Limonese Creole (also called Limonese, Limón Creole English or ) is a dialect of

Jamaican Patois Jamaican Patois (; locally rendered Patwah and called Jamaican Creole by linguists) is an English-based creole language with West African influences, spoken primarily in Jamaica and among the Jamaican diaspora. A majority of the non-English ...

(Jamaican Creole), 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 ...

language, spoken in

Limón Province Limón (), commonly known as Puerto Limón, is a district, the capital city and main hub of Limón province, as well as of the Limón canton in Costa Rica. It is the seventh largest city in Costa Rica, with a population of over 55,000, and is h ...

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. 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 Jamaican Patois (; locally rendered Patwah and called Jamaican Creole by linguists) is an English-based creole language with West African influences, spoken primarily in Jamaica and among the Jamaican diaspora. A majority of the non-English wo ...

spoken in Jamaica and Panama and to a lesser extent other English-based creoles of the region, such as Colón Creole, Mískito Coastal Creole, Belizean Kriol, and San Andrés and Providencia Creole; many of these are also somewhat mutually intelligible 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 o ...

", a word of French origin used to refer to provincial

Gallo-Romance languages The Gallo-Romance branch of the Romance languages includes in the narrowest sense the Langues d'oïl and Franco-Provençal. However, other definitions are far broader, variously encompassing the Occitano-Romance, Gallo-Italic, and Rhaeto-Rom ...

of France that were historically considered to be unsophisticated "broken French"; these include Provençal,

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, spoken in parts 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 plantation A banana plantation is a commercial agricultural facility found in tropical climates where bananas are grown. Geographic distribution Banana plants may grow with varying degrees of success in diverse climatic conditions, but commercial banana p ...

s and on the Pacific railway. During the Atlantic slave trade, British colonizers in Jamaica and elsewhere in the

British West Indies The British West Indies (BWI) were colonized British territories in the West Indies: Anguilla, the Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, Montserrat, the British Virgin Islands, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Grena ...

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 mutually intelligible 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 language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varie ...

between English and

. 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 Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

) * {{English-based creoles

References

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