Saramaccan language

Saramaccan
Region	Surinam
Native speakers	26,000 (1995)
Language family	Creole
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-2	crp
ISO 639-3	srm

Saramaccan (autonym: Saamáka) is a creole language spoken by about 24,000 people near the Saramacca and upper Suriname Rivers in Suriname (formerly also known as Dutch Guyana), and 2,000 in French Guiana. The speakers are mostly descendants of fugitive slaves; they form a group called Saramacca, also spelled Saramaka.

Saramaccan is remarkable to linguists because of its unusual divergence from its source languages.

Origins

The Saramaccan lexicon is largely drawn from Portuguese, English, Dutch, and Sub-Saharan African languages, especially Kongo and Gbe. The African entries account for about 5% of the total.

Samaraccan phonology has traits similar to languages of West Africa, and it even has developed tones, which are common in Africa.

Over half of Saramaccan's words are from English. It is generally agreed that Saramaccan's Portuguese influence is due to the fact that the language's creators lived on plantations with Portuguese masters, and possibly slaves speaking a Portuguese creole that the masters had brought with them while migrating to Surinam from Brazil. Saramaccan's creators started with an early form of Sranan Tongo and transformed it into a new creole via this Portuguese influx, plus heavy influence from the grammars of Kongo and Gbe.

An earlier idea that Saramaccan was an offshoot of a Portuguese pidgin spoken by slaves who had learned it on the West African coast is no longer subscribed to by working creolists.

Certain common words in Sranan Tongo, the most common creole spoken in Suriname, also derive from Portuguese words.

Dialects

About 1,000 of its speakers use a dialect called Matawari.

Phonology

The language has two tones, "high" and "low".

Its vowel inventory, besides i, a and u, contains both open and closed e and o sounds, giving seven vowels in all. There is no r sound. Two phonemes that are very typical of West African languages, kp and gb, are also found. These are not consonant clusters, but are made by simultaneously articulating at both labial and glottal points.

There are nasal vowels, often indicated in writing with an n or (in early missionary sources) m at the end of a syllable. The syllabic structure is (C)V(V). Many words that start with o are variably labialized: ojo / wojo "eye," oto / woto "story."

Examples

To English speakers not familiar with it, the English basis of this language is almost unrecognizable. These are some examples of Saramaccan sentences (taken from the SIL dictionary):

De waka te de aan sinkii möön.
"They walked until they were worn out."

U ta mindi kanda fu dee soni dee ta pasa ku u.
"We make up songs about things that happen to us."

A suku di soni te wojo fëën ko bëë.
"He searched for it in vain."

Mi puu tu dusu kölu bai ën.
"I paid two thousand guilders to buy it."

Examples of words originally from Portuguese or a Portuguese creole are: mujee (mulher) "woman"; womi (homem) "man"; da (dar) "to give"; bunu (bom) "good"; kaba (acabar) "to end"; ku (com) "with"; kuma (como) "as"; faka (faca) "knife"; aki (aqui) "here"; ma (mas) "but"; kendi (quente) "hot"; liba (arriba) "above"; lio (rio) "river".

References

• Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.) (2005). "Saramaccan". Ethnologue: Languages of the World (Fifteenth edition ed.). Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help); |edition= has extra text (help); External link in |chapter= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

External links

• SIL Saramaccan-English dictionary
• Saramaccan and Haitian as Young Grammars, John McWhorter
• Saramaccan Grammar