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 Spanish 

Photo Provided by Aart G. Broek

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Spanish is an important language on the island of Aruba not only because a large part of Papiamento consists of Spanish rooted words, but also because the island sits just north of Venezuela. The vocabulary that has a base in Spanish is mostly distributed in content words such as man, woman, body parts, etc. However, it is not the simple borrowing of words into the vocabulary, the word takes a new form in spelling and pronunciation into a remarkably unique version. Among scholars interviewed in this project, as Aart G.Broek and Eva Eckkrammer, there is a theory that Aruban Papiamento is being Hispanicized in which there is an unprecedented borrowing of Spanish. While this trend is true to an extent, Dr. Bart Jacobs shows that it is not necessarily the case

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The table below shows examples of conjugation in Papiamento with the Spanish rooted word, cantar (sing). This example is provided to see and hear the similarities and the differences in terms of grammatical style. The similarity is quite clear within the word but the addition of ta is an auxiliary, which “among the few irregularities is the omission of auxiliary ta before dici, kie, por, tin, sabi. […] Unlike Spanish, Papia- mento makes much use of passive voice in literary style, using keda and Dutch worde ('become') etc. as auxiliaries” (Fish, G.T., 1970, p.92). The auxiliary in grammar is the helping element, usually a verb, which add meaning to main verb in a sentence. The addition of this table is not meant to signify that Spanish is more important to Papiamento than Portuguese but merely to take a look at the conjugation in general.

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Audio:

Papiamento: Marilinda Croes

Spanish: Edith Otero Q.

English: Rosie Thomas and Angela Gutierrez

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