Saramaccan Creole

Saramaccan Creole

Saramaccan Creole is a language spoken by about 24 000 - 26 000 people near Saramacca in Upper Surinam and French Guiana . The language is used mostly in the communities once formed by fugitive black slaves . It is unique between so-called pidgin languages in two characteristics Firstly it has two lexifier languages (English and Portuguese ) and secondly , it existed in relative isolation until about 1960 and thusly presents an example of pure ' Creole language that has not suffered significant decreolization . The latter fact makes Saramaccan especially interesting for research of

the Creole languages history and development as it provides scholars with an idea of initial ' stage of any Creole language

It is generally accepted that the basis of the language was Sranan Tongo which has been modified as a result of Portuguese influence . Most likely that the first speakers of Saramaccan were the slaves who worked for the Portuguese masters in Surinam and probably the slaves brought by those masters from Brazil . In addition the language has been heavily influenced by the grammar of west-African tongues . Most probably , the language has started to develop in the early XVIII century , although the ground for it have been laid by the British colonists during British rule of Surinam between 1651 and 1667 . Thereafter the colony passed to the Dutch . At that time about 200 Portuguese-speaking Jews migrated from Brazil bringing their slaves with them . Those settlers and their slaves started speaking a local English dialect that has been influenced by their...