Dutch & English
Dutch
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As the official language of Aruba, it is indeed interesting to see the distribution of Dutch within Papiamento. Like Spanish, Dutch is distributed in content words, but the use of these words are not completely standardized within Papiamento as a whole spoken on the A,B,C islands. For example, Curacao will tend to use more Dutch-derived words, while on Aruba, more Spanish-derived words would be used instead.
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English
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“In Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao they speak of two busnan, and more than one truck is referred to as trucknan”, as nan is the plural (Littman, J., 1945, p.52). English is very present on the islands due to tourism and the influence from the oil refinery, which was owned by an American company. While many on the island can speak English, English is influencing Papiamento in terms of code-switching. Code-switching is the borrowing of English phrases or words, alternating between languages in a fluid switch, rather than having words rooted in English within the vocabulary as is the case with Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese (B. Jacobs, Interview, Jan 10, 2018). The influence of English is currently based more on code-switching rather than being having its own unique place in Papiamento's vocabulary.
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Audio:
Papiamento: Marilinda Croes
Dutch: Peter van der Lei
English: Rosie Thomas and Angela Gutierrez