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Papiamento or
Papiamentu
Papiamento is a form of Creole indigenous to the Dutch Antilles,
particularly
Bonaire,
Curacao, and
Aruba, where
it is considered the national language. It is also found in
occasional use on
Sint Maarten,
Saba, and Statia. The term is a derivation of the old Spanish verb
papear, which means to speak or converse.
Although there are numerous theories on the origins of Papiamento,
the most widely accepted explanation is that it is a Portuguese
based Creole, traceable to the first contact between the Portuguese
and West Africans in the mid-1400s. The Portuguese colonization of
the West African coast prompted the evolution of a new language, one
containing elements of African language structures and Portuguese
vocabulary that allowed the two peoples to communicate with each
other.
Shortly thereafter, the Portuguese commenced the slave trade,
shipping human cargo from the West African coast to the Americas.
Gathered from all over West Africa, the slaves did not even share a
common language, as they spoke dialects that varied considerably by
region. To communicate with one another, as well as with the
Portuguese, they slowly started to acquire the coastal Creole during
the many months they were held in West African ports awaiting
passage across the Atlantic. This lingua franca, which became the
mother tongue of a new generation, evolved further as it was adapted
to the particular linguistic environments in which the slaves found
themselves. In many instances, the resulting Creole served as a
secret language shared among the slaves, incomprehensible even to
those owners who spoke Portuguese.
Evidence for this theory is found in the guene language, which was
brought to Curacao by the first slaves to arrive on the island.
Slaves would use it when they didn't want their shons (owners) to
understand what they were saying. For a long time guene was
neglected by linguists simply because it seemed incompatible with
any potential root language. More recently, however, it was found to
bear an unmistakable structural similarity to Crioulo, the
Portuguese Creoles that are still spoken on the West African coast
(in parts of Guinea Bissau, the Cape Verde Islands, Senegal, and
Gambia). This resemblance suggests that guene is actually a remnant
of the new language from the ports of West Africa, brought to
Curacao around the 16th century. Other Portuguese based Creoles, all
linked to early regions of Portuguese colonization, include Cafundo
(in Brazil), Korlai (near Bombay, India), Macanese (in Hong Kong),
Kristang (in Melaka, Malaysia), and Ternateno (in Maluku,
Indonesia), and Indo-Portuguese (in Sri Lanka), although only
Cafundo shares Papiamento's West African origin
 Bon
bini - welcome
Kon ta bai - hello
Bon dia - good morning
Bon tardi - good afternoon
Bon nochi - good evening
Si - yes
Danki - thank you
Dushi - sweetheart, sweet
Kome - eat
Bebe - drink
Drumi - sleep
Ayo - good-bye
WEB TRANSLATOR English to Papiamentu
Attention! At this moment the
database contains 17085
translations and I am busy in
registering more words into the
database. If you are missing some words
and you want to contribute in completion
of the database, please mail me the
information you have.
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