole language spoken on the island of Bioko, Equatorial Guinea. It is an offshoot of the Krio language of Sierra Leone, and was brought to Bioko by Krios who immigrated to the island during the colonial era in the 19th century.
Nativization is the process through which in the virtual absence of native speakers, a language undergoes new phonological, morphological, syntactical, semantic and stylistic changes, and gains new native speakers. This happens necessarily when a second language used by adult parents becomes the native language of their children. Nativization has been of particular interest to linguists, and to creolists more specifically, where the second language concerned is a pidgin.
Spanish is the most-widely spoken language in Ecuador, though great variations are present depending on several factors, the most important one being the geographical region where it is spoken. The three main regional variants are:
Bozal Spanish is a possible extinct Spanish-based creole language or pidgin that may have been a mixture of Spanish and Kikongo, with Portuguese influences. Attestation is insufficient to indicate whether Bozal Spanish was ever a single, coherent or stable language, or if the term merely referred to any idiolect of Spanish that included African elements.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
