Also Known As: Saramaccan Language,Saramaccan
Description:
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.
The Saramaccan lexicon is largely drawn from Portuguese, English, Dutch, and Sub-Saharan African languages, especially Kongo, Akan and Gbe. The African component accounts for about 5% of the total.
Saramaccan 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 because 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,..... full article at Wikipedia |