NEW LI GHT ON THE ORI GI NS OF PAPI AMENTU:

AN EI GHTEENTH- CENTURY LETTER.

The language of the islands of Curagao, Aruba and Bonaire, Papia-
mentu, "una lengua criolla que ha llegado a ser un idioma fijo", 1 has been
viewed as the outstanding example of a creole which has risen to a posi-
tion of considerable social respectability and official recognition. In the
words of Rudolf Lenz, in his classic study,
,,El Papiamento de Curazao es, seg6n mi opini6n, el mejor ejemplo de una lengua
criolla que se ha levantado hasta el nivel de una 'lengua de alta cultura'." ~
The origins of Papiamentu have long been debated by Antillian,
Dutch and foreign scholars. The debate has centered upon two traditional
theories of the circumstances of origin, and hence of the genetic classi-
fication, of Papiamentu. Although not all the participants in the debate
have realized this, their arguments have paralleled, in parvo, a broader
clash of opinion between two schools of creolists, the monogenetic and
the polygenetic schools of students of the European-affiliated creoles of
the colonial and post-colonial world.
Most participants in this debate have agreed that Papiamentu is an
Afro-European creole. However, the African affiliations of the Antillian
vernacular have never been established with any degree of precision.
The identification of features of Papiamentu with those of specific
African languages poses problems far greater than in the case of the other
Afro-European creoles, which preserve large numbers of lexical borrowings
from specific West African languages. Papiamentu is the most European
in vocabulary of the existing Afro-European creoles (a fact which has, in
times past, doubtless militated in favor of its social acceptance), and future
work on the origins of the African element in Papiamentu - a challenging
task - must center on the syntax a and perhaps especially upon the into-
nation pattern and other suprasegmentals.
The point most heatedly disputed in the past, and concerning which
two opposing theories have been propounded, is on the circumstances of
origin of Papiamentu and especially the mutual relationship of the
identifiable Castilian and Portuguese elements in Papiamentu.
One theory declares Papiamentu an Afro-Spanish creole first origi-
nating in the Antillian environment. Van Ginneken adheres to this
viewpoint when he calls Papiamentu ,,Negerspaansch ''4, and the earliest
utterance by an outside observer of Papiamentu, the statement by the
Jesuit missionary, Father Alexius Schabel, 17045, that "the Negroes of
Curagao speak broken Spanish", is often cited by exponents of this
theory. Maduro 6 is the chief Antillian defender of this viewpoint, while
among overseas creolists the most recent exponent of the Castilian
theory is Rona 7, who ascribes many of the phonological features of
Richard E. Wood - Ne w Light on the Origins of Papiamentu 19
Papiamentu which bear a resemblance t o Portuguese to internal phonetic
development rather than either an historical Portuguese base or sub-
sequent Portuguese influence. Seen more broadly, the theory of the origi-
nation of Papiamentu specifically in the Curagaoan environment is an
integral part of the traditional polygenetic theory of the multiple origins
of the European-attiliated creoles, each arising from a separate pidgin in
its own environment, which is still held by such noteworthy creolists as
Hall s and has indeed only recently been questioned.
Opposed to this theory, however, is the hypothesis of the descent of
Papiamentu from West African Creole Portuguese. This theory is pro-
pounded at length by Lenz 9 on the basis of Schuchardt' s general work,
and shared later by such scholars as Navarro Tom,is 1~ and Van Wijk 11,
who explain the many obvious phonetic, morphological and syntactic
Castilianisms in current Papiamentu as the result of a comparatively
recent Hispanization owing to geographical and socio-economic circum-
stances. Maduro 12, a strong opponent of the Afro-Portuguese hypothesis,
has demonstrated the practical weaknesses of the theory as hitherto pro-
pounded by refuting the many dubi ous Portuguese etymologies proposed
by Lenz, and suggesting, for certain of these, derivations in seventeenth-
century Spanish, in other dialects of the Peninsula, or in the dialects of the
adjacent countries, notably Venezuela, Colombia and the Dominican
Republ i O a. The residue of specifically Portuguese loanwords and
phonological similarities Maduro ascribes to the Portuguese Jews who
settled in CuraCao from 1651 on.
Yet, however erroneous or questionable many of the individual
etymologies of Lenz may be, the West African Creole Portuguese theory of
the origin of Papiamentu gains strength when viewed as an integral part of
the total edifice of the monogenetic theory of Afro-European creole
origins. Valkhoff, for example, one of the forerunners of the monogenetic
theory, and a general creolist not specifically concerned with Papiamentu,
speaks of a "genetic relationship" between West African Creole Portu-
guese and the modern Western Hemisphere creoles, among them Papia-
mentu 14. The monogenetic t heory has been developed and expounded by
Thompson 15 and Whinnom 16.
Yet the Castilian elements in Papiamentu are t oo numerous and basic,
and the divergences from Portuguese t oo great, to be explained away on
the basis of a comparatively recent relexiflcation and superficial Casti-
lianization alone, A leading exponent of the Afro-Portuguese theory, Van
Wijk, believes that older Papiamentu texts would, i f discovered, show a
more markedly Portuguese phonology, morphology and syntax. After
describing an assumed Hispanization of the phonology of Papiamentu,
he continues,
,,En el terreno morfol6gico y sint~ictico podriamos comprobar id6nticas tendencias,
si dispusi6semos de textos de los siglos XVII y XVIII, que nos permitieran comparar
20 Richard E. Wood- New Light on the Origins of Papiamentu
el papiamentu actual con la modalidad anterior al ochocientos. Pero por desgracia
los dos textos m~is antiguos clue conocemos remontan a 1843 y 1844 respectivamente."l 7
As will be demonstrated, such are, fortunately, no longer the earliest
documents in Papiamentu. In the present study, the language of an older
document, produced in circumstances which might be expected to result
in a particularly strong Portuguese element, will be studied, and the
actual language will be compared with that of Van Wijk's hypothesis,
above.
First, however, a third theory of the origin of Papiamentu may be
suggested. It may be seen to incorporate the strengths of the two fore-
going theories, but few if any of their weaknesses, and it is, in a way, a
synthesis of both. The Guyanese linguist Bickerton is has posited the
former existence, in the Caribbean, of a largely Spanish-affiliated creole
once widely current in the Hispanic territories and itself based upon a
West African Creole Portuguese substrate and still showing signs thereof.
Bickerton has expounded this theory on the basis of certain contemporary
linguistic findings in other parts of the Hispanic circum-Caribbean area.
Discoveries of extant or recorded creoles in northern Colombia 19 and
Puerto Rico 8~ have led to an increased interest in the search for further
Afro-Hispanic creoles, and de Granda, in an evaluation of current re-
search in linguistics and related fields 81, has called for an intensive
search for such creoles in Hispanic countries and is confident of farther
positive findings.
As de Granda points out, Papiamentu has at times been viewed as a
linguistic and cultural isolate: the only Afro-European creole in the
Spanish-American world. Now, however, Papiamentu may be seen to
descend from the Spanish-affiliated pan-Caribbean creole, as do Palen-
quero in northern Colombia, the former Puerto Rican Creole Spanish, and
others yet to be discovered. Palenquero in particular bears a strong
resemblance to Papiamentu and contains a similar proportion of apparent
Castilian and apparent Portuguese forms. Papiamentu is merely the most
resilient and widespread contemporary manifestation of this genetic
family, owing its maintenance to various political and socio-economic
reasons, not least of which is the almost continuous Dutch, as opposed to
Spanish or Spanish-American, rule in Curacao, Arnba and Bonaire since
163488 . It need hardly be pointed out that Colombia, Puerto Rico, etc.,
have never been under Portuguese rule and have had no population
group corresponding to the influential Portuguese Jews of Carabao.
The thesis of the present study is that Papiamentu has been fixed in tis
present characteristic form since a date earlier than has hitherto been
recognized; and the present writer adheres to what Van Wijk describes as
,,la teoria err6nea de que el casteUano contribuy6 ya desde el principio a la formaci6n
del habla antillana. ''~3
Overseas linguists writing on the history of Papiament~ have been
Ri chard E. Wood - New Li ght on the Origins o f Papiamentu 21
hindered by the comparatively recent date of the earliest documents in the
Antillian vernacular know to them. Lenz, in his bibliography, lists as his
earliest citation a certain "Pikien ABC Boekoe" published in Amsterdam
in 184324. Unfortunately, this is not in Papiamentu, but in Sranan, the
English-affiliated creole of Surinam, a fact which neither Navarro Tom,is
nor Van Wijk, in their listings of the earliest works in Papiamentu, point
out, and an omission also noted in Maduro' s otherwise very copious list of
corrections to the Lenz study2L Paradoxically, although Sranan has not
risen to the social status attained by Papiamentu, our earliest records of it
antedate those of Papiamentu by many years 16. The oldest work listed by
Lenz, Navarro Tom~s and Van Wijk which is actually in Papiamentu is a
gospel translation of 1844 zT.
However, earlier texts are now available. Firstly, a Catholic catechism
of 1825, produced under the authority of Mgr. Martinus Jo[h]annes Nie-
windt 2s, is in the archives of the Apostolic Vicariate in Curacao. It may
be regarded as the model for the many catechisms, prayerbooks and tracts
produced in the latter half of the nineteenth century under Niewindt and
his successors.
Secondly, the noted Puerto Rican linguist Alvarez Nazario has brought
to light the published text of a song in Papiamentu sung by the Curagaoan
emigrant colony resident on Puerto Rico on the occasion of a public
festival in San Juan in 183029 . It is in popular language and free from
prescriptive influences. It shows some Spanish influence, but such
borrowings are the result of normal social contact in the Puerto Rican
environment and were not inserted normatively by a prescriptive writer,
as is so often the case with the earlier Cura~aoan Papiamentu texts,
including the catechism of 1825.
Thirdly, and far antedating the 1825 catechism and the 1830 Compar s a di
Jul andds from Puerto Rico, an eighteenth-century Papiamentu text is
now available for the first time.
In their recent definitive history of the old-established Sephardic com-
munity on Curagao, I. S. and S. A. Emmanuel publish, without translation
or linguistic or other comment, a page from a "Letter of a Cura~aoan
Jew in Papiamento, 1766 ''a0, in the Algemeen Rijksarchief at The Hague,
West-Indische Compagnie documents section 223. The present author
wishes to take this opportunity to acknowledge the encouragement of
Dr. Isaac S. Emmanuel, formerly Rabbi of the Mikv6-Israel Synagogue,
Willemstad, Curagao, in the undertaking of a linguistic study of this
significant letter.
The letter in question is a personal communication from a Curagaoan
Sephardic (Portuguese) Jew to his wife, and is entirely in Papiamentu.
The significance lies not only in its early date, but in the circumstances of
its composition. It is an intimate letter, in terms of great endearment, from
a loving husband to his ailing wife. The style is natural and unaffected,
free of all prescriptivism or pedantry, and thus in sharp contrast with the
22 Richard E. Wood - New Light on the Origins of Papiamentu
pedantic, unnatural language which permeates almost all the works
published in Papiamentu during the nineteenth century 31. Even Lenz,
for example, a competent linguist, in his bibliography, praises the natural-
ness of the language of a certain collection of edifying stories entitled
"Historianan Recreativa. Promer Secci6n." He says, "Este es el documen-
to que contiene el lenguaje mas nat ural . . . -32 Yet, out of the four words
of the title, two are divorced from natural popular usage: firstly, "Recrea-
tiva" with its grammatical adjective agreement, unknown in normal
Papiamentu, and secondly the Hispanizing use of-r on Promer, where all
unaffected speakers say promd.
The 1776 letter, with its natural, popular, intimate language, may be
said to bypass the prescriptive Victorianism of the 19th-century docu-
ments. It produces, indeed, a remarkable impression of modernity. It may
be likened only to the delightful Comparsa di Julandds brought to linguistic
attention by Alvarez Nazario (see above), which was produced in the
fortunate circumstances of geographical and cultural isolation of an
6migr~ community.
This letter from an unidentified Curagaoan Jew is a remarkable
phenomnoen in a linguistic sense in that, in the total absence of a vernac-
ular orthographic tradition, the writer did not hesitate do use Papiamentu
in writing, and to use a spelling which, for its day, is remarkably true to
the sound pattern of Papiamentu and, just as in its choice of vocabulary
and syntax, is remarkably modern. Moreover, it is as least as consis-
tent as the orthography of Dutch, if not that of Spanish, at the time. This
Curagaoan, then, at a very early date, did something which Cohen
Henriquez - all the facts, then and now, to the cont rary- claimed he
would never do:
..... de Curagaoenaar... zal . . , nooit een brief in deze taal schrijven orn de een-
voudige reden, dat hij met de spelling geen raad zou weten. ''33
The erroneous nature of another linguistic claim by Cohen Henriquez
will later be demonstrated.
The twentieth-century linguist, reading this eighteenth-century letter,
is struck by its kinship in spirit to the present day, with its firm rejection
of prescriptivism and its willingness to judge each language on its own
terms. The orthography of the writer is not strongly dependent upon
Spanish, Portuguese or Dutch orthographic traditions, and the overall
impression is far from that of the nineteenth century, which attempted to
push Papiamentu into the straitjacket of a Dutch-based missionary
orthography or else artificially to minimize the many differences between
the phonology of Spanish and Papiamentu by an excessively Hispanizing
orthography 34.
The spelling adopted by the unknown writer is in many ways similar to
that which is today gaining acceptance among educated Antillians and
which may be accepted as official in the near future. It shows very few
Richard E. Wood - New Light on the Origins of Papiamentu 23
inconsistencies. Such spellings, consistently used in the 1776 letter, as ku
"wi t h; t o" coincide perfectly with the currently increasingly accepted
usage and compare favorably with such renderings as koe, cu, coe found
elsewhere. Likewise, awe "t oday" strikes the reader as very modern, as
does the clear recognition of the quality of the first vowel in rospondy
"reply, answer" ( ( Sp. Port. responder [probably ( past participle
respondido] with vowel harmony). Many Hispanizing authors up to the
present day write respondi, but the people consistently say rospondL
The only significant orthographic difference between the usage of the
letter and that of many educated speakers t oday is the writer' s consistent
use of y for i in final position, e.g. f ort y "fort, fortress", modernf ort i ; dy
"of, from", modern di; scribimy "write me", modern skribimi. One
interesting difference of orthographic convention which sheds light upon
the speech pattern of Papiamentu is the consistent (another remarkable
consistency in this admirably consistent letter) affaxation of the perfective
aspect marker a to the verb root, e.g. atopa "met, have met", amanda
"sent, have sent". In fact, little or no pause can be discerned in the speech
rhythm at this morphemic juncture, and a division into a topa, amanda,
now usual orthographically, is a mere convention, probably under
Spanish or other traditional influence. On the other hand, the writer' s
suffixation of the personal object in scribimi (above), puntrabo "ask you"
(another startlingly modern spelling), mandabo "send you", etc., happens
to correspond to current orthographic usage.
Not merely the spelling is strikingly modern. The sentence structure and
lexical choice are, with few exceptions, those which could be expected from
a native speaker today. Morpheme for morpheme, word for word,
the utterances used by this eighteenth-century writer could be expected
from a speaker in the latter half of the twentieth century. On this evidence,
we may heartily endorse Lenz' s conclusion that Papiamentu is "un i di oma
fijo ''35 and we cannot share the uncertainty of the Antillian historian
Hart og as to whether " . . . er zo iets als een stabiel Papiament zou be-
staan."3n The language of the 1776 letter is almost identical with that of
speakers some two centuries later, centuries during which Papi ament u
has had no official status, has lacked a uniform orthography, has been
spoken by a highly heterogeneous population, and has been largely
untaught in the schools.
Papiamentu, then, was already established in a form quite similar t o
its present morphology, lexicon, and, insofar as the writer' s spelling
permits us to judge - and it is as good as most spellings used t oday - its
present phonology, by the beginning of the last quarter of the eighteenth
century. This lends strength to the statement of Latour, who says of Papia-
mentu,
,,Het is geen dialect, ook geen overgangstaal; her is een gefixeerde creoolsche t aal . . .
die haar overgangsperiode te boven is gekomen. ''aT
The transitional period of which Lat our speaks must antedate 1776. The
24 Richard E. Wood- New Light on the Origins of Papiamentu
recent demonstration of the currency of Papiamentu among the Cura-
~aoans resident on Puerto Rico and the existence of an early sample of
Papiamentu on that island, in no significant way different from that of
Curacao, leads us to assume the existence of Papiamentu in its present
form before the date of the first emigration of Cura~aoans to Puerto
Rico, whose terminus antes quem is 1766 as.
Not only is the 1776 letter significant as a proof of the antiquity of
Papiamentu in its present form, it is also a decisive factor in any consid-
eration of the theory, outlined above, that Papiamentu is a direct descend-
ant of a Portuguese creole which has, in comparatively recent times, been
decreolized through the influence of Spanish at all linguistic levels, owing
to contacts with the adjacent Spanish-speaking countries and the presence
on the Dutch islands of Spanish speakers. In this connection, one claim
by Cohen Henriquez - an Autillian, not himself a linguist but an engineer
and a former Minister of Agriculture of the Netherlands Antilles 39 -
frequently cited by overseas linguists, is specific and far-reaching:
,,In het oude Papiarnentsch treffen wij dan ook veel racer typisch Portugeesche
woorden en constructies aan dan in het nieuwere Papiamentsch. ''4~
This is a bold and categorical claim; but it is not supported by a single
reference to any document in Papiamentu. The earliest published works
in the language, the 1825 catechism and the 1844 gospel, both show a
form of language which, when the superficial Spanish loans of voces cultas
and prescriptively Hispanizing adjective agreements and the like are
disregarded, demonstrates the same formal relationships to Portuguese and
to Spanish, respectively, as does the Papiamentu of today. While some
words include monophthongs similar to those of Portuguese, the very
earliest records show Castilian diphthongs in such basic words as pie
"foot " (contrast Port. pe3, pieda "stone, rock" (often rendered in an
artificially Hispanized form, piedra), webu "egg" (( Sp. huevo, not Port.
ovo), pueblo (rural puebl: differing from Spanish through loss of the final
vowel, but still maintaining the Castilian diphthong) "people", kie
"want, wish", etc. as well as clearly Castilian consonants in ruman
"brother", hende "human being" and dozens of other examples, those
identified as "castellanas seguras" by Lenz in his etymological study 41.
But Cohen Henriquez claims more than a Castilian influence in recent
Papiamentn; some recent decreolization towards Spanish is beyond
dispute and has been identified especially by Navarro Tom~s4L What is
claimed are "veel meer typisch Portugeesehe woorden en constructies".
Can we find these in the 1776 letter, our oldest document? Above all,
might we not expect more Lusitanisms in the language of the "Portu-
guese Nation on Curacao", who officially used Portuguese until the
departure of the last Portuguese-speaking rabbi in 1868? 48
Let us now examine the text in detail. In the following transcription,
the first line is the original manuscript text, the second a normalization
Ri char d E. Wood - Ne w Li ght on the Ori gi ns o f Papi ament u 25
i nt o moder n Papi ament u ort hography based upon the recent proposals of
RSmer 44 and wi t h punct uat i on and capitalization added. The t hi rd line
is an English translation.
1. [ . . . ] piter may the ora ky boso abiny, my at opa t r o l a . . .
[ . . . ] Pi t r may te or al d boso a bini, mi a t opa T r o l a . . .
[ . . . ] Pietermaai until you (pl.) came, I met Trol a [a n a me ? ] . . .
2. Ku sara meme nan t aba bi ny punt a
Ku Sara meymey nan taba[ta] bini Punda
Al ong wi t h Sara t hey were going to Punda
3. my dusie bo pay amanda bo r uman awenochy ku
Mi dushi, bo pay a ma n d a bo r uman awenochi ku
My dear, your fat her sent your brot her t oni ght wi t h
4. t ony & manca koge na kami na dy piter may
Toni i Manka kohe na kami n[d]a di Pi t r may
Tony and Manka [a name?] t o meet on the Pi et ermaai road
5. es nigrita ant unyca & nan nybel t ras dij fort y
es negrita Ant uni ka i nan nibel[?] tras di[or, di e] fort i
the Negress Ant uni ka and t hey went straight across[?] the fort
. & nan amanda sutel guat apana mas my
i nan a manda Sutel wat apana, mas mi
and t hey sent Sutel [a name?] some wat apana [Antillian tree, s api ndus
cori ari a], but I
7. no saby paky razon. Sy bo saby manda gabla
no sabi pa ki rason. Si bo sabi manda Gabl a
do not know for what reason. I f you are able to send Gabl a [a name?]
. ku my dios pagabo.
kumi , Dyos pagabo.
t o me, God reward you.
9. bi da manda gabla ku mi kico bechy abiny
Bida, manda Gabl a kumi , ki ko Bechi a bini
[My] life, send Gabl a t o me, which Bechi came
10. busca na punt a & borbe bay asina presto.
buska na Punda i bolbe bay asina presto.
to l ook for in Punda and went away again so quickly.
26 Richard E. Wood - New Light on the Origins of Papiamentu
11. my diamanty no laga scribimy tudu
Mi dyamanti, no laga di skirbimi tur
My diamond, do not neglect to write me all
12. kico my ta puntrabo awe nochy my ta warda
kiko mi ta puntrabo awenochi. Mi ta warda.
that I ask you tonight. I am waiting.
13. rospondy, my serafim precura pa guanta
Rospondi, mi serafim. Perkur~i pa wanta
Reply, my Seraphim. Prepare to endure
14. antes dios sacabo dyes aflicai3 & no para dy
antes Dyos sakabo dies aflikshon i no para di
until God deliver you from the affliction and do not cease to
15. tuma remedio
tuma remedyo.
take [your] medicine.
16. my mam~ bida sy bo mester algun coza manda
Mi mama, bida, si bo mester algun kos, manda
My mother, [my] life, if you need anything, send
17. pidy bo marido ky tanto ta stimabo, my aurora
pidi bo marido ki tanto ta stimabo. Mi aurora,
[and] ask your lmsband, who loves you so much. My dawn,
18. nobira falso pa my dios guardabo
no bira falso pami. Dyos wardabo.
do not become untrue to me. God keep you.
19. dy bo marido ky tanto ta stimabo
Di bo marido ki tanto ta stimabo
From your husband, who loves you so much
20. & ta duna nabo
i ta duna nabo
and gives you
(Stylized X, symbolic of a kiss)
21. pay may rakel
Pay, may [i] Rakel
Father, mother [and] Rakel
Richard E. Wood- New Light on the Origins of Papiamentu 27
22. t a mandabo
ta mandabo
send you
23. muchu knmindamento
muchu kumindamentu.
many greetings.
Let us now consider the ways in which the Papiamentu of this letter
differs from that used t oday or recorded in more recent documents. The
differences are few indeed. Phonetically, there are three slight divergences
from modern usage, entirely explicable in terms of familiar linguistic
phenomena. The liquid of borbe (1.10) is t oday more usually bolbe, but the
two liquids frequently alternate in rural Papiamentu, and borbe, though
not part of the standard Willemstad dialect, might well be heard today in
the kunuku (coutryside). Also affecting the liquid, two minor instances of
metathesis are noted in scribimy(1. 11) and precura(1. 13), where the
modern standard places the vowel before the liquid. One development in
Papiamentu which, to judge from this text, occurred subsequent to 1776,
is the development of the characteristic modern medial consonant cluster
nd, bot h by the voicing of the dental stop in punt a (Sp. "point, prom-
ont ory") t o the familiar nineteenth-century and current Punda "Punda,
chief business district of Willemstad ''45, and through the accretion of a
dental in camina(1. 4), modern kami nda "road".
Additionally, one or two forms in the 1776 letter are archaic or
obsolescent today, but recorded in later documents or indeed still used in
hypercorrect, archaicizing or in some instances rural speech (especially
t hat of Bonaire): examples are tudu "al l " (1. 11), today normally tur
through a regular sound shift; the definite article or demonstrative
pronoun es "the, t hat " (1. 5), t oday normally e; and the archaic taba
"was, wer e' ; t oday more usually expressed by the pleonastic t6bata, and
the disyllabic coza (1, 16), now reduced to the monosyllable kos "thing",
cf. kas "house" ( Sp.Port. casa. In the case of coza, a Portuguese ety-
mology might be claimed; the z may be a representation of the voiced
consonant of modern Portuguese cousa. However, there is no evidence for
this elsewhere in the letter; the other occurrence of the symbol z is in
razon (1. 7), where it doubtless represents the voiceless [s] of Latin
American Spanish and of current Papiamentu; and the latter language, i f
it may be construed as having a / z / phone me at all, does not show the
highly marginal /z/ in any words of Iberian origin, i.e., in the great
majority of its lexicon.
None of the above-mentioned archaisms and divergences from modern
usage are specifically Portuguese. On the contrary, they are either normal
linguistic variants through such familiar phenomena as metathesis, of
current forms, or obvious genetic ancestors of existing lexical items,
28 Richard E. Wood - New Light on the Origins of Papiamentu
which, in their present form, are no more and no less Portuguese in
etymology. This letter by a Portuguese Jew is singularly unproductive of
Portuguese linguistic material and totally fails to provide "veel meer
typisch Portugeesche woorden en constructies."
One solitary exception may be mentioned. It is the noun aflica6 (1.14):
evidently a nonce loan of Port. aflifgo "affliction", frequently spelled a6 in
the 18th. century. This, itself a voz culta with strong religious overtones
and used, in this letter, in a religious context, might be expected in the
writing of a Sephardic Jew whose religious service was regularly con-
ducted in Portuguese, especially the sermons (certain prayers and chants
were of course in Hebrew). This solitary abstract lexical loan of a religious
nature is no more basic to a discussion of the phonology and lexicon of
Papiamentu than are the many similar loans made, not from Portuguese
but from Spanish, by missionaries and religious writers in the nineteenth
century. And this one Portuguese loan is counterbalanced by the dis-
tinctly Castilian phonology of the (equally religious) dios (contrast Port.
Deus) and the abstract razon (Sp. razdn but Port. razgo), as well the basic
muchu (Sp. rnucho, Port. muito), ruman (Sp. hermano but Port. irrngo),
aIgun (constrast Port. algum), no (Port. n~o), my " my" (Sp. mi but Port.
meu, minha), and the very consistent use of b in bida, bo, biny, bira with
their initial voiceless stops typical of modern Papiamentu. The latter are
to be expected in derivation from the Spanish of the surrounding area
which knows no b/v distinction, a distinction, however, still maintained in
Portuguese.
The words dios and razon are particularly powerful demonstrations of
the integral and basic Spanish element in Papiamentu as early as the
eighteenth century in a semantic area where some might claim a late,
secondary Castilian influence. Here, a Sephardic Jew of the Portuguese
community on Curacao, which from 1726 to 1770 formed the majority of
the island's white population, 4s uses distinctly Castilian forms; these
and the others cited, plus further examples which may readily be found in
the text, far outweigh the single nonce Portuguese loanword aflica~ and
the conceivable phonological Lusitanism, coza.
Conclusions.
1. Papiamentu demonstrates, over a period of 200 years, a stability and
unity noteworthy not only among creole languages, but in absolute terms,
fully justifying Lenz' s epithet of " un idioma fijo".
2. It shows, throughout this period, a significantly constant ratio of
Castilian and Portuguese elements in basic vocabulary, phonology,
morphology and syntax, insofar as distinct derivations from one or the
other Iberian language may be identified.
3. The hypothesis of an earlier strongly Portuguese Papiamentu with
subsequent radical I-Iispanization, especially in the phonology, is
unproven.
Richard E. Wood - New Light on the Origins of Papiamentu 29
4. The der i vat i on of Pa pi a me nt u f r om a f or mer pan- Car i bbean Spanish-
affiliated creole i t sel f showi ng a Por t uguese subst r at um is t he onl y
reasonabl e expl anat i on of t he presence i n Papi ament u, f r om t he t i me of
t he earliest records, of specifically Cast i l i an i nt egral el ement s al ongsi de
t he Port uguese. I n t hi s l i ght , t hen, we way under s t and and largely
endorse t he classic obser vat i on by t he pol ygl ot Schabel (1704) t ha t t he
l anguage of Cur acao is " br oke n Spani sh".
Louisiana St at e University RI CHARD E. WOOD
No t e s
I. Lenz, Rodolfo, El Papiamento, la lengua criolla de Curazao (la gramdtica mds
sencilla), Santiago de Chile, Balcells & Cia., 1928, 15.
2. Ibid., 33.
3. A pioneering study in this respect is Bendix, Edward H. , Serial verbs in Creole
and West African, paper presented at annual meeting, American Anthropological
Association, November 1970, San Diego, mimeo.
4. Van Ginneken, Jac[obus], Handboek der Nederlandsche taal, ' s-Hertogenbosch,
L. C. G. Malmberg, 2nd. ed. 1928, I, 283.
5. Hartog, Joh[annes], Curafao, van kolonie tot autonomic, Aruba, D. J. de Wit,
1961, 432.
6. A large and useful collection of published opinions on the origin of Papiamentu,
with commentary from a distinctly partisan anti-Afro-Portuguese viewpoint, is Maduro,
Antoine J., Papiamentu, origen i formacidn, Corsou, Drukkerij Scherpenheuvel, 1965.
7. Rona, Jos6 Pedro, Elementos espagoles y elementos portugueses en el papiamento,
paper presented at 1st. symposium of Asosyashon pa Estudyo di Papyamentu, 11-15
August 1970, Willemstad, mimeo.
8. Hall, Robert A. , Jr., Pidgin and Creole languages, Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell Uni-
versity Press, 1966.
9. Op. cit., 13, 41, etc.
10. Navarro Tom,is, Tom,is, "Observaciones sobre el Papiamento", Nueva
Revista de Filologia Hispdniea, VII, 183-189.
11. Van Wijk, H[enri] L. A. , "Origenes y evoluci6n del Papiamentu," Neophilo-
logus, XLII, 169-182.
12. Maduro, Antoine J., Observaeion- i apuntenan toeante ,,El Papiamento la
lengua eriolla de Curazao.'" Santiago de Chile - 1928 di Dr. Rodolfo Lenz, Corsou,
1967, mimeo.
13. See especially Maduro, Antoine J., Proeedeneia di palabranan Papiamentu i
otro anotaeionnan, Corsou, 1966, mimeo, 2 pts.
14. Valldaoff, Marius F. , Studies in Portuguese and Creole with special reference
to South Africa, Johannesburg, Witwatersrand University Press, 1966, 68-69.
15. Thompson, R. W., "A note on some possible affanities between the Creole
dialects of the Old World and those of the New," Creole Language Studies, II, 107-113.
16. Whinnom, Keith, "The origin of the European-based creoles and pidgins",
Orbis, XV, 509-527.
17. Op. eit., 177.
18. Bickerton, Derek, The linguistic unity of the Caribbean, paper presented at
I.S.A. (Caribbean Chapter) conference, Mayagiiez, P.R., Apri l 1970, mimeo.
19. Bickerton, Derek, and Aquilas Escalante, "Palenquero: a Spanish-based
Creole of Northern Colombia", Lingua, XXIV, 254-267.
20. ~dvarez Nazario, Manuel, El elemento afronegroide en el espaKol de Puerto
Rico; contribueidn al estudio del negro en Amdriea, San Juan de Puerto Rico, Instituto
de Cultura Puertorriquefia, 1961.
21. De Granda, Gerrn~in, "On the study of the Creole dialects in Spanish-speaking
areas", Orbis, XIX, 72-81.
30 Ri chard E. Wood - Ne w Li ght on the Origins o f Papi ament u
22. On the social status of Papiamentu, see Wood, Richard E., "Linguistic pro-
blems in the Netherlands Antilles", La Monda Lingvo-Problemo, I, 77-86.
23. Op. cir., 174.
24. Op. eit.,18.
25. Op. eit., 1967.
26. On the social status of Sranan, see especially Eersel, Christian, Questions of
prestige in language choice in a multilingual setting, paper presented at C.P.C.L., Mona,
Jamaica, April 1968, mimeo.
27. Ewanhelie di San Matheo, poeblikado abau di direksjon di Domini C. Conradi,
minister di St . Ewanhelie, Curaqao, A. L. S. Muller & J. F. Neiimafi, 1843.
28. Declaracion corticu di catecismo pa uso di Catholica, Curagao?, 1825.
29. ,/dvarez Nazario, Manuel, Un texto literario del papiamento documentado en
Puerto Rico en 1830, paper presented at 1st. symposium of Asosyashon pa Estudyo di
Papyamentu, 11-15 August 1970, Willemstad, mimeo. The original text of the Comparsa
di JulandOs was published in Descripci6n de las fiestas reales en San Juan de Puerto Rico
y otrospueblos de la Isla en 1830, San Juan, impreso en la Oficina del Gobierno, 1831.
30. Emmanuel, Isaac S., and Suzanne A. Emmanuel, History of the Jews of the
Netherlands Antilles, Cincinnati, American Jewish Archives, 1970, 2 vols. Plate 78
(face p. 257).
31. With the exception of the collection of folktales collected by Jesurun, Abra-
ham, "Verzameling Curaqao'sche sprookjes in het Papiamentsch met de vertaling",
Jaarlijksch Verslag van her Geschichts-, Taal- en Volkenkundige Genootschap te Willem-
stad, III, 94-119.
32. Op. cir., 21.
33. Cohen Henriquez, lr. P[ercy], "De taal van Cura9ao", Natuur en Mensch,
LIV, 31-34; here 32-33.
34. For samples of different orthographies, see Wood, op. cit., 82-83.
35. Op. cit., 15.
36. Hartog, J[ohannes], "Talen op Cura9ao, blik in het verleden", Oost en West,
LV: 6, 11.
37. Latour, M. D., "Her Papiamento", West-Indisehe Gids, XXII, 220-225;
here 222.
38. ~lvarez Nazario, 1970, 3.
39. Emmanuel and Emmanuel, op. cit., 435.
40. Op. cit., 32.
41. Op. cit., 207-260.
42. Op. cit., 188-189.
43. Emmanuel and Emmanuel, op. cit., 359.
44. R6mer, Ra61 G., Voorlopige richtlijnen met betrekking tot de spelling van het
Papyamentu, Curagao, [Bureau Cultuur en Opvoeding,] 1967, mimeo. Slightly modified
in R~mer, Ra61 G., Ortografiapapapyamento [. . . etc.], Aruba, Kultura i Edukashon,
1969, mimeo.
45. This incidentally tends to refute the etymology for Panda proposed by Latour,
M. D .... De taal van Curacao", West-Indisehe Gids, XVIII, 231-234; here 234.
46. Hartog, 1961, 339.