MOTHER AFRICA: Three Caribbean Native Languages From Africa

Mother Language Day is a day set aside by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to “promote awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity and promote multilingualism”.

The day was established in 1999 and formally recognized by the United Nations General Assembly in a resolution in 2008, which was declared the International Year of Languages.

Africa is one of, if not the continent, with the highest linguistic diversity in the world. Aside from official languages which are colonial imports, there are thousands of mother/native tongues.

The influence of these African mother tongues in the Caribbean, especially with the movement of enslaved people during the Atlantic slave trade to the West, then, is to be expected.

In the Caribbean, five of the six official languages are European languages, with the exception of Haitian Creole. But despite the official languages, Creole and indigenous languages are widely spoken in the Caribbean.

Creole, the mix of languages of the people on the land, has great African mother language influence.

Below are 3 specific Caribbean languages whose etymology can be directly traced back to the continent.

Jamaican Patois/ Patwah

Jamaican Patois or Jamaican Creole is an English-based creole with West African influences that is spoken primarily in Jamaica and its diaspora.

The language developed when enslaved Africans from West and Central Africa were “exposed to, learned, and nativized the vernacular and dialectal forms” the English spoken by slave owners.

As many of the Africans who survived slavery in Jamaica were of Akan descent, most of the loan words were from the Akan language. Patois words such as “broni” (white parent) and “nana” (grandparent) are the same in Akan.

Patois “bafan” comes from Bɔfran (child) and “casha” from kasɛ́, (thorn). Other African languages from which Patois takes loan words and have been influenced by are Efik, Fula, Igbo, Kongo, Yoruba, Mende, and Wolof.

Haitian Creole

The French-based creole language is the only language of most Haitians and is spoken by 9.6–12 million people worldwide. It was developed in the 18th century from French with influences from Portuguese, Spanish, English, Taíno, and West African languages.

The enslaved Africans who arrived in Haiti, at the time Saint-Dominique, were from various areas in Africa, spanning from Senegal to the Congo, with considerable number Central Africa, including Kongo kingdom (Kongo), Benin (Ewe, and Yoruba).

Other slaves in Haiti came from Senegal, Guinea (imported by the Spanish since the sixteenth century and then by the French), Sierra Leone, Windward Coast, Angola, Cameroon, Nigeria, Ghana and Southeast Africa (such as the Bara tribesmen of Madagascar, who arrived in Haiti in the eighteenth century).

Thus, Haitian creole is influenced by many African languages. But most notably, the most prominent of the West African Gbe languages, Ewe.

The one that mostly affect Haitian Creole is Ewe, the most prominent Gbe language, and the Fon syntax. Some notable words creole words are “chouc-chouc” from fulani chuk which means to have s3x, “manbo” from kikongo ( mambu and fongbe) meaning and “oungan” from fongbe, both meaning vaudou priest.

Antillean Creole

Antillean Creole is a French-based creole primarily spoken in the Lesser Antilles, specifically, the countries of Dominica, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Îles des Saintes, Martinique, Saint-Barthélemy (St. Barts), Saint Lucia, French Guiana, Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela (mainly in Macuro, Güiria and El Callao Municipality). Dominican, Grenadian, St. Lucian, Trinidadian, Brazilian (Lanc-Patuá) andVenezuelan speakers of Antillean Creole call the language patois.

It is also spoken in various creole-speaking immigrant communities in the United States Virgin Islands, British Virgin Islands, and the island of Saint Martin.

Its grammar and vocabulary include elements of Carib and African languages. Antillean Creole has approximately 1 million speakers. It allows migrants travelling between neighboring English and French-speaking territories in the Caribbean to communicate.

Because the Antillian creole has roots in many different countries stemming from different African mother languages, there is little information on specific words and their root origins. But as Professor Maureen Warner-Lewis nicely describes in her lecture, “African Heritage in the Caribbean”, there are many ways to see African influence in the languages.

The Caribbean use of “Allyuh” and “you all” also bear traits of West African language. Standard English just has “you,” which acts as the 2nd person singular AND the 2nd person plural.

African languages make a distinction between the plural ‘you’ and the singular ‘you’ so therefore the “all” is inserted “allyuh”, “you all” to mean more than one.

The Bajan “wunna,” which means “you all” is a version of the Ibo pronoun “unna” which has a similar meaning. “Moomoo” a word meaning stupid, or dumb, and “booboo” meaning coal in the eyes are also African based words.

“Anansi” likewise is a chief character of folk tales in the Gold Coast. “Jumbi” is a word from Angola meaning a ghost, an entity that returns from the dead.

“Locho” is a Congo word meaning “cheap; mean; stingy” that has found its way to the Caribbean. “Tabanka” or its variant (without the nasal consonants “n or m”) “Tabaka,” is a Congo word meaning sold out or bought out completely.

So from this we have the Caribbean word “tabanka/tabaka” meaning completely lost in love. “Tooloom” comes from the word “toolumuka” which means to drag oneself or to pull out teeth.

The Caribbean word “Lahe” which mean “wutless” or “good for nothing” is based in the Congo word “laha” which means the same. “Kongori” can be found in a series of languages in Africa from Gabon to the interior, and the meaning is the same – a millipede.

“Kaiso” among the Niger Delta peoples is a term that means “well done!” and so at the end of a “kaiso” or “calypso” it is very suitable to hear such an acclamation. “Dwen/Douen” is also an African word which refers to the soul of a child that has died.