Word: papiamento
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Lesser Antilles is English, though it is not always understood on St. Barts, where the blacks also speak Creole and villagers of Breton and Norman descent converse in varied patois. While Dutch is their official language, few Statians or Sabans ever use it. Many, however, do speak Papiamento, the merry island melange of Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French, English and African dialects ("Bon tim ni un quenta ta coppé tras mi mucha muhé; bai hombre sushi, i lagele na paz. "Translation: "You have no business chasing my girl; go away, you nasty man, and leave her alone...
...never catch up with Colonel Carter, aims to become the leading collector of autographed TIME covers outside the U.S. He is Randall Salas, a slim, 17-year-old high school senior in Caracas, Venezuela. Randall, who was born in Curaçao and speaks English, Spanish, Dutch and Papiamento (a Caribbean lingua franca), started his collection only in 1959. But he had a head start: his father, an insurance broker, has been reading TIME since 1935, and had saved many back copies. Randall now has 402 covers signed by subjects, among them Konrad Adenauer, Moise Tshombe, U.S. Astronaut Alan Shepard...
...Papiamento interests linguists because of its simplicity...
...sole work which Widener possesses about Papiamento is a small Italian pamphlet printed in 1863, entitled "I1 dialetto curassese." Papiamento is mainly spoken on two islands in the West Indies, Curacao and Aruba...
Gerstl, who has lived in Curacao, emphasized that Papiamento is "very much a living language." He believes his collection of 12 books and pamphlets represents everything ever printed in the dialect, which is just now beginning to be written. There are no dictionaries in Papiamento, only word lists...