The discovery, nature, and implications of a Papiamentu text fragment from 1783 (4 & final)
by Bart Jacobs & Marijke J. van der Wal
5.2. Linguistic observations
From a strictly linguistic point of view, the 1783 Papiamentu text reaffirms an important conclusion drawn previously by other authors on the basis of the 1775 and 1803 Papiamentu texts, namely that late-18th-century Papiamentu does not differ significantly from modern-day Papiamentu and, thus, that the grammar of the language had become quite stable at a relatively early date (see Wood 1972; cf. Kramer 2008:99).
Fort Amsterdam, Punda, Curaçao
Exceptions to the continuity between early and modern-day Papiamentu in Anna Elisabeth’s letter are limited to vocabulary items such as joego, coemda and prestoe. In the transition from early to modern-day Papiamentu, joego ‘child, son, daughter’ (< Sp. hijo) has been reduced to yu, the short form coemda ‘to greet’ has been abandoned in favour of the trisyllabic form kumindá (indeed, the continuation of, or merger with, the form koemenda found in line 8), and prestoe ‘quick(ly)’ (< Sp./Port. presto) has been replaced by synonyms such as lihé.
As far as the morphosyntax is concerned, the letter and sentences are too short to allow any far-reaching analyses, though we may at least point at the use of the third person plural pronoun nan as a postnominal pluralizer in line (4), the verbal serialization manda koemenda in line (8), and the polyfunctionality of ta as a preverbal imperfective aspect marker in line (3) and a copula ‘be’ in line (9), all features characteristic of present-day Papiamentu.
At a phonological level, we see that several sound changes that characterize modern-day Papiamentu had already (largely) been completed by the time of writing:
• The words toer (modern Pap. tur < Port. tudo ‘all’) and saloer (modern Pap. salú < Sp. salud ‘health’ (≠ Port. saúde)) exemplify the change of etymological (i.e. Spanish or Portuguese) -/d/ or -/dV/ to modern-day Pap. -/r/ and often even -/Ø/. Similar developments can be seen in the transitions from Port. metade~Sp. mitad ‘half’ to Pap. mitá~mitar, from Sp./Port. medida ‘measure’ to Pap. midí, or Port. pode ‘[3s.pres.] be able’ > Pap. por.
• b. The verb trese, derived from Port. trazer (≠ Sp. traer), shows vowel harmony and the devoicing of the etymological /z/, processes that are typical of the older layers of the Papiamentu vocabulary (cf. Jacobs 2012a:Chapter 1).
• c. The word anja ‘year’ (written <aña> in modern-day Papiamentu following Spanish spelling) is one of several basic vocabulary items that have undergone the change from etymological /o/ to /a/. Compare, for instance, Pap. bisiña ‘neighbour’, biña ‘wine’ and kurpa ‘body’, from Port. vizinho, vinho and corpo.
• An interesting case of sandhi is found in the reduction of duna ‘give’ to naa (line 7). This reduction is still typical of (rapidly) spoken Papiamentu at present.
• The aphaeresis and syncope of unstressed syllables of plurisyllabic words, typical of Papiamentu (e.g. Merka < Sp./Port. América), is reflected in bisyllabic Coemda (line 4), which occurs side by side with trisyllabic koemenda (line 8), both meaning ‘to greet, salute’ and derived from Sp./Port. encomendar (whose primary meaning is not ‘to greet’ but ‘to commend’). Present-day Papiamentu to our knowledge only has preserved the trisyllabic variant kumindá ‘greet’, but similar variation is found in the present-day Papiamentu pair lanta and lamantá, both derived from Sp./Port. levantar. In this latter case, the pair was preserved probably due to the fact that the variants have developed a subtly different meaning: lanta ‘to stand up’, lamantá ‘to revolt’.
In the domain of the vocabulary, apart from the fact that the letter gives us a better idea of the time-depth of certain lexical and lexico-semantic particularities of present-day Papiamentu (such as kumindá ‘to greet’, dushi ‘sweetheart’), an interesting fact is the presence in the text of several Lusitanisms:
trese ‘carry’ < Port. trazer (≠ Sp. traer)
tur ‘all’ < Port. tudo (≠ Sp. todo)
morto ‘death’ (line 9) < Port. morto (≠ Sp. muerto)
te and na (contracted in toena, line 9), with te ‘until’ < Port. até (≠ Sp. hasta) and na ‘in’ < Port. na (≠ Sp. en + la).
bon < Port. bom (≠ Sp. bien)
nobo < Port. novo (≠ Sp. nuevo)
Nederlands-Portugees-Israëlitische gemeente Mikvé Israël-Emanuel is de oudste, nog in gebruik zijnde joodse synagoge in de Nieuwe Wereld. Ze werd tussen 1730 en 1732 gebouwd door Pieter Roggenburg
These Lusitanisms, found also in present-day Papiamentu, are revealing in the context of the much debated origins of Papiamentu, and more precisely of its Portuguese elements. Their presence in Anna Elisabeth’s repertoire is evidence that they were firmly integrated also in the ‘Dutch’ variety of Papiamentu at an early date. It is implied, for instance, that the many Portuguese-derived items in the basic vocabulary of Papiamentu cannot be attributed to Curaçao’s Sephardic Jewish community (pace Sanchez 2009:835). Rather, Anna Elisabeth’s linguistic heritage suggests that these Lusitanisms were part of the original Papiamentu grammar irrespective of any Curaçaoan Sephardic linguistic input. This, in turn, is in line with the hypothesis (to which we subscribe; see below and footnote 21) that Papiamentu was imported from elsewhere as an originally Portuguese-based creole and was subsequently (partially) relexified towards Spanish.
It should be noted, on the other hand, that the letter does not contain any Lusitanisms that are not also found in present-day Papiamentu and the same holds for the 1775 and 1776 samples. In other words, the relative proportion of Spanish-to-Portuguese vocabulary in earlier forms of Papiamentu was roughly equal to what it is today. In discussing the 1775 Papiamentu letter, Wood (1972) already drew attention to this fact and (like others after him) interpreted this as evidence against the hypothesis that Papiamentu is a relexified descendant of a previously Portuguese-based pidgin or creole. If that hypothesis were correct, Wood argued, we would certainly expect to find additional (viz. not yet relexified) Portuguese vocabulary items in these early written attestations. Jacobs (2012b), however, argues against Wood, by noting that he erroneously assumed relexification to be a gradual process, whereas, in fact, most established cases of relexification have been shown to occur in the space of time of a single generation or less (i.e. typically no more than two to three decades). Under that premise, the pronounced Spanish character of the Papiamentu vocabulary in written attestations of the late-18th century is merely predictable: if Papiamentu was brought to Curaçao in the second half of the 17th century, relexification of its originally Portuguese vocabulary may well have been completed already by the beginning of the 18th century.
6. Final remarks
Tracing the linguistic diversity of the past, various types of, more or less scarce, sources are available, both speech-based such as recorded court testimonies and speech-like such as private letters. Both types of sources deliver the earliest Papiamentu text samples: a court testimony and a private letter, both by Curaçaoan Sephardic Jews. By the private letters discussed in the present paper, our knowledge of late-18th-century Papiamentu is further extended. The Papiamentu letter by Anna Elisabeth shows us, amongst other things, that Papiamentu had spread among, and become socially acceptable in, the Dutch upper class of Curaçao at a remarkably early date.
We may often wonder how people in the past communicated in various circumstances abroad. Anna Elisabeth’s letters provide us with a view on the multilingual late-eighteenth-century society of Curaçao and on the function of Papiamentu for Dutch-Curaçaoan writers and their addressees. As she is the only individual of the family network who writes in Papiamentu, we may assume that the gender difference noticed for the 1820s by Bosch existed earlier in the 1780s. Her husband, however, must also have had a reasonable passive command of Papiamentu in order to be able to understand the remarkable letter from his son. What remains a bit of a mystery, however, is the precise function of the Papiamentu letter in the Dutch correspondence between spouses. Are the expression of longing and the transfer of greetings in Papiamentu an example of ‘Spielerei’ that was appreciated by husband Dirk Schermer? Whatever its function was, the letter figures as a lively and precious early Papiamentu fragment from the past.
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Online sources:
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