Roquetas Pidgin Spanish

Roquetas Pidgin is spoken by migrant workers working in the greenhouses in and around Roquetas de Mar, which constitutes Andalusia's largest agglomeration of greenhouses. These workers represent more than 50 different nationalities and live in neighborhoods at the edge of or sometimes even among the greenhouses. Most are undocumented and live in precarious conditions. The majority are single men aged 20–29 who have been living in Spain for less than a year. As a result of these conditions, the migrant community is very marginalized, and suspicious of mingling with other social groups. Most immigrants leave Roquetas after a few months. Most migrants with very little education come from the Maghreb and the Sahel, where literacy rates seem to be lower. At the same time, many immigrants from Russia, Ukraine, and Romania have completed secondary and sometimes even higher education. The most widely spoken native languages are Sunnike, Bambara, Arabic, and Romanian. Although the migrants are divided by nationality and native language of origin, they maintain relationships marked by a high degree of solidarity familiarity, and there is no internal hierarchy among them. Their common life circumstances make them form a social group within Almería and lead to a homogenous pidgin language. These immigrants typically have studied no Spanish before arriving in Andalusia, but have been able to adopt it to maintain a minimum of communication with fellow workers, with employers and with native speakers on the bus and in stores. Their speech has a simplified grammar and vocabulary, but this has also resulted in the creation of new structures, such as this variety's spatial deixis. This contact situation, where people from a variety of language backgrounds are in contact and need a common language for certain contexts, is the typical background for a pidgin to form. This common pidgin language is generally restricted to the work environment and to the few other interactions migrants have with native Spanish-speakers. Roquetas Pidgin Spanish has been studied by Alexander Haselow who worked for three months in the greenhouses with these migrant workers. ==Pronunciation==

There are some cases of phonemes being replaced by others in Roquetas Pidgin, such as the pronunciation of 'down' or 'work' with a instead of an . The general preference is for words with simple and transparent forms. Particular aspects of some words, such as the trilled in 'up', the palatal nasal in 'small', the sequence in 'left', the hiatus in or the palatal fricative in , may be a reason for the use of alternate terms. ==Grammar==

Grammatical gender Roquetas Pidgin speakers exhibit a large degree of confusion of grammatical gender. Forms such as 'work', instead of Spanish , as well as , are widespread. The word 'a lot' is almost always used in its feminine form when describing nouns. The verbs 'eat' and 'shower' are often used in the infinitive, typically in the expressions 'for eating' and 'for showering'. The only reflexive verb is 'to be called', which is really only said in the set phrase 'is named', as in 'What is your name?', or 'My name is...', although 'My name is' is also attested. Syntax Roquetas Pidgin Spanish has a strict subject–verb–object word order, which has been speculated to be due to a mental model inherent in the immigrants' brains. The strictness of Roquetas Pidgin's word order may also be due to a greater degree of analyticity compared to Spanish, due to the lack of verb conjugations or noun-adjective agreement. The language's syntax has to compensate for the lack of grammatical information carried by inflectional morphology. The prepositions 'to' and 'of, from' are frequently dropped, as in 'Where are you (from)?', 'He is (from)'. The copula is also frequently dropped, meaning the zero copula is common in Roquetas Pidgin. Deixis The spatial deixis of Roquetas Pidgin Spanish shows some notable differences from that of standard Spanish. Whereas standard Spanish has three different spatial deictic adverbs, , , and , reflecting three degrees of spatial proximity, Roquetas Pidgin uses just two, and , which reflect the criterion of visibility. That is, is used in reference to locations within the field of view, while is used in references to places outside the field of view. Proximity plays no role. When standing atop a hill overlooking Roquetas de Mar and asked 'Where is your house?', one of 's respondents replied , which would mean 'here' in standard Spanish. When giving directions, immigrant workers in Roquetas also use physical gestures such as pointing their finger or glancing towards a certain area. These physical gestures are in many cases the only way for an interlocutor to know what location or direction is being referred to. For example, when asked to give directions to the nearest bus stop, an immigrant worker in Roquetas may say 'Go there, to the right', accompanied by a gesture pointing to a certain area. Reduplication In the phrase 'It rains very little' documented by , the speaker expresses intensification by reduplicating the adverb instead of by using the adverb 'very'. ==Vocabulary==

Most migrants in Roquetas have an active Spanish vocabulary of no more than forty different words. The most commonly used nouns have to do with either aspects of work, or with the physical environment and directions. While most verbs are exclusively used only in the third-person present singular form, the verbs 'eat' and 'shower' actually are quite often used in the infinitive, especially in the expressions 'for eating' and 'for showering'. only found two interjections in Roquetas Pidgin Spanish, and , and no profanity. Lack of antonyms The speech of the migrant workers in Roquetas generally avoids antonyms, instead preferring simple negations. For example, while 'down' is widely used in Roquetas Pidgin Spanish, its opposite 'up' is almost entirely absent. Instead, speakers of Roquetas Pidgin use to mean 'up'. Similarly, 'to the left' is replaced by 'not to the right', and 'small' is replaced by 'not big'. Some other examples are 'good/not good' and 'all/not all'. The one case of antonymy found in the lexicon is that of 'a lot' and 'a little'. Semantics Given the general paucity of words in Roquetas Pidgin, many terms have had their meanings expanded. The term is used for any human movement. The preference for may be due to its regular conjugation, since most other verbs related to human movement are conjugated irregularly, and Roquetas Pidgin Spanish eliminates all verbal inflection, using verbs only in the present third-person singular form. Similarly, replaces all other verbs related to communication. For example: 'I say no', with a third-person verb form and use of instead of 'to say', 'I am coming here tomorrow', with a third-person form and instead of 'to come'. ==References==