Reassessment of the Portuguese contribution to the

Reassessment of the Portuguese contribution to the Papiamentu lexicon Bart Jacobs

Universität Konstanz & Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

1. Introduction This short note provides a reassessment of the Portuguese contribution to the lexicon of present-day Papiamentu. Although it is generally recognized that Spanish is the principal lexifier of Papiamentu, scholars also acknowledge that the creole’s lexicon contains a significant number of Portuguese-derived items (a.k.a. Lusitanisms). Of course, as has been pointed out frequently in the literature, it is often pointless to try to establish whether a certain Papiamentu (Pap.) lexeme is of Spanish (Sp.) or Portuguese (Port.) origin due to the closeness of the two lexifiers (e.g. Pap. kanta ‘to sing’ < Sp./Port. cantar, etc.). Nevertheless, for a considerable number of Papiamentu lexemes, it is in fact perfectly possible to identify whether the etymon is Spanish or Portuguese. For instance, the Papiamentu preposition na ‘in’ is clearly derived from Port. na (< em + a), rather than from Sp. en. The present paper provides the most exhaustive and accurate listing of such Papiamentu Lusitanisms to date. It should be stressed that the possible historical source(s) of the Papiamentu Lusitanisms (an issue that several scholars including the present author have been concerned with) will not be taken into account in the assessment presented below. Here, I am merely concerned with identifying as many Lusitanisms as possible in the lexicon of present-day Papiamentu, regardless of their ultimate historical source. Below, I will first point out some of the shortcomings of the existing assessments of Papiamentu Lusitanisms (§2) and then present my reassessment (§4), preceded by some methodological remarks (§3).

Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 28:1 (2013), 154–165. doi 10.1075/jpcl.28.1.07jac issn – / e-issn – © John Benjamins Publishing Company

Reassessment of the Portuguese contribution to the Papiamentu lexicon 155

2. The existing assessments of Papiamentu Lusitanisms Lenz (1928), Megenney (1984), Jeuda (1991), and Grant (2008) are among the most valuable and exhaustive attempts at systematically identifying Papiamentu lexemes of probable Portuguese origin. However, these assessments suffer from several problematic etymologies, many of which are in fact recurring in the literature on Papiamentu. Some obvious ones are discussed below: – Pap. bringa ‘to fight’ is typically claimed to derive from Port. brigar. However, although Pap. bringa ‘to fight’ is phonetically indeed slightly closer to Port. brigar than to Spanish bregar, the latter is just as plausible an etymon considering that the raising of the etymological unstressed /e/ to /i/ is a completely regular phenomenon in Papiamentu. Pap. bringa should thus not be included in a list of Papiamentu Lusitanisms. – As Quint (2000: 186) has pointed out, Pap. pusha ‘to push’ is often erroneously attributed to Port. puxar. Despite the obvious phonetic resemblance, Port. puxar means ‘to pull’, which is exactly the opposite of what Pap. pusha means. Quint (2000: 186) therefore correctly affirms that English to push is a more plausible etymon.1 – For similar reasons (i.e. the availability of an equally or more plausible Spanish etymon), words such as Pap. (a)den ‘in(side)’, bati ‘to hit’, dale ‘to hit’, di ‘of ’, drumi ‘to sleep’, gumitá ‘to vomit’, kai ‘to fall’, ketu ‘quiet’, konta ‘to tell’, landa ‘to swim, ma ‘but’, papia ‘to speak’, and solo ‘sun’, listed in one or more of the above-mentioned assessments, should in fact not appear in any listing of Papiamentu lexical items of probable Portuguese origin. Grant (2008: 56–60) is the hitherto most exhaustive attempt to systematically identify Papiamentu lexemes of probable Portuguese origin. If we exclude the problematic items addressed above from Grant’s list, however, this list contains no more than ca. 45 Papiamentu items of probable Portuguese etymology. The reassessment presented in this short note (§4, Table 1) contains some 129 items of probable Portuguese origin. I will first briefly address some methodological issues.

1. English influence on Papiamentu dates back to the second period of English occupation of Curaçao from 1807 to 1816 (Maurer 1998: 194footnote). English left other traces in Papiamentu’s core vocabulary, e.g. Pap. bèk < Eng. back (adv.), used in verbal expressions of the type bai bèk ‘to go back, return’ and pleonastic bolbe bèk (lit. ‘to return back’) ‘to return’. Wood (1971) deals with English borrowings in Papiamentu.

156 Bart Jacobs

3. Methodological remarks As noted, the aim of this short note is to (re)assess the contribution of Portuguese to the lexicon of present-day Papiamentu. I am not concerned here with the possible historical or geographic source(s) of these Lusitanisms. Suffice it to note that not all of them stem from the same source or have the same time depth. While some may have been part of the creole’s original lexicon, others are more likely to have been integrated in post-formative stages through contact with, for instance, Sephardic Jewish Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese and/or an already restructured variety of Portuguese.2 As mentioned, however, such considerations are of no relevance here. In principle, the assessment contains only Papiamentu lexemes for which a Portuguese etymon is clearly more plausible than a Spanish one from a phonological point of view. One consequence is that Papiamentu words (such as Pap. papia ‘to speak’ < Sp./Port. papiar and Pap. landa ‘to swim’ < Sp./Port. nadar) which are traditionally attributed to Portuguese not on phonological grounds but on the basis of close cognates in other Portuguese-based creoles, have not been included in the present assessment. This way I hope to avoid a pro-Portuguese bias from which several existing assessments suffer. In four cases, however, where Spanish is as plausible a source as Portuguese from a phonological point of view, I decided to classify a lexeme as Lusitanism on purely semantic grounds. These are Pap. banda ‘side’, bira ‘to turn, become’, kachó ‘dog’ and lora ‘to roll’. For each item, a footnote provides the relevant semantic considerations. It is important to note, furthermore, that I do not consider Old (15th/16thcentury) Spanish as a possible contributor to the Papiamentu lexicon. Some scholars supporting the Spanish (rather than Portuguese) origins of Papiamentu (e.g. Maduro 1966; Ferrol 1982; Munteanu 1996) have claimed that several Papiamentu words traditionally attributed to Portuguese may well have existed in Old Spanish and should thus not be classified as Lusitanisms. Here, by contrast, I take as a point of departure the compelling linguistic evidence provided by Quint (2000: 184, 185; elaborated on in Jacobs 2009b) showing that Old Spanish did not play any role in the formation of the Papiamentu lexicon.

2. For detailed discussions of the controversial origins of Papiamentu and of the various possible historical sources of the Portuguese elements in its core vocabulary, the reader is referred to Martinus (1996), Quint (2000), Grant (2008), Maurer (2009), and Jacobs (2009a, 2012). Joubert & Perl (2007) provide an excellent overview of the historical presence of Portuguese on the Dutch Antilles.


Moreover, in keeping with e.g. Maurer (1998: 198), I will not take other Iberian languages such as Galician or Catalan into consideration, even though the same body of scholars just mentioned (Maduro, Ferrol, Munteanu) have insisted on doing just that, again with the purpose of downplaying the importance of the Portuguese contribution to the Papiamentu lexicon. Unlike these authors, then, I will classify a word such as Pap. porta ‘door’ as a Lusitanism (Port. porta ≠ Sp. puerta), even though the word porta also exists in Catalan and Asturian (Maduro 1966: 20). Nonstandard varieties of (Latin American) Spanish are not considered as possible sources of Papiamentu lexical material either. For instance, I will classify a word such as Pap. lembe as a Lusitanism (< Port. lamber ≠ Sp. lamer), even though the form lamber is found in several nonstandard varieties of Spanish (Penny 2000: 87, 188, 232). Although this choice is disputable, looking for possible etyma in all nonstandard varieties of Spanish would clearly surpass the scope of this short note. It is important to note, finally, that I did not include in the assessment deverbal nouns with the Papiamentu suffix -mentu (< Port. -mento ≠ Sp. -miento), such as Pap. kasamentu (< Port. casamento ≠ Sp. casamiento), Pap. pagamentu (< Port. pagamento ≠ Sp. pagamiento) and many more. If such nouns were included, needless to say, the assessment of Lusitanisms in Papiamentu would be considerably longer. Instead, I only included the suffix at issue. Moreover, from some of the verbs listed in Table 1, participles were derived and lexicalized as nouns or adjectives. I did not include these derivations in the assessment either. 4. Papiamentu lexemes of probable Portuguese origin Table 1 below presents a reassessment of Papiamentu lexemes (both content words and function words) of probable Portuguese origin. The left-most column provides the Papiamentu lexeme (in the orthography of Curaçao and Bonaire) followed by the gloss in the mid-left column (note that only the primary meanings are given); the Portuguese etymon is provided in the mid-right column. For comparison, the right-most column provides the Spanish equivalents. The assessment draws on, and is indebted to, the works of Lenz (1928), Megenney (1984), Jeuda (1991), Martinus (1996), Quint (2000), and Grant (2008), all of whom have contributed to the identification of Lusitanisms in Papiamentu, and is complemented with lexical data gathered through own research. The dictionaries consulted for the Papiamentu entries are Ratzlaff (1992), van Putte & van Putte-de Windt (2005) and Joubert (2007). For Portuguese and Spanish, I primar-

158 Bart Jacobs

ily consulted the Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa and the Diccionario de la Real Academia Española. Table 1. Papiamentu lexemes of probable Portuguese origin Papiamentu A afó ainda anto avochi3 B baf bai balente banda (di)4 basha basora biki biña bira5 bisiña bon bunitesa barbulètè butishi C chumbu D desha

GLOSS

Portuguese

Spanish

‘outside’ ‘still’ ‘thus’ ‘grandfather’

afora ainda então avô

afuera aún, todavía entonces abuelo

‘bad breath’ ‘to go’ ‘courageous’ ‘side’ / ‘next to, around’ ‘to go/bring down’ ‘broom’ ‘nipple’ ‘wine’ ‘to turn, become’ ‘neighbor’ ‘good, well’ ‘beauty’ ‘butterfly’ ‘jar’

bafo vai valente banda baixar vassoura bico vinho virar vizinho bom boniteza borboleta botija

vaho, aliento va valiente lado bajar escoba pico vino volver vecino bueno, bien belleza, bonitura mariposa botija

‘lead’

chumbo

plomo

‘leave, let’

deixar

dejar

3. Pap. avochi is composed of Port. avô and the Dutch diminutive suffix -tje. 4. Although Spanish also has banda in the sense of ‘side’, it is far less common than in Portuguese, particularly Brazilian Portuguese. 5. Spanish virar also exists but is used only as a nautical term ‘to tack’ and as such was in fact borrowed from Portuguese (Penny 2002: 281). Pap. bira does not mean ‘to tack’. Its broader meaning ‘to turn, become’ is reflected only by (Brazilian) Portuguese virar. 6. In present-day Papiamentu, a derivative of Port. ração is found only in the composition Pap. djarason ‘Wednesday’. Birmingham (1970: 131footnote) comments on the origin of this word: ‘Legend says that Wednesday was a ‘day of ration’ for the [Curaçaoan] slaves, the one day of the week on which they were given their allotted supplies of food and clothing’.


Table 1. (continued) Papiamentu

GLOSS

Portuguese

Spanish

djarason6

‘Wednesday’ ‘too much’

dia + ração demais

dia + ración demasiado

‘to be bored’ ‘hungry’ ‘to bother’ ‘bothersome’ ‘pin’ ‘party’ ‘fig’ ‘to get bogged down, be delayed’ ‘factor, plantation overseer’ ‘to drown’ ‘outside’ ‘oven’ ‘strength’ ‘fort’ ‘leaf ’ ‘weak’ ‘ant’

enfadar faminto enfastiar enfastioso alfinete festa figo ficar feitor afogar fora forno força forte folha fraco formiga

aburrirse hambriento fastidiar fastidioso alfiler fiesta higo quedar hacedor ahogar fuera horno fuerza fuerte, fortaleza hoja flaco hormiga

‘chicken’ ‘to dig’ ‘to swallow’

galinha esgravatar engolir

gallina escarbar engullir

‘hut, cottage’ ‘dog’ ‘shiver’ ‘any’ ‘to flake (off), peel (off)’ / ‘skin, bark, rind’ ‘to want’ ‘who’ ‘to heat’

cabana cachorro calafrio qualquer cascar

cabaña perro escalofrío cualquier descascarar, descascar

quer quem aquentar

quiere quien calentar

dimas F fada famitu fastia fastioso feneta festa figu fika fitó foga fó~for (di) (cf. pafó) fornu forsa forti foya fròko–fròko fruminga~vruminga G galiña grawatá guli K kabana kachó7 kalafriu kalke~kualke kaska (verb & noun) ke~ker ken kenta

7. Pap. kachó ‘dog’ could derive from either Spanish cachorro or Portuguese cachorro (both ‘puppy’) with equal likelihood. However, its classification as a Lusitanism is justified in light of the fact that (a derivative of) cachorro also means ‘dog’ (rather than ‘puppy’) in Brazilian Portuguese as well as in several Portuguese-based creoles.

160 Bart Jacobs


GLOSS

Portuguese

Spanish

kentura kompai korá kumisá kurashá kurashi kurpa kustumá L lembe lensu lo lomba lora M mai manteña mare! mea mei9 -mentu mes meste~mesté~mester mishi mishirikeira miskiña morcha morto N na nobo nos O oyada

‘fever’ ‘chum, mate’ ‘red’ ‘to begin’ ‘to encourage’ ‘courage’ ‘body’ ‘to be accustomed’

quentura compãe corado começar encourajar couragem corpo costumar

calentura, fiebre compadre colorado comenzar encorajar coraje cuerpo soler, acostumbrar

‘to lick’ ‘handkerchief ’ future tense marker ‘back’ ‘to roll’

lamber lenço logo lomba rolar

lamer pañuelo, lienzo luego loma rodar8

‘mother’ a type of greeting ‘hopefully’ ‘sock, stocking’ ‘half ’ ‘-ment’ ‘self ’ ‘must’ ‘to stir’ gossip ‘stingy’ ‘to wither’ ‘dead’

mãe mantenha tomara! meia meio -mentu mesmo mester mexer mexeriqueiro mesquinho murchar morto

madre mantenga ¡ojalá! media medio -miento mismo menester mover, mezclar manifecero mezquino marchitar muerto

‘in’ ‘new’ ‘we’

na (< em + a) en + la novo nuevo nos nosotros

‘evil eye’ (ritual term)

olhada

ojeada

8. Sp. rolar exists, but only as a nautical term. The meaning of Pap. lora is reflected only by Port. rolar. 9. Cf. Pap. meimei ‘middle’; Pap. meimei di ‘in the middle of ’.


Table 1. (continued) Papiamentu P pai perta10 pikinini pishiporko podisé por porkispiña porko porta praga pretu prison promente puiru pulushá puspas R racha riska risku S sambarku sanka sarampi sede~sedu semper shalop skeze skuma (verb & noun) snoa so soño spesha spiña~sumpiña T tambe

GLOSS

Portuguese

Spanish

‘father’ ‘to tighten’ ‘small’ ‘pork fish’ ‘maybe’ ‘to can, be able’ ‘spine fish’ ‘pig’ ‘door’ ‘plague’ ‘black’ ‘prison’ ‘pepper, chili’ ‘dust’ ‘to grumble’ ‘porridge’

pai apertar pequenino peixe-porco pode ser pode porco espinho porco porta praga preto prisão pimenta(?) poeira pelejar pospasto

padre apretar pequeñín pez-puerco puede ser, quizá(s) puede puerco espín puerco puerta plaga prieto, negro prisión pimienta polvo pelear postre

‘to crack, tear’ ‘to risk’ ‘risk’

rachar arriscar risco

rajar arriesgar riesgo

‘sandal’ ‘butt, behind’ ‘measles’ ‘thirst’ ‘always’ ‘syrup’ ‘to forget’ ‘to foam’ / ‘foam’ ‘synagogue’ ‘only’ ‘sleep, dream’ ‘to get excited’ ‘spine’

sambarco as ancas sarampo sede sempre xarope esquecer escumar esnoga só sonho sobejar espinha

sandalia las ancas sarampión sed siempre jarope olvidar espumar sinagoga solo, sólo sueño sobrar espina

‘also’

também

también

10. Cf. also the derived adjective Pap. pertá ‘tight’.

162 Bart Jacobs


GLOSS

Portuguese

Spanish

te teme tempu~ten11 tera tin tinzji torto tosa12 trese tur U unda Z zjeito zjuzjun zjantar

‘until’ ‘to insist’ ‘time’ ‘earth’ ‘to have, exist’ ‘to paint’ ‘cross-eyed’ ‘to cough’ ‘to bring’ ‘all’

até teimar tempo terra tem tingir torto tossar trazer tudo

hasta insistir tiempo tierra tiene teñir tuerto toser traer todo

‘where’

onde

donde

‘bloom, flavor’ ‘fasting’ ‘dinner’

jeito jejum jantar

? ayuno cena, yantar

In addition to the Lusitanisms listed in Table 1, several Papiamentu words can be analyzed as the result of conflation of a Portuguese and Spanish etymon (cf. van Wijk 1958: 177; Kramer 2004: 99). Examples are listed in Table 2. Table 2. Papiamentu lexemes of mixed Portuguese/Spanish origin Papiamentu

GLOSS

Portuguese

Spanish

doño

‘owner’

dono

dueño

hariña

‘flour’

farinha

harina

(h)erment

‘tool’

ferramenta

herramienta

heru

‘iron’

ferro

hierro

palomba

‘dove’

pomba

paloma

Furthermore, there are some Papiamentu lexemes whose etymon may be either Portuguese or Dutch, examples of which are listed in Table 3. A conflation of both etyma may of course also be hypothesized.

11. Cf. Pap. tanten ‘as long as’; Pap. turesten ‘in the meanwhile’. 12. Cf. also the derived noun Pap. tosá ‘cough’.


Table 3 Papiamentu lexemes of either Portuguese or Dutch origin Papiamentu

GLOSS

Portuguese

Dutch

garashi

‘garage’

garagem

garage

keshi

‘cheese’

queijo

keesje (dialectal)

lagadishi

‘lizard’

lagartixa

hagedisje

pasashi

‘passage’

passagem

passage

5. Final remarks Combining existing scholarship and own research, the present paper provided a (re)assessment of Papiamentu lexemes for which a Portuguese origin can be plausibly hypothesized. Amongst other things, the assessment is meant to facilitate comparative lexical research (cf. e.g. Cardoso & Smith 2004 for Lusitanisms in Saramaccan) and, more generally, research into the history of Papiamentu and its speakers. As far as I am aware, this assessment is the most exhaustive to date. This does not imply, of course, that it is complete or incorrigible. Note, for instance, that the more conservative varieties of Papiamentu spoken in Western Curaçao, on Bonaire and in some areas of Aruba are yet to be studied with scrutiny and may contain Lusitanisms that have not been captured in the existing grammars and dictionaries. Received: 6/16/11 Revised: 6/24/11 Accepted: 7/8/11

References Birmingham, John C. 1970. The Papiamentu language of Curaçao. Michigan:University Microfilms. Cardoso, Hugo & Norval Smith. 2004. A new look at the Portuguese element inSaramaccan. Journal of Portuguese Linguistics 3. 115–147. Ferrol, Orlando. 1982. La cuestión del origen y de la formación del papiamento. Den Haag: Smit. Grant, Anthony P. 2008. The Portuguese elements in Papiamentu. In Nicholas Faraclas, Ronnie Severing, & Christa Weijer (eds.), Linguistic studies on Papiamentu, 47–72. Curaçao: Fundashon pa Planifikashon di Idioma. Jacobs, Bart. 2009a. The Upper Guinea origins of Papiamentu. Linguistic and historical evidence. Diachronica 26 (3). 319–379.

164 Bart Jacobs Jacobs, Bart. 2009b. The origins of Old Portuguese features in Papiamentu. In Nicholas Faraclas, Ronald Severing, Christa Weijer, & Liesbeth Echteld (eds.), Leeward voices: Fresh perspectives on Papiamentu and the literatures and cultures of the ABC Islands. Volume 1, 11–38. Curaçao: Fundashon pa Planifikashon di Idioma. Jacobs, Bart. 2012. Origins of a Creole: The History of Papiamentu and Its African Ties. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Jeuda, David M. 1991. Papiamentu and its Portuguese element. In A. Della Volpe (ed.), The seventeenth LACUS forum, 1990, 385–398. Lake Bluff, Illinois: The Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States. Joubert, Sidney M. 2007. Handwoordenboek Nederlands-Papiaments. Zutphen:Koninklijke Wöhrmann. Joubert, Sidney M. & Matthias Perl. 2007. The Portuguese Language on Curaçao and Its Role in the Formation of Papiamentu. Journal of Caribbean Literatures 5 (1). 43–60. Kramer, Johannes. 2004. Die iberoromanische Kreolsprache Papiamento. Hamburg: Helmut Buske. Lenz, Rodolfo. 1928. El papiamento: la lengua criolla de Curazao. Santiago de Chile: Balcells & Cia. Maduro, Antoine J. 1966. Procedencia di Palabranan Papiamentu i otro anotacionnan. Curaçao: the author. Martinus, Efraim Frank. 1996. The Kiss of a Slave: Papiamentu’s West-African Connections. Amsterdam: Universiteit van Amsterdam dissertation. Maurer, Philippe. 1998. El papiamentu de Curazao. In Matthias Perl & Armin Schwegler (eds.), América Negra: panorámica actual de los estudios lingüísticos sobre variedades hispanas, portuguesas y criollas, 139–217. Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert. Maurer, Philippe. 2009. A short note about Papiamentu’s origin: Upper Guinea, Gulf of Guinea, or elsewhere? In Nicholas Faraclas, Ronald Severing, Christa Weijer, & Liesbeth Echteld (eds.), Leeward voices: Fresh perspectives on Papiamentu and the literatures and cultures of the ABC Islands. Volume 1, 39–47. Curaçao: Fundashon pa Planifikashon di Idioma. Megenney, William W. 1984. Traces of Portuguese in Three Caribbean Creoles: Evidence in Support of the Monogenetic Theory. Hispanic Linguistics 1 (2). 177–189. Munteanu, Dan. 1996. El papiamento, lengua criolla hispánica. Madrid: Gredos. Penny, Ralph. 2000. Variation and Change in Spanish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Penny, Ralph. 2002. A History of the Spanish Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Putte, Florimon van & Igma van Putte-de Windt. 2005. Dikshonario Papiamentu Hulandes / Hulandes-Papiamentu. Zutphen: Walburg Pers. Quint, Nicolas. 2000. Le Cap Verdien: Origines et Devenir d’une Langue Métisse. Paris: L’Harmattan. Ratzlaff, Betty. 1992. Dikshonario Papiamentu-Ingles / Ingles-Papiamentu. Bonaire: TWA Dictionary Foundation. van Wijk, Henri L.A. 1958. Orígenes y evolución del Papiamentu. Neophilologus 42. 169–182. Wood, Richard E. 1971. The English loanwords in Papiamentu. Nieuwe West-Indische Gids 48. 173–189.


Other sources Diccionario de la Real Academia Española. Available online: http://buscon.rae.es/draeI/ SrvltConsulta?TIPO_BUS=3&LEMA=cultura Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa. Available online: http://www.priberam.pt/DLPO/

Author’s address Bart Jacobs Universität Konstanz Romanistische Sprachwissenschaft Fach 189 78457 Konstanz Germany [email protected]

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