, the first prime minister of the
Netherlands Antilles, with a message inscribed in Papiamento: , roughly meaning: "
Do not do unto others what you do not want others do unto you" There are various theories about the origin and development of the Papiamento language, and precise history has not been established. Its parent language is surely
West Iberian Romance, but scholars dispute whether Papiamento was derived from Portuguese and its derived
Portuguese-based creole languages or
from Spanish. Historical constraints, core vocabulary, and grammatical features that Papiamento shares with
Cape Verdean Creole and
Guinea-Bissau Creole are far less than those shared with Spanish, even though the Spanish and Dutch influences occurred later, from the 17th century onwards. In 1978, Jacoba Bouscholte conducted a study on the various Dutch influences in Papiamento. An example of a hybrid word is , which is a combination of a Dutch root (meaning 'paint') and the Portuguese and Spanish suffix
-dor (used for a person who performs an action, like 'painter'). The transformation from to involved changing the
-dor to
-dó due to a linguistic process called
apocopation. The name of the language itself originates from , from Portuguese and Cape Verdean and Bissau Guinean Creole ("to chat, say, speak, talk"), with the addition of the noun-forming suffix . Spain claimed dominion over the islands in the 15th century but made little use of them. Portuguese merchants had been trading extensively in the West Indies and with the
Iberian Union between Portugal and Spain during 1580–1640 period, their trade extended to the
Spanish West Indies. In 1634, the
Dutch West India Company (WIC) took possession of the islands, deporting most of the small remaining
Arawak and Spanish population to the continent (mostly to the Venezuelan west coast and the Venezuelan plains, as well as all the way east to the Venezuela Orinoco basin and Trinidad), and turned them into the hub of the Dutch slave trade between Africa and the Caribbean. The first evidence of widespread use of Papiamento in Aruba and Curaçao can be seen in official documents in the early 18th century. In the 19th century, most materials in the islands were written in Papiamento including
Roman Catholic school books and hymnals. In 1837, the
Catecismo Corticu pa uso di catolicanan di Curaçao (Brief Catechism for use by Catholics) was printed, the first printed book in Papiamento. In 2009 the Catecismo Corticu was added to the
UNESCO Memory of the World register. The first Papiamento newspaper was published in 1871 and was called
Civilisadó (The Civilizer).
Local development theory One local development theory proposes that Papiamento developed in the Caribbean from an original Portuguese-African
pidgin, with later Dutch and Spanish (and even some Arawak) influences. Another theory is that Papiamento first evolved from the use in the region since 1499 of 'lenguas' and the first repopulation of the ABC Islands by the Spanish by the Cédula real decreed in November 1525 in which Juan Martinez de Ampués, factor of
Hispaniola, had been granted the right to repopulate the depopulated Islas inútiles of Oroba, Islas de los Gigantes, and Buon Aire. The evolution of Papiamento continued under the Dutch colonisation under the influence of 16th-century Dutch, Portuguese (Brazilian) and Native American languages (Arawak and Taíno), with the second repopulation of the ABC islands with immigrants who arrived from the ex-Dutch Brazilian colonies. The Judaeo-Portuguese population of the ABC islands increased substantially after 1654, when the Portuguese recovered the
Dutch-held territories in Northeast Brazil, causing most Portuguese-speaking Jews and their Portuguese-speaking Dutch allies and Dutch-speaking Portuguese Brazilian allies in those lands to flee from religious persecution. The precise role of
Sephardic Jews in the early development is unclear, but
Jews certainly played a prominent role in the later development of Papiamento. Many early residents of Curaçao were Sephardic Jews from Portugal, Spain, Cape Verde or Portuguese Brazil. Also, after the
Eighty Years' War, a group of Sephardic Jews immigrated from
Amsterdam. Therefore, it can be assumed that
Judaeo-Portuguese was brought to the island of Curaçao, where it gradually spread to other parts of the community. The Jewish community became the prime merchants and traders in the area and so business and everyday trading was conducted in Papiamento. While various nations owned the island, and official languages changed with ownership, Papiamento became the constant language of the residents. When the Netherlands opened economic ties with Spanish colonies in what are now Venezuela and Colombia in the 18th century, students on Curaçao, Aruba, and Bonaire were taught predominantly in Spanish, and Spanish began to influence the creole language. The sister languages bear strong resemblance with Papiamento. According to this theory, Papiamento was derived from one or more of these older creoles or their predecessors, which were brought to the ABC islands by enslaved Africans and European traders from Cape Verde and West Africa. Later becoming the lingua franca between the various ethnic and religious groups of the islands. The similarity between Papiamento and the other Afro-Portuguese creoles can be seen in the same pronouns used, , , , , , being Portuguese-based. Afro-Portuguese creoles often have a shift from "v" to "b" and from "o" to "u": (), instead of . In creole and also in Spanish, and are pronounced the same. In creole, it is also written as a . Just as in Portuguese, an unaccented final is pronounced as .
Guene was the name given to four languages spoken by Africans on Western Curaçaoan plantations of
Kenepa, Sabaneta, Lagun and Porto Marí. The name derives from "Guinea" or "Geni", but that does not give much clear indication of African origin, because this name referred to different areas in West Africa in the 17th and 18th centuries. There were possibly hundreds of Guene work songs used to make work lighter, organize work rhythms, guide task execution through instructions, and comment on work situations. Guene influence still exists in current Papiamentu in several domains. Difficulties in understanding its relevance today lies in how to distinguish between Guene and non-Guene contributions from African languages, what role the language(s) had in shaping non-linguistic cultural materials (such as hierarchical relationships, solidarity networks, relations to the ancestors, knowledge of soil types) and how this has been re-encoded into what we know today as Papiamentu.
Linguistic and historical ties with Upper Guinea Portuguese Creole Since the late 1990s, research has been done that shines light on the ties between Papiamento and Upper Guinea Portuguese Creole. focus specifically on the linguistic and historical relationships with the Upper Guinea Portuguese Creole, as spoken on the Santiago island of Cape Verde and in Guinea-Bissau and Casamance. In Bart Jacob's study
The Upper Guinea Origins of Papiamento he defends the hypothesis that Papiamento is a
relexified offshoot of an early Upper Guinea Portuguese Creole variety that was transferred from Senegambia to Curaçao in the second half of the 17th century, when the Dutch controlled the island of
Gorée, a slave trading stronghold off the coast of
Senegal. The Creole was used for communication among slaves and between slaves and slave holders. On Curaçao, this variety underwent internal changes as well as contact-induced changes at all levels of the grammar, but particularly in the lexicon, due to contact with Spanish and, to a lesser extent, Dutch. Despite the changes, the morphosyntactic framework of Papiamento is still remarkably close to that of the Upper Guinea Creoles of Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau. Parallels have also been identified between the development of Papiamento and
Catholicism.
Present status Papiamento is spoken in all aspects of society throughout
Aruba,
Curaçao and
Bonaire. Park written in Aruban Papiamento,
English, and
Spanish Papiamento has been an official language of
Aruba since May 2003. In the former
Netherlands Antilles, Papiamento was made an official language on 7 March 2007. After the
dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles on 10 October 2010, Papiamento's official status was confirmed in the newly formed
Caribbean Netherlands.
Venezuelan Spanish and
American English are constant influences today.
Code-switching and
lexical borrowing from Spanish, Dutch and English among native speakers is common. This is considered as a threat to the development of the language because of the loss of the authentic and Creole "feel" of Papiamento. Many immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean choose to learn Papiamento because it is more practical in daily life on the islands. For Spanish-speakers, it is easier to learn than Dutch, because Papiamento uses many Spanish and Portuguese words. The first
opera in Papiamento, adapted by from his novel
Katibu di Shon, was performed at the
Stadsschouwburg in Amsterdam on 1 July 2013, commemorating the 150th anniversary of the ending of slavery in the Dutch Caribbean.
Old Papiamento texts The Papiamento language originates from about 1650. The oldest Papiamento texts that have been preserved are written letters. In the following three letters it can be seen that the words changed and the spelling became closer to the Dutch spelling. Although some words are no longer in use, the basis of Papiamento did not change much.
Piter May letter 1775 The oldest letter dates from 1775. It was sent by the
Sephardic Jew Abraham Andrade to his mistress Sarah Vaz Parro, about a family meeting in the centre of Curaçao.
Boo Jantje letter 1783 The next letter dates from 1783 and was recently discovered in an English archive. It was sent by Anna Charje in the name of her baby Jantje Boufet to her husband Dirk Schermer in Rotterdam. (The final sentence is standard Dutch.)
Quant Court affidavit 1803 The third text dates from 1803. It is an
affidavit (written testimony for use in a court of law as evidence) signed by 26 Aruban farm workers to support their supervisor Pieter Specht against false accusations by landowner B.G. Quant. ==Orthography and spelling==