Kwinti is an
English-based creole
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 cre ...
of
Suriname
Suriname (; srn, Sranankondre or ), officially the Republic of Suriname ( nl, Republiek Suriname , srn, Ripolik fu Sranan), is a country on the northeastern Atlantic coast of South America. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the nor ...
closely related to
Ndyuka. The language has less than 300 speakers, and split from Plantation Creole which is nowadays known as
Sranan Tongo
Sranan Tongo (also Sranantongo "Surinamese tongue," Sranan, Surinaams, Surinamese, Surinamese Creole) is an English-based creole language that is spoken as a ''lingua franca'' by approximately 550,000 people in Suriname.
Developed originally amo ...
in the middle 18th century.
Code-switching
In linguistics, code-switching or language alternation occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation or situation. Code-switching is different from plurilingualis ...
with Sranan Tongo and
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
was common among the younger generation in 1973, and about 70% of the tribe have moved to the urban areas. UNESCO considers the language endangered.
In the 1970s, Jan English-Lueck collected a vocabulary of 500 words. Unlike the Ndyuka languages, the letter ''r'' is spoken in a similar way to Sranan Tongo and Dutch, although speakers without ''r'' have been discovered later. About three quarters of the words were cognate to Sranan Tongo, very few (circa 3%) were cognate to
Matawai, and about 17% were not found in the other creoles and mainly originated from Dutch. The differences can be explained by education, because according to a 2011 study the population of
Witagron
Witagron (or Bitagron) is a Kwinti village in Suriname on the Coppename River at the crossing of the Southern East-West Link from Paramaribo to Apoera in West-Suriname.
In the local language ''Bitagron'' means 'Land of my forefathers'. Witagron ...
had a good command of both Dutch and Sranan Tongo.
References
Bibliography
*
*
* Hoogbergen, Wim (1992).
Origins of the Suriname Kwinti Maroons', New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids 66, no: 1/2, Leiden, 27–59,
KITLV
The Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies ( nl, Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, lit = Royal Institute for the Linguistics, Geography and Ethnology, abbreviated: KITLV) at Leiden was founded ...
. Green, E.C., The Matawai Maroons: An Acculturating Afro American Society, PhD. dissertation, Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1974.
Ndyuka language
Languages of Suriname
English-based pidgins and creoles
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