Saramaccan (autonym: Saamáka) is a creole spoken by about 24,000 people near the Saramaccan and upper Suriname Rivers in Suriname, and 2,000 in French Guiana. About 2,000 of the total speak a dialect called Matawari. The sources of Saramaccan vocabulary are English, Portuguese, Dutch, and Sub-Saharan African languages (20% of its vocabulary is African), especially Kongo and Gbe. Its phonology is closest to languages of Africa, and it has even developed tones, which are common in Africa. A creole is a language descended from a pidgin that has become the native language of a group of people. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... The term African languages refers to the approximately 1800 languages spoken in Africa. ... Kongo is the Bantu language spoken by the Kongo people living in the tropical forests of Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo and Angola. ... Map showing the distribution of the various Gbe languages Introduction The Gbe languages form a dialect continuum stretching across the area between eastern Ghana and western Nigeria. ... Phonology (Greek phone = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), or phonemics, is a subfield of grammar (see also linguistics). ... This article or section uses Ruby annotation. ...

Phonology

The language has two tones, "high" and "low".

Its vowel inventory, besides i, a and u, contains both open and closed e and o sounds, giving seven vowels in all. There is no r sound. Two phonemes that are very typical of West African languages, kp and gb, are also found.

There are nasal vowels, indicated in writing with an n or m at the end of a syllable. The syllabic structure is (C)V(V). Words that start with o are labialized.

Examples

To English speakers not familiar with it, the English basis of this language is almost unrecognizable. These are some examples of Saramaccan sentences (taken from the SIL dictionary):

De waka te de aan sinkii möön.
"They traveled until they were worn out."

U ta mindi kanda fu dee soni dee ta pasa ku u.
"We make up songs about things that happen to us."

A suku di soni te wojo fëën ko bëë.
"He looked for it in vain."

Mi puu tu dusu kölu bai ën.
"I paid two thousand guilders for it."

Examples of words originally from Portuguese or a Portuguese creole are: mujee (mulher) "woman"; womi (homem) "man"; da (dar) "to give"; bunu (bom) "good"; kaba (acabar) "to end"; ku (com) "with"; kuma (como) "as"; faka (faca) "knife"; aki (aqui) "here"; ma (mas) "but"; kendi (quente) "hot"; liba (arriba) "above"; lio (rio) "river".

External Links

• Ethnologue entry (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=SRM)
• SIL Saramaccan-English dictionary (http://www.sil.org/americas/suriname/Saramaccan/English/SaramEngDictIndex.html)
• Saramaccan and Haitian as Young Grammars (http://www.benjamins.com/jbp/series/JPCL/19-1/art/0003a.pdf), John McWhorter
• Saramaccan Grammar (http://lingweb.eva.mpg.de/montage/scripts/SMGrammar.cgi)