Jonathan Schwartz

Languages of the World

Paper #2

Suriname: Implications of Linguistic Diversity in a Small Nation

Regarding the capital and population center of Suriname, the sociolinguist Tjon

Sie Fat declared “Paramaribo, with up to a dozen languages, is the sociolinguist’s

paradise” in Eithne B. Carlin and Jacques Arends’s Atlas of the Languages of Suriname

(Carlin & Arends 237). Indeed, few spots in the world boast a greater heterogeneous

assortment of cultures, religions, and languages as does the Guiana Shield. Located on

the northeastern corner of South America, this region’s diversity is due to a history of

colonialism and labor of foreign indentured servants and contract workers. Regions of

the Guiana Shield were initially colonized by British, Dutch, and French settlers, in

separate colonies known as the Guianas. Sandwiched between French Guiana on the east

and what was then British Guiana (now independent and known as Guyana) is the area

presently called Suriname, formerly Dutch Guiana. The Guianas have long been

anomalies in the New World, distinct from the Spanish-dominated conquest of South and

Central America, and the Portuguese-speaking Brazil runs along the entire southern

border. Also contributing to the peculiarity and mystery of the region is the relatively

sparse population and untouched nature, which incidentally means that many indigenous

peoples’ lands have been more or less uncorrupted. How does this small, sparse

population, isolated from the more populated nations of South America, adapt to the

region’s linguistic diversity?

 Although any of these three nations could serve as a fascinating model for deeper

exploration, Suriname has the unique position of being surrounded by three nations all

with separate, non-Spanish languages, and an insecure border with English-speaking

Guyana on the west adds to the influence. Influence from former English settlements and

from Spanish and indigenous languages is also significant. It is the only Dutch-speaking

independent nation in the New World (or any Germanic language other than English, for

that matter), and also the only independent South or Central American country not to

even share a border with a Spanish-speaking nation (French Guiana also does not border

any predominantly Spanish-speaking countries, but it is still a territory of France).

Perhaps most interestingly, due to a harsh and long history of slavery and importation of

Asian laborers, several languages are well-represented in present-day Suriname including

a distinctive dialect of Hindustani1, Javanese, Hakka, and many Creole languages with

roots in Africa that date back to the African slave trade of the 17th and early 18th century

(Forte 10).

Suriname, therefore, is a linguistic melting pot consisting of influence from the

Germanic, Romance, and Indo-Iranian branches of the Indo-European language family,

as well as some influence from the separate Austronesian, Sino-Tibetan, and Niger-

Congo families. As with many nations around the Caribbean Sea, many of these

influential languages have loaned some of their components to a nationwide Creole

language. This language, known as Sranan Tongo (literally “Surinamese tongue”) or

simply as Sranan, is important in serving as a lingua franca between the wide range of

ethnicities and peoples of the country. Although the only official language of Suriname is

1
Hindustani is a name given to several mutually intelligible languages of northern India, including but not
limited to Hindi and Urdu. The name given to the Surinamese dialect of these languages is Sarnami
Hindustani.
Dutch, Sranan Tongo is classified as an English-based Creole. Historically, this is a

consequence of English farmers and their West African slaves settling the coastal regions

of Suriname in the middle part of the 17th century. The dominance of English in

Suriname did not last for much longer than thirty years, as the Dutch came to rule the

colony in 1667, rendering the prevalence of English as the superstratum language of the

Creole as something of an oddity (Braun & Plag 4). Dutch influence on Sranan’s

vocabulary is evident, but considered peripheral compared to that of English. By

contrast, Jamaican Creole developed during a period of British rule and slave labor on

sugar plantations ranging from 1655 to 1834, and long periods of dominance of Creole

superstratum languages such as this are indeed more typical of Caribbean Creole

languages (Lalla & D’Costa 1990). Unsurprisingly, Jamaican Creole morphology is

consequentially generally more preserving of the English superstratum than is Sranan

Tongo, which also has incorporated large amounts of Dutch and Portuguese in addition to

English and the West African languages native to the slaves.

The Portuguese influence on Sranan is not, as one might expect, from across the

southern border with Brazil- in fact the southern part of Suriname is nearly uninhabited,

leaving essentially no sphere of influence around the southern border. Since the

Portuguese were the first Europeans to settle in the West African lands from where the

British farmers acquired their slaves, Portuguese characteristics may have already been

present in some of the languages of West Africa, so the Portuguese influence actually

predates that of English (Lalla & D’Costa 1990). An alternative theory points to

evidence of early settlement attempts in Suriname prior to the arrival of the first wave of

British settlers in 1651. The nationality of these settlers is unknown, but Portugal has
been speculated upon as a possible origin. Although the “Portuguese-based lexical

element… has been calculated at some 4% for Sranan” (Forte 6), it is much greater in

some other Creoles of Suriname that have since mostly died out in favor of Sranan, such

as Saramaccan, for which the Portuguese-based lexical element is “some 35%” of the

vocabulary (Forte 6).

The original use of English as a lingua franca among Maroon populations is a

common phenomenon around the Caribbean, since their native languages were widely

varied and often not mutually intelligible. The history behind English’s rise as a Creole

superstratum language is debated. Though different English-based Creoles exist

throughout the Caribbean region, with differing levels of divergence from English and

levels of influence from other languages, independent origins for each of these Creole

languages have usually been assumed. Due to geographical barriers, this explanation

seems intuitive. A bold and unique hypothesis, however, has been proposed by Norval

Smith, who points to some striking similarities between Sranan and other Caribbean

English-based Creoles, specifically Guyanese Creole, Jamaican Creole, and even the Krio

language of Sierra Leone, which was largely formed by repatriated slaves from the

Caribbean. Smith argues for the existence of a “pan-Caribbean English-derived pidgin”

(Forte 7), suggesting that the similarities between Sranan Tongo and other pidgins and

creoles around the Caribbean were not simply the results of having the same or similar

superstratum and substrate languages, but in fact had direct influence on one another. In

Smith’s own words: “Virtually all the creoles spoken in the Caribbean area, together with

Guyanese, and the various creoles of Suriname, share such a number of striking features

of grammar, phonology, and lexicon, that these parallels cannot be explained as

accidental” (Smith 137). It should be pointed out, however, that the African substrate

languages vary widely between these English-based creoles. The African components of

Sranan Tongo, for instance, are mostly rooted from the Gbe language of Ghana, Togo,

and Benin; and from Kikongo, which is predominantly spoken around the Congo (Braun

& Plag 4) (Gordon 2005). Krio, on the other hand, shares a significant amount of

morphology with Yoruba, from which its Niger-Congo component is believed to be

derived.

This is precisely the variation that might lead to the necessity of a lingua franca

among Maroons, even with English as the superstratum language of all groups. Smith

does not (and cannot) explain in exact detail how such a pan-Caribbean English-based

Creole language came to be assembled (and subsequently diverged). He points to an

example in which the Garifuna language of the American Arawakan family spread across

the Caribbean to Central America from its origins on the island of St. Vincent in the

southeastern Caribbean Sea as its speakers dispersed. This isolated incident of population

dispersal proves, at the very least, that cross-Caribbean creoles can significantly influence

one another, although Smith’s theory for a single pan-Caribbean Creole is still not

generally accepted by linguists (Forte 7).

Although Sranan Tongo is spoken either as a native or second language by over

60% of the Surinamese population and functions effectively as a lingua franca among

Suriname’s population, it has yet to become universal. It still has not obtained a status as

an official language, Dutch remaining the only one. Dutch has traditionally been used

exclusively by Suriname’s government and most national media, although recently shifts

have been made to include Sranan Tongo among such dialogue (part of Suriname’s
national anthem, for instance, is written in Sranan). Traditionally, however, Dutch has

been the more formal, elite language of the nation. Additionally, Dutch is taught

compulsorily in schools (Forte 10) (de Kleine 216). Despite the appearance of classicism

inherent to the compulsory teaching of a European language to students regardless of

their heritage, the usage of a distinct Surinamese dialect of Dutch is unabashed, and any

evidence of efforts to preserve traditional Dutch is scarce to be found. In fact, the

compulsory primary teaching of Dutch is the primary reason for its preservation, as

Sranan has been revealed as the primary medium of social interaction, even among the

white population, during the 17th and 18th centuries (Forte 11). Compulsory primary

Dutch education was mandated in 1876, which, apart from ensuring the preservation of

Dutch in Suriname, contributed to the fusion of “structural influences from the other

languages, particularly Sranan, on Dutch” (Forte 11). De Kleine goes so far as to declare

Surinamese Dutch “a language variety in its own right,” and argues that the lack of

widespread recognition of Surinamese Dutch as a unique language variety is due to

“grammatical camouflage,” a phenomenon she describes as the preservation of “forms

that are also found in European Dutch but which have assumed new functions in

Surinamese Dutch” (de Kleine 2007).

Tjon Sie Fat said, of the linguistic distribution of Paramaribo, that “Dutch [is]

used in formal and Sranan in informal situations.” This in itself is typical of creolized

Caribbean nations; the European language dominating the government and upper class,

while the creole prevails in informal contexts. Fat follows this statement up with

another usage of Sranan that, in contrast to his previous statement, is not applicable to all

Caribbean creoles, stating “Stylistically simplified Sranan is also the main inter-ethnic
language” (Carlin & Arends 237). One interesting consequence of Suriname’s ethnic

diversity is that Sranan Tongo serves essentially the same purpose for which it was

originally constructed- as something of a lingua franca; although presently uniting

Maroons, descendents of African slaves, descendents of Asian laborers, native

Americans, and Europeans; rather than only uniting the various West African languages

of the slaves.

The portion of the population not using Sranan Tongo as a lingua franca largely

consists of direct descendents of the Dutch settlers, or of one of three major waves of

immigrants following the initial importation of African slaves. By 1863, when the first

contract laborers were brought from various locations in Asia, Sranan and other creoles

were already well-formed and widely used, so any influence exerted on Sranan

morphology by these laborers’ languages is presently minimal (Forte 10). Aside from

Surinamese Dutch, Carlin and Arends identify three major “Eurasian languages” spoken

by these laborers’ descendents in present-day Suriname: Sarnami Hindi, Javanese, and

Kejia (Hakka) (Forte 10). All three of these languages have maintained a sizeable

population of speakers in Suriname even while facing Dutch’s prestige and Sranan’s

pervasiveness within their homeland’s boundaries, for reasons that have as much to do

with cultural pride and preservation as with complicated language barriers. In the case of

Hakka, the Chinese language spoken by the majority of the immigrants from China in the

19th and 20th centuries, a mentality of a diaspora identity has preserved Chinese culture

and unity in Suriname, along, not surprisingly, with the language. Paul Brendan claims

that “Chinese are very often treated as foreigners with no particular bond to Suriname,

other than economic,” and that as a people, they are “not interested in acquiring Dutch,
since they are focussed [sic] on the social order of Chinese culture rather than on social

mobility within Surinamese society as a whole (Brendan 237). Only recently in

Suriname has the Hakka language been compromised, as the 1990s saw an influx of

immigrants from other parts of China, who associated naturally with the Hakka people,

and as a result Mandarin has become a lingua franca among much of the Surinamese

Chinese community (Brendan 236) (Forte 13). The Javanese population has preserved

their native language as well, with little divergence. Probably due to its complete

isolation from other Austronesian or related languages, it has stayed the most well-

preserved of the Eurasian languages in Suriname. Learning Sranan Tongo as a second

language, however, is not uncommon among either group.

In contrast, the Indian immigrants’ need for a lingua franca occurred almost

immediately upon their arrival to Suriname in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, due to

a variety of native languages being spoken among the population. Thus, the dialect (or

language) of Sarnami Hindi was born. Since it consists of mixed elements from a group

of closely related languages, it is not classified as a creole but rather as a koiné2.

However, Sranan Tongo is commonly learned among the Indian population and any

notion of a diasporic identity they may possess has not been discussed along the same

wavelengths as that of the Chinese, perhaps due to the fact that a plurality of the

Surinamese population is of Indian ethnicity.

Suriname serves as an excellent model for many sociolinguistic and cultural

phenomena. Its incredible linguistic and cultural diversity helps to paint clearer pictures

towards answering important questions of sociolinguistics, such as what may cause

2
Defined by Jeff Siegel as “a stable linguistic variety which results from contact between varieties which
are subsystems of the same linguistic system” (Forte 13) (Damsteegt 254).
languages to fuse and diverge versus the factors that allow languages to be conserved

even among surroundings that are overrun with a remarkable range of other languages.

The process of creolization (a favorite topic within the field of sociolinguistics) is

stripped of any weaseling or oversimplified definition through the complex history of

Sranan Tongo, and the rise of a lingua franca is shown to be natural and unpredictable

within a small, concentrated hotbed of linguistic diversity such as Suriname.

Reference:

Brendan, Paul. “Chapter IX, Kejia: A Chinese Language in Suriname.” Atlas of the
Languages of Suriname. Eds. Carlin, Eithne B. and Jacques Arends, 2002. Leiden:
KITLV Press.

Braun, Maria and Plag, Ingo. “How Transparent is Creole Morphology? A study of Early
Sranan Word-Formation.” Yearbook of Morphology 2002. Eds. Geery Booij and Jaap van
Marle. 15th ed. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003.

Damsteegt, Theo. “Chapter X, Sarnami as an immigrant koiné.” Atlas of the Languages

of Suriname. Eds. Carlin, Eithne B. and Jacques Arends, 2002. Leiden: KITLV Press.

De Kleine, Christa. “Chapter VIII, Surinamese Dutch.” Atlas of the Languages of

Suriname. Eds. Carlin, Eithne B. and Jacques Arends, 2002. Leiden: KITLV Press.

De Kleine, Christa. A Morphosyntactic Analysis of Surinamese Dutch as Spoken by the

Creole Population of Paramaribo, Suriname. Lincom GmbH, 2007.

Forte, Janette Bulkan. “Review Essay: Atlas of the Languages of Suriname.” Kacike: The
Journal of Caribbean Amerindian History and Anthropology. 20 May 2003.

“Guianese Shield Hub.” IIRSA. 2004. Icono Multimedia. 13 May 2007

http://www.iirsa.org/BancoConocimiento/E/egd_caracteristicas_del_eje/egd_caracteristic
as_del_eje_ENG.asp?CodIdioma=ENG&CodSeccion=27

Lalla, B. and D’Costa, J. Voices in Exile. London: The University of Alabama Press,
1989.

Smith, Norval. “Chapter V, The History of the Surinamese Creoles II: Origin and
Differentiation.” Atlas of the Languages of Suriname. Eds. Carlin, Eithne B. and Jacques
Arends, 2002. Leiden: KITLV Press.
“Suriname.” CIA – The World Factbook. 31 May 2007. Central Intelligence Agency. 13
May 2007 https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ns.html