| States | Suriname |
|---|---|
| Ethnicity | Kwinti |
| Speakers | 250 |
| Date | 2018 |
| Ref | e25 |
| Familycolor | Creole |
| Fam 1 | English Creole |
| Fam 2 | Atlantic |
| Fam 3 | Suriname |
| Iso 3 | kww |
| Glotto | kwin1243 |
| Glottorefname | Kwinti |
Kwinti is an English-based creole of Suriname closely related to Ndyuka.[1] The language has less than 300 speakers,[2] and split from Plantation Creole which is nowadays known as Sranan Tongo in the middle 18th century.[3] Code-switching with Sranan Tongo and Dutch was common among the younger generation in 1973,[4] and about 70% of the tribe have moved to the urban areas.[5] UNESCO considers the language endangered.[6]
In the 1970s, Jan English-Lueck collected a vocabulary of 500 words. Unlike the Ndyuka languages, the letter r is spoken in a similar way to Sranan Tongo and Dutch, although speakers without r have been discovered later. About three quarters of the words were cognate to Sranan Tongo, very few (circa 3%) were cognate to Matawai, and about 17% were not found in the other creoles and mainly originated from Dutch.[7] The differences can be explained by education, because according to a 2011 study the population of Witagron had a good command of both Dutch and Sranan Tongo.[8]
References
- ^ Hoogbergen 1992, p. 123.
- ^ Borges 2014, p. 195.
- ^ Borges 2014, p. 188.
- ^ Elst 1973, p. 14.
- ^ Richard Price (2013). "The Maroon Population Explosion: Suriname and Guyane". New West Indian Guide. 87 (3–4): 323–327. New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids Volume 87: Issue 3-4. doi:10.1163/22134360-12340110. S2CID 140546216
- ^ "Kwinti". The University of the West-Indies, Jamaica. Archived from the original on 29 October 2021. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
- ^ Borges 2014, pp. 188–189.
- ^ Borges 2014, p. 191.
Bibliography
- Borges, Roger (2014). The Life of Languagedynamics of language contact in Suriname (PhD. dissertation). Utrecht: Radboud University Nijmegen.
- Elst, Dirk van der (1973). "The Coppename Kwinti: Notes on an Afro-American tribe in Suriname". Nieuwe West-Indische Gids. 55. University of Florida.
- Hoogbergen, Wim (1 January 1992). "Origins of the Suriname Kwinti Maroons". New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids. 66 (1–2): 27–59. doi:10.1163/13822373-90002003
- Green, E.C. (1974). The Matawai Maroons: An Acculturating Afro American Society (PhD. dissertation). Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America.