Palenquero


Palenquero or Palenque is a Spanish-based creole language spoken in Colombia. It’s a mixture of Kikongo and Spanish. Palenquero is the only Spanish-based creole in Latin America, if Papiamento is excluded. The ethnic group which speaks this creole consisted of 6,637 people in 2018. It is primarily spoken in the village of San Basilio de Palenque which is southeast of Cartagena, and in some neighbourhoods of Barranquilla.

History

The village was formed by escaped slaves and Native Americans around 1604 under the leadership of Benkos Biohó. These slaves escaped from Cartagena, building their own communities to the south.
Since many slaves had not been subjected to contact with people of European descent, the palenqueros spoke Creole languages constructed from the Spanish language and their own African ones.
Ten percent of the population under 25 years of age spoke Palenquero in 1998. It is more commonly spoken by the elderly. Its sole substrate is likely the Kikongo language, which is spoken in the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola. Palenquero words like ":en:wikt:ngombe#Palanquero|ngombe", which means cattle, are found in several Bantu languages.

Grammar

Similar to several other creole languages, Palenquero grammar lacks inflectional morphology, meaning that nouns, adjectives, verbs and determiners are almost always invariant.

Gender

Grammatical gender is non-existent, and adjectives derived from Spanish default to the masculine form: lengua africano ‘African language’.

Plurality

Plurality is marked with the particle ma.. This particle is believed to derive from Kikongo, a Bantu language, and is the sole Kikongo-derived inflection present in Palenquero. The younger speakers of Palenquero utilize ma for plurality more so than the speakers that came before them.
This particle is usually dropped with cardinal numbers greater than two: ma ndo baka "two cows" but tresi año "13 years".
NumberPersonNominativeSource
Singular1stíuncertain
Singular1styoyo
Singular2ndbovos
Singular3rdeleele
Plural1stsutonosotros
Plural2ndutereustedes
Plural2ndenu Bantu origin
Plural3rdanéBantu origin

Verbs

Copula

There are four copulas in Palenquero: e, ta, jue, and senda. E roughly corresponds to ' in Spanish and is used for permanent states, and ta is similar to the Spanish in that it used for temporary states and locatives. Jue is used as a copula for nouns and senda is only found with predicative nouns and adjectives referring to permanent states.
Examples:
Some 300 words of African origin have been identified in Palenquero, with many believed to originate in the Kikongo language. A comprehensive list and proposed etymologies are provided in Moñino and Schwegler's "Palenque, Cartagena y Afro-Caribe: historia y lengua". Many of the words that come from African origin, include plant, animal, insect and landscape names. Another handful of words are believed to originate from Portuguese.''
PalenqueSpanishEnglish
burúdineromoney
ngombeganadocattle
ngubámanípeanut, goober
posácasa. Compare house
tamboretambordrum
maimadre. Compare.mother
bumbilobasuragarbage
cheparopaclothing
chitiáhablarto speak
ngainagallinachicken
tabákotabacotobacco
hemanohermanobrother
ondedondewhere
puetapuertadoor
ngologordofat
floflorflower
monániñochild
ceddocerdopig
cateyanocastellanoSpanish
forateroforasterooutsider
kusacosathing, stuff
cuagrobarrioneighborhood

Sample

PalenqueroSpanish
Tatá suto lo ke ta riba sielo,
santifikaro sendá nombre si,
miní a reino sí,
asé ño boluntá sí,
aí tiela kumo a sielo.
Nda suto agué pan ri to ma ría,
peddona ma fata suto,
asina kumo suto a se peddoná,
lo ke se fatá suto.
Nu rejá sujo kaí andí tentación nu,
librá suto ri má. Amén.		Padre nuestro que estás en el cielo,
santificado sea tu nombre.
Venga a nosotros tu Reino.
Hágase tu voluntad,
así en la tierra como en el cielo.
Danos hoy nuestro pan de cada día.
perdona nuestras ofensas,
como también nosotros perdonamos
a los que nos ofenden.

no nos dejes caer en la tentación,
y líbranos del mal. Amén.