Student Names: Elizabeth Hurtado Sierra

Stephania vila Albarracn

Communicative Competence III Mara Elena Gutirrez

Final Project

UPB

2014

CREOLE AS A LANGUAGE OF SAN ANDRES ISLAND

This articles objective is to describe, in a general way, the historical aspects of Creole as a
language; thus, we will talk about the way it emerged which, briefly said, is due to the
mixtures of Creole language caused by European colonial expansion. Besides some
comparisons between English and Creole, expressions, words and similarities will be
provided in this paper.

Creole language has its origin in European colonial expansion and the transatlantic slave
trade.
In Europe, a race for power was started with the utterly possession of land and gold as main
goal. When the settlers arrived to the islands with African slaves, they (the slaves) created a
code which linguistically was called "pidgin" in order to communicate with their patterns.
This code introduced the character of language, generating new native speakers. Besides,
the island had a Creole English lexical based language. At the very beginning, the natives
of the islands used this language to communicate each other, read and write in Standard
English; but this changed since the declaration of free port in 1953 and the reaffirmation of
geopolitics Colombian sovereignty.

Now a San Andres born native is going to talk about her experience as a Creole native
speaker:

What do you know about Creole language?

The Creole language was invented by the slaves who came to the island

with the English colonization. The language was invented for their dominos

would not to understand what they say among them. (Leonela Padilla,

2014)
What kind of differences do you find between English and Creole?

The differences that I found between English and Creole is that English is

a more sophisticated language than Criole, words dont have the same

meaning in English than in Creole (Leonela Padilla, 2014)

Below a chart that compares and lists some words and expressions in English and Creole is

displayed:
 ENGLISH CREOLE

Children Piknini

You Unuh

Situation Situeyshan

Cellphone Fuon

Put down Put don

Money Mony

Everybody Evrybady

Someone Sombady

Think Tink

Who is thinking on the people? Huh deh tink pahn dih pipl ?

Turn on the light Mih gyal putaan dih lait

We talk our own language Wih taak fih wih uno langwij

Where do you go my son? Dah weh yuh gwan mih son?

Children pay attention! Piknini unuh hier

Our language makes us talk Fih wih langwij mek wih taak

Some of the general characteristics of Creole of San Andres are:

It uses the auxiliary wen, benmen, which mark a preterit, also to indicate future tense it
uses wi and wuda.
Progressive tense is marked by de.
It uses beg and mek to say something politely or asking something. In addition, Creole has
other auxiliaries to use before the verb, they mark the probability among these are maita,
mos, mosi, kyan and kuda
The aspects it was mentioned are some of the many aspects of Creole that make it as
complex as any other languages when it comes to grammar.

Creole is spoken by raizal ethnic group; its vocabulary has its roots in English language but
mixed with Spanish and African languages and also has its own grammatical structures
different from Spanish and English

Finally, it is important to point out that: Some people think that creoles are just a
mixture of other languages. By that criterion, English is 'just' like Creole. A huge
percentage of Englishs vocabulary comes from Latin and French (which is a Romance
language belonging with the Indo-European family) and has contributions and loans
coming from many others.(1983). taken from: http://www.scl-
online.net/publications/index.htm

Creole allows to us approach to islanders culture. Creole teaches us an important part of

history, an origin, and some expressions and words of one of the newest languages in the
world.

REFERENCES

DECKER, Kendall D.; KEENER, Andy, authors. 2001. "A report on the English-based
creole of San Andres and Providence islands, Colombia." SIL Electronic Survey Reports
2001-010: 15.
Available on: http://www.sil.org/resources/publications/entry/9166

Flrez, S. (2006). A Study of Language Attitudes in Two Creole-Speaking Islands: San

Andres and Providence (Colombia)*1, vol. 11, nm. 17, enero-diciembre, 2006, pp. 119-
147. Universidad de Antioquia.

Image taken from:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/7x9jy7p7c70/UKvDev_S3bI/AAAAAAAAAzo/LT63Ipf0Zqs/s16
00/San-Andr%C3%A9s7.jpg

Image by: 2014, Padilla L.

NEOGRAPHY

Adel Christopher Livingston (2011). Book, Idiomas de mi tierra.

http://www.scl-online.net/FAQS/linguistics.htm (Q.36) Isnt English lexicon creole

dialect/ patwa) simply broken English or bad English.

Studies in Caribbean language I (1983). http://www.scl-online.net/publications/index.htm