Limonese Creole (also called Limonese, Limón Creole English or ) is a dialect of Jamaican Patois (Jamaican Creole), an English-based creole language, spoken in Limón Province on the

Caribbean Sea The Caribbean Sea ( es, Mar Caribe; french: Mer des Caraïbes; ht, Lanmè Karayib; jam, Kiaribiyan Sii; nl, Caraïbische Zee; pap, Laman Karibe) is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean in the tropics of the Western Hemisphere. It is bounded by Mexico ...

coast of

Costa Rica Costa Rica (, ; ; literally "Rich Coast"), officially the Republic of Costa Rica ( es, República de Costa Rica), is a country in the Central American region of North America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the no ...

. The number of native speakers is unknown, but 1986 estimates suggests that there are fewer than 60,000 native and second language speakers combined.

Origin and related creoles

Limonese is very similar structurally and lexically to the Jamaican Creole spoken in Jamaica and Panama and to a lesser extent other English-based creoles of the region, such as

Colón Creole Bocas del Toro Patois, or Panamanian Patois English, is a dialect of Jamaican Patois, an English-based creole, spoken in Bocas del Toro Province, Panama. It is similar to Central American varieties such as Limonese Creole. It does not have the sta ...

Mískito Coastal Creole Mískito Coast Creole or Nicaragua Creole English is an English-based creole language spoken in coastal Nicaraguan region of Mosquito Coast on the Caribbean Sea; its approximately 30,000 speakers are spread over a number of small villages. The regi ...

, Belizean Kriol, and San Andrés and Providencia Creole; many of these are also somewhat

mutually intelligible In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as an ...

to Limonese and each other.

Names

The name ''Mekatelyu'' is a transliteration of the phrase "make I tell you", or in standard English "let me tell you". In Costa Rica, one common way to refer to Limonese is by the term "

patois ''Patois'' (, pl. same or ) is speech or language that is considered nonstandard, although the term is not formally defined in linguistics. As such, ''patois'' can refer to pidgins, creoles, dialects or vernaculars, but not commonly to jargon or ...

", a word of French origin used to refer to provincial Gallo-Romance languages of France that were historically considered to be unsophisticated "broken French"; these include

Provençal Provençal may refer to: *Of Provence, a region of France * Provençal dialect, a dialect of the Occitan language, spoken in the southeast of France *''Provençal'', meaning the whole Occitan language *Franco-Provençal language, a distinct Roman ...

Occitan Occitan may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania territory in parts of France, Italy, Monaco and Spain. * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania administrative region of France. * Occitan language Occitan (; o ...

and

Norman Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norm ...

among many others.

History

Limonese developed from Jamaican Creole that was introduced to the Limón Province by

Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...

n migrant workers who arrived to work on the construction of the Atlantic

railway Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a pre ...

, the banana plantations and on the Pacific railway. During the

Atlantic slave trade The Atlantic slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, or Euro-American slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and i ...

, British colonizers in Jamaica and elsewhere in the British West Indies delivered African slaves from various regions of Africa who did not speak a common language so various creoles developed to facilitate communication between them, largely influenced by slavers' English. Early forms of Limonese had to adjust for context that they were being used in so two

language register In sociolinguistics, a register is a variety of language used for a particular purpose or in a particular communicative situation. For example, when speaking officially or in a public setting, an English speaker may be more likely to follow pres ...

s developed, one

to and heavily influenced by English for formal contexts and a common vernacular used among Limonese speakers in informal contexts.

Modern day status

Some linguists are undecided on the categorization of Limonese. According to some authors, Limonese should be treated as a separate language altogether while others contend that it is merely a part of a

dialect continuum A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of Variety (linguistics), language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulat ...

between English and Jamaican Patois. Limonese is documented to have been and is being gradually decreolized.

Bibliography

*Herzfeld, Anita. ''Tense and Aspect in Limon Creole''. Kansas: The University of Kansas, 1978. *Herzfeld, Anita (2002). Mekaytelyuw: La Lengua Criolla. Editorial de la Universidad de Costa Rica, 438 pp. . *Wolfe, Terry. ''An Exploratory Study of the Morphology and Syntax of the English of the Province of Limon, Costa Rica''. San José: Universidad de Costa Rica, 1970. *Wright M., Fernando. ''Limon Creole: A Syntactic Analysis''. San José: Universidad de Costa Rica. 1974. *Wright M., Fernando. "Problemas y Métodos para la Enseñanza como Segunda Lengua a los Habitantes del Mek-a-tél-yu en la Provincia de Limón". ''Revista de la Universidad de Costa Rica'', March–Sept. 1982. *Wright M., Fernando. ''Problems and Methods of Teaching English as a Second Language to Limon Creole Speakers''. Lawrence: The University of Kansas, 1979.

External links

"¿Qué es el mek-a-tel-yu?"
by Dora H. de Vargas (in Spanish) * {{English-based creoles

References

Afro–Costa Rican Afro-Jamaican culture English-based pidgins and creoles Languages of Costa Rica Languages of the African diaspora