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 influences from West African, Arawak, Spanish and other languages, spoken primarily in Jamaica and among the Jamaican ...

(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 cr ...

language, spoken in

Limón Province Limón () is one of seven Provinces of Costa Rica, provinces in Costa Rica. The province covers an area of 9,189 km2, and has a population of 386,862. The majority of its territory is situated in the country's Caribbean lowlands, though the ...

on the

Caribbean Sea The Caribbean Sea is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean in the tropics of the Western Hemisphere, located south of the Gulf of Mexico and southwest of the Sargasso Sea. It is bounded by the Greater Antilles to the north from Cuba ...

coast of

Costa Rica Costa Rica, officially the Republic of Costa Rica, is a country in Central America. It borders Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the northeast, Panama to the southeast, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, as well as Maritime bo ...

. 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 influences from West African, Arawak, Spanish and other languages, spoken primarily in Jamaica and among the Jamaican ...

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 In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between different but related language varieties in which speakers of the different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intellig ...

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'' (, 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 sl ...

", 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 and variously encompass the Occitan or Occitano-Romance, Gallo-Italic o ...

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 among many others.

History

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

Jamaica Jamaica is an island country in the Caribbean Sea and the West Indies. At , it is the third-largest island—after Cuba and Hispaniola—of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean. Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, west of Hispaniola (the is ...

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 using wheeled vehicles running in railway track, tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel railway track, rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of ...

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

Atlantic slave trade The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of Slavery in Africa, enslaved African people to the Americas. European slave ships regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Pass ...

, British colonizers in Jamaica and elsewhere in the

British West Indies The British West Indies (BWI) were the territories in the West Indies under British Empire, British rule, including Anguilla, the Cayman Islands, the Turks and Caicos Islands, Montserrat, the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, Antigua and Barb ...

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 registers 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

. Limonese is documented to have been and is being gradually decreolized.

References

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 African diaspora in Costa Rica Afro-Jamaican culture Languages of Costa Rica Languages of the African diaspora Jamaican Patois Creoles of the Americas Limón Province