Spanish-based creole languages

Last updated

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 .

Contents

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] [ page needed ] 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.

Bozal Spanish was spoken by African slaves in the Spanish Caribbean [2] [ page needed ] and other areas of South and Central America from the 17th century up until its possible extinction at around 1850. [3] [ page needed ] It's influenced the variety spoken in the Chota Valley in Ecuador, [4] and a Spanish-based creole is still spoken in the Bolivian Yungas. [5] [ page needed ]

Chavacano

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 ]

For more information see the article on Chavacano, or the Ethnologue Report on Chavacano.

Palenquero

Palenquero Palenquero1.jpg
Palenquero

Palenquero (also Palenque) is a Spanish-based creole spoken in Colombia.

The ethnic group which speaks this creole consisted only of 2,500 people in 1989.

It is spoken in Colombia, in the village of San Basilio de Palenque which is south and east of Cartagena, and in some neighborhoods of Barranquilla.

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.

For more information see the Ethnologue Report on Palenquero. [6]

Spanish-influenced creole languages

Annobonese Creole

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 400 km 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.

Papiamento

Papiamento is spoken in the Dutch Caribbean. It is a Portuguese-based creole, [7] with a large influence from Spanish, some influence from Dutch and a little from Indigenous American languages, English and African languages. Spoken in Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, by 341,300 people in 2019. [8] It was made the official language, alongside Dutch and English, in 2007. [9]

Today, the Venezuelan Spanish influence is very strong, especially on the Aruban dialect, but, due to the similarities between the Iberian Romance languages, it is difficult to ascertain whether a certain feature is derived from Portuguese or from Spanish. [9]

Pichinglis

Pichinglis is spoken on Bioko island, Equatorial Guinea. It originated with the arrival of Krio speakers from the mainland. Krio is a creole that derives most of its vocabulary from English, but the Spanish colonization of Guinea exerted Spanish influence on its lexicon and grammar.

See also

Spanish-based interlanguages:

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Papiamento</span> Creole language in the Dutch Caribbean

Papiamento or Papiamentu is a Portuguese-based creole language spoken in the Dutch Caribbean. It is the most widely spoken language on the ABC islands.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Portuguese-based creole languages</span> Creole languages lexified by Portuguese

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Forro Creole</span> Portuguese-based creole of São Tomé and Príncipe

Forro Creole or Sãotomense is a Portuguese-based creole language spoken in São Tomé and Príncipe.

In addition to its classical and modern 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Languages of the Philippines</span>

There are some 130 to 195 languages spoken in the Philippines, depending on the method of classification. Almost all are Malayo-Polynesian languages native to the archipelago. A number of Spanish-influenced creole varieties generally called Chavacano along with some local varieties of Chinese are also spoken in certain communities. The 1987 constitution designates Filipino, a standardized version of Tagalog, as the national language and an official language along with English. Filipino is regulated by Commission on the Filipino Language and serves as a lingua franca used by Filipinos of various ethnolinguistic backgrounds.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chavacano</span> Spanish-based creole of the Philippines

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 2020 Census of Population and Housing counted 106,000 households generally speaking Chavacano.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Portuñol</span> Mixed Portuguese–Spanish language, especially in South America

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Palenquero</span> Spanish-based creole language spoken in Colombia

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 not sufficient evidence to indicate that Palenquero is strictly the result of a two-language contact. It could also have absorbed elements of local indigenous languages.

Nigerian Pidgin, also known simply as Pidgin or Broken or as Naijá in scholarship, is an English-based creole language spoken as a lingua franca across Nigeria. The language is sometimes referred to as Pijin or Vernacular. First used by British colonists and slave traders to facilitate the Atlantic slave trade in the late 17th century, in the 2010s, a common orthography was developed for Pidgin which has been gaining significant popularity in giving the language a harmonized writing system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ternate, Cavite</span> Municipality in Cavite, Philippines

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Guinea-Bissau Creole</span> Portuguese-based creole of Guinea-Bissau, Senegal and The Gambia

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.

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.

Equatoguinean Spanish is the variety of Spanish spoken in Equatorial Guinea. This is the only Spanish variety that holds national official status in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is regulated by the Equatoguinean Academy of the Spanish Language and is spoken by about 90% of the population, estimated at 1,170,308 for the year 2010, all of them second-language speakers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pichinglis</span> English-based creole of Bioko, Equatorial Guinea

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ecuadorian Spanish</span> Variety of Spanish spoken in Ecuador

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 possibly 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.

References

  1. 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.
  2. 1 2 Clements 2009.
  3. Lipski 2007a.
  4. Lipski (1987).
  5. Lipski 2007b.
  6. "Palenquero". Ethnologue. 1999-02-19. Retrieved 2015-10-08.
  7. Jacobs, Bart (2009-11-09). "The Upper Guinea origins of Papiamentu: Linguistic and historical evidence". Diachronica. 26 (3): 319–379. doi:10.1075/dia.26.3.02jac. ISSN   0176-4225.
  8. www.ethnologue.com
  9. 1 2 Romero, Simon (2010-07-05). "Willemstad Journal: A Language Thrives in Its Caribbean Home". The New York Times .

Works cited