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The creole language of Papiamentu enjoys a distinguished status among the creoles of the world. The native language of some 250,000 people on the southern Caribbean islands of Curaçao, Araba, and Bonaire (and their diaspora-largely in the Netherlands), Papiamentu is not only established in written form, but also is the subject of a long-standing controversy over its origin. Linguistic researchers have still not been able to come to agreement on the question of whether Papiamentu resulted from the contact between the Spanish conquistadors and the Amer-Indian residents of the islands beginning in 1499 (polygenesis theory), or from an Afro-Portuguese pidgin that originated on the west coast of Africa as the African-Atlantic slave trade developed (monogenesis theory).
In looking at the lexicon of Papiamentu, it is clear that it is primarily of Iberian origin. Actually, the term Iberian is a convenient word since it would include both Spanish and Portuguese influences. The similarity between the two languages is a complicating factor in tracing the vocabulary of Papiamentu. For example, some experts, such as Antoine Maduro, have argued that other tongues, such as Galician, have played a role (Maduro, Papiamento: Di un palo pa otro 28). This language-a common language of many Spanish sailors-while considered a variant of Spanish, is actually quite close to Portuguese.
It might also be pointed out early in this essay that Spanish influences are even more prevalent in Aruban Papiamentu than in the Papiamentu spoken on Curaçao and Bonaire, where Dutch influences are more frequent, especially in spelling. In present-day attempts to standardize the language, Araba has prefened to base spelling on the etymology of each word, whereas Curaçao and Bonaire favor a phonetic spelling. Thus, the word for "house" would be spelled cas on Araba and kas on Curaçao and Bonaire. Similarly, the suffix "tion" is spelled -cion on Araba and -shon on Bonaire. Interestingly, Papiamentu uses the Dutch system for naming the months, but the Iberian system for days. One exception is the day for Wednesday, dia rason, which apparently is derived from the Portuguese word for ration (raçao) since Wednesday was the normal day that slaves were given their weekly rations. Others attribute the word to the Dutch word rantsoen, which has the same meaning (Martinus 31). Even the...