Samaná English (SE and SAX) is a variety of the
English language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the ...
spoken by descendants of black immigrants from the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
who have lived in the
Samaná Peninsula
The Samaná Península is a peninsula in Dominican Republic situated in the province of Samaná. The Samaná Peninsula is connected to the rest of the state by the isthmus of Samaná; to its south is Samaná Bay. The peninsula contains many beache ...
, now in the
Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic ( ; es, República Dominicana, ) is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean region. It occupies the eastern five-eighths of the island, which it shares with ...
. Members of the enclave are known as the
Samaná Americans.
The language is a relative of
African Nova Scotian English and
African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), with variations unique to the enclave's history in the area. In the 1950 Dominican Republic census, 0.57% of the population (about 12,200 people) said that their
mother tongue was English.
Immigration
Most speakers trace their lineage to immigrants who arrived at the peninsula in 1824 and 1825. At the time all of
Hispaniola was administered by
Haiti, and its president was
Jean-Pierre Boyer
Jean-Pierre Boyer (15 February 1776 – 9 July 1850) was one of the leaders of the Haitian Revolution, and President of Haiti from 1818 to 1843. He reunited the north and south of the country into the Republic of Haiti in 1820 and also annexed ...
. The immigrants responded to an invitation for settlement that
Jonathas Granville
Pierre Joseph Marie Granville, known as Jonathas Granville (1785–1839) was a Haitian educator, legal expert, soldier and a diplomat. He was born a free mulatto in Saint-Domingue. He was a musician and poet, skilled swordsman, an experienced ...
had delivered in person to
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...
,
Baltimore
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...
,
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
, and
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
.
Abolitionists
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people.
The Britis ...
like
Richard Allen,
Samuel Cornish
Samuel Eli Cornish (1795 – 6 November 1858) was an American Presbyterian minister, abolitionist, publisher, and journalist. He was a leader in New York City's small free black community, where he organized the first congregation of black Pr ...
,
Benjamin Lundy
Benjamin Lundy (January 4, 1789August 22, 1839) was an American Quaker abolitionist from New Jersey of the United States who established several anti-slavery newspapers and traveled widely. He lectured and published seeking to limit slavery's expa ...
, and
Loring D. Dewey joined the campaign, which was coined the
Haitian emigration.
The response was unprecedented, as thousands of
African Americans boarded ships in eastern cities and migrated to Haiti. Most of the immigrants arrived during the fall of 1824 and the spring of 1825. More continued moving back and forth in later years but at a slower rate.
Between 1859 and 1863, another immigration campaign brought new settlers to the island but at a fraction of the number in 1824 and 1825. Those who originally settled in Samaná were fewer than 600 but formed the only surviving immigration enclave.
Survival
While more than 6,000 immigrants came in 1824 and 1835, by the end of the 19th century, only a handful of enclaves on the island spoke any variety of the antebellum Black Vernacular. They were communities in
Puerto Plata, Samaná and
Santo Domingo
, total_type = Total
, population_density_km2 = auto
, timezone = AST (UTC −4)
, area_code_type = Area codes
, area_code = 809, 829, 849
, postal_code_type = Postal codes
, postal_code = 10100–10699 ( Distrito Nacional)
, webs ...
. The largest was the one in Samaná that maintained church schools, where it was preserved. During the
Rafael Trujillo dictatorship (1930–1961), however, the government began a systematic policy of
Hispanizing the entire Dominican population. The church schools in which English was taught were eliminated, and the language was discouraged.
Enclaves across the island soon lost an important element of their identity, which led to their disintegration. Samaná English withstood the assaults in part because the location of Samaná was favorable to a more independent cultural life. However, government policies have still influenced the language's gradual decline, and it may well now be an
endangered language
An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a "dead langu ...
.
Nature
The language is a
dialect
The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena:
One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a ...
of English. It has very few features characteristic of
English-based creoles
An English-based creole language (often shortened to English creole) is a creole language for which English was the '' lexifier'', meaning that at the time of its formation the vocabulary of English served as the basis for the majority of the cr ...
, and while it shares many non-standard features with
African-American Vernacular English, these are generally no more prominent in Samaná English. Like modern AAVE, Samaná English permits
zero copula
Zero copula is a linguistic phenomenon whereby the subject is joined to the predicate without overt marking of this relationship (like the copula "to be" in English). One can distinguish languages that simply do not have a copula and languages tha ...
, or the omission of the conjugated present-tense forms of the verb ''to be'' from sentences. Samaná English generally follows the same copula-deletion patterns as AAVE, with lower rates of deletion than some northern urban AAVE varieties. Like in AAVE, Samaná English can only drop the copula where contraction would also be permitted, and Samaná English generally does not follow creole-like patterns of copula dropping.
Ethnologue
The 15th edition (2005) of
Ethnologue dropped it from its list of languages, but linguists still consider it a separate
language variety
In sociolinguistics, a variety, also called an isolect or lect, is a specific form of a language or Dialect continuum, language cluster. This may include languages, dialects, register (sociolinguistics), registers, style (sociolinguistics), style ...
.
See also
*
References
External links
Ethnologue report for English Samaná English is described under the heading "Dominican Republic"
from Muturzikin.com
Caribbean English (British Library)Cross-Referencing West Indian Dictionary*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Samana English
Languages of the Dominican Republic
North American English
Samaná Province
Dialects of English
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
Languages of the African diaspora