OSO. Tijdschrift voor Surinaamse Taalkunde, Letterkunde en Geschiedenis. Jaargang 3

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Some notes on Sranan
Frederic G. Cassidy

It is a paradox of scholarship that the more successful a discipline is, and the more right it has to defend the methods that brought it success, the more it also tends to resist criticism and innovation. It tends to ‘dig in’. To keep the discipline developing, tradition has to be opposed. The great achievements of nineteenth-century philology, based on the study of written texts, entailed a devaluation of spoken language which hampered linguistic progress for a great part of the twentieth century. Textual studies are still valuable, of course - for study of the past, essential - but texts are always to some degree edited, unconsciously, unknowingly, even if not purposely, by omission or alteration. Texts never record all the relevant data about the language they preserve, and especially when established writing systems are used to record languages unwritten until then, they are bound to distort as well as to omit features unfamiliar to the recorder or not provided for in his writing system. Paradoxically, again, not all the observable or recordable features of language are significant: some are adventitious. Beyond a point there is a regression of significance in the observable, but one cannot know that that point has been reached until it has been passed. Theoretically, every bit of data should be gathered - but experience shows that one can drown in a sea of unanalyzed and perhaps irrelevant data. Theory cannot be proposed except on a basis of partial data, but theories collapse when they are based on too little. There has to be a tennis play, back and forth, between the gathering and analysis of data and the elaboration of theory.

Scholars trained in the disciplines that were effective in textual study were slow to develop disciplines for treating living language. They had become letter-minded. It was phonetics that began to make them sound-minded, but even so, recording was first equally bound to treating the sound as a set unit. It was not till mechanical recording became possible - especially through such devices as the sound-spectrograph - that the fluidity of speech could be realized and the speech continuum be followed. The big change began with the turn from written texts back to spoken language, observation of living speech, and recognition of its complexity and variability.

It was linguistic geography that forced the linguist to redefine terms and methods of analysis. If every word had its own individual being and history, what could be the meaningful bases of classification? So phonemic theory was worked out in the second quarter of the century, and refinements or variations on descriptive methods have occupied the following quarter century. Both the synchronic description of ‘system’ and the diachronic examination of changing systems have occupied recent years, as also the reduction of systems to stratified, rule-bound networks of relationships in many competing models. The study of the word out of context has yielded

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to that of the word in context, lexicon to syntax, with the further changeability of semantic intereffects within phrase structures. It is almost as if solids turned fluid and then began to become gases, the linguist finding himself in the position of a physicist seeking to pin down a unitary atom and finding, the farther he goes, that there is nothing ultimate about it. So the linguist is now in pursuit of universals, seeking them most recently, in the physiology of the human brain and the programmed gene. It looks like another regression, possibly infinite.

This brief preamble on developments in linguistics within our recent lifetime is intended to put into focus the work of Jan Voorhoeve. Eminently aware of the importance of data, he worked with the languages of Surinam - languages without prestige in European terms, but none the less whole languages. As a creolist he was able to contribute to the solution of problems that old, established, and very complex languages make it virtually impossible to solve. The value of pidgin and creole languages, due to their recent formation, the rapidity with which they can change, and their immediate observability, have only recently been recognized. Voorhoeve, working especially with Sranan, was in the forefront of the creole field, contributing in both research and theory.¹ This short paper can add only some minor notes to his full and solid work.

Voorhoeve has noted how mixed is the lexicon of Sranan. English was established in Surinam from 1651 forward, so the ‘morpheme stock’ was derived from English. But it was only sixteen years later, by the Peace of Breda (1667), that Surinam became Dutch. The chief English planters departed, many of them going to what became known as ‘Surinam Quarters’ in southwestern Jamaica, so that ‘there was hardly an Englishman who remained’, and ‘after 1675 no English influence can be traced in Surinam’. ‘In the place of the English came Portuguese-speaking Jewish planters (after 1665) Dutch and French (after 1667) and probably some Germans.’² No attempt was made to change the creole English. Dutch became the official language and has remained so. Thus an interesting situation came about: In Jamaica, with very similar roots, the creole, constantly under English influence, has become more and more decreolized, whereas on the English-based creole, Sranan, the Dutch influence has been far less profound. In Jamaica a ‘continuum’ has developed, tied throughout to English. In Surinam, with Dutch as the official language, the conditions leading to formation of a continuum were not present; decreolization would have to take a different route, if any.

The present notes are based on my examination of Henrik Focke's Neger-Engelsch Woordenboek of 1855³ - recording Sranan nearly two hundred years after its establishment in Surinam. During that time, plantations were increased and the colony grew. Voorhoeve has pointed out that since the Dutch did not have the system of indenture such as the English had, by which English servants worked alongside African slaves until they had fulfilled their contracted time, there was a wider separation in Surinam between master and slave than there had been in, for example, Barbados or in the first English plantations in Surinam. When, after the Dutch take-over, the English-speaking models were removed, no equivalent Dutch-speaking models replaced them. This of course contributed to the continuation of English - in time, to a more archaic form of it than remained in the colonies where English continued as a model.

My examination of Focke's dictionary⁴ shows the following percentages for the lexicon of Sranan:

English	53
Dutch	18
African	11
Portuguese	6
Mixed	6

1 See entries in Reinecke et al., 1975.

2 Passages just quoted are from ‘Creole languages and communication’ in Colloque sur le multilinguisme / Symposium on multilingualism, 1962, p. 234

3 We have kept the Dutch orthography.

4 Figures are based on only pages 1-58, but examples are quoted from any part.

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Amerind	2
Uncertain	2
French	1
Spanish	1

These figures, though approximate, are probably not far from a full count, if that could be established; but to make that one would have to decide whether to include compounds, phrases, loan-blends on a par with single words; and one would have to apportion between English and Dutch such cognates as five and fijf which could equally well have produced Sranan feifi. Five, being English, would historically have been the original model; but later feifi may have become identified with fijf, at least for those who knew Dutch. Nevertheless, survival of the very different féifi argues for very little superstrate influence, and, as we shall see, its form was supported by broader phonotactic rules.

A flat count of dictionary entry forms can also be misleading as to the relative importance of lexical sources. With Sranan, we would have to ask which sources are more, which less, basic, judging by at least two criteria: the essentiality of the concepts expressed, and the degree to which words are utilized in forming compounds and set phrases. The Amerindian component, for example, is almost wholly names: anjoemara a fish, apoetoe a small cudgel, arakakka a tortoise, arapappa a waterfowl, aroewakka the Arawak indians, and so on. Excluding the possibility of unrecognized formal coincidence, there is no evidence of any but nouns being borrowed - the names of plants, animals, foods, artifacts - and even among nouns, nothing so intimate as numbers, body parts, directions, human relationships. The Amerindian contribution is superficial as well as scanty. Though some Indians became plantation slaves, they were a minority, and their own local culture kept them apart from the plantation society to which deracinated Africans had to adapt themselves. It is no surprise that their contribution was not intimate.

The African component, on the other hand, was introduced from the beginning of the colony, with slaves brought from Barbados probably already knowing some form of English - at least the basic structure of English-African pidgin or creole. This then was expanded lexically with English models until 1667, by which time it must have been fully established as the slave language. Whatever the African component may have been in the early years, it must have been continually reinforced and enlarged by new importation of West Africans, most of them, probably, having no knowledge of English whatever, others with a pidgin element. The need for a medium of communication did the rest: the English of whites (with dialectal elements) being partly adopted by Africans, with elements retained from their own word-stock, and, most importantly for the structure of the creole, many syntactic features. Within sixteen years a pidgin was produced which ultimately became Sranan.

The African lexical component, using Focke's list, unlike the Amerind, includes every part of speech.⁵ Under the letter A alone, more than one third of the entries (33 of 92) are certainly African (though that proportion is higher than normal). They include 1 pronoun a, I auxiliary verb a, 3 interjections a! ago! ai! and the 28 nouns include 7 names of animals and other living things, 7 plants, 3 foods and 1 drink, 2 games, a day of the week, a tribal name, a big drum, a disease, coral, beads, and only two abstract words: adjabre a lie and azé witchcraft. Most of these could have come only from African languages since they name things in African culture that had no exact English (or European) equivalents. There would have been no occasion for whites to furnish alternatives and no good reason to translate them in any case. African cultural practices brought African words with them. It was the culture that was transplanted and with it the words. Lan-

5 These are not designated, but may be found among cited examples.

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guage does not live apart from culture.

Far more basic than lexical features were structural ones common in West African languages that differed from European structures. Voorhoeve has noted that West African languages generally have a CVCV word structure.⁶ In Sranan the effect of this pattern upon borrowed English words ending with a consonant was regularly to make them add a vowel. Further, a degree of vowel harmony (also a widespread feature of African languages) frequently determined which vowel was to be added. Examples from only the letter B are: bakka back, bangi band, barki bark, bedi bed, begi beg, bessi best, beti bite (also beet and bait), bigi big, bikissi because, boekoe book, boli boil, boro bore, bosi buss, boto boat, bradilifi broadleaf (tree). In a few words a vowel was added before initial r: aratta rat, areisi rice, aren rain. With some words, metathesis rather than addition served to produce the final vowel: baksi basket, betre better, botro butter. Since nasals were treated in this respect as vowels they could also come finally:⁷ aren rain, baboen baboon, begien begin, bon bone, dram strong drink, krakoen turkey (Dutch kalkoen). When the English word ended in a vowel it could be adopted so: beri bury, boi boy, botri buttery, djankro john-crow, drei dry, famili family, farawe far away, flei fly, fri free, and many more. Both l and r phonemes existed (as in lei lie vs. rei ride) but they were frequently interchanged: bele/bere belly, biro/bilo below, brakka/blakka black. More often, r displaced the l in English words: batra bottle, boffro buffalo, bortri bully-tree, bresi bless, bribi believe, broedoe blood, didibri the devil, djaroesoe jealousy, dobroe double, drirri drill, farsi false, and so on. Clearly, the power of African word-structure had been exerted upon the lexical elements borrowed.

Since Jamaican creole is strikingly similar in word-stock to Sranan, a comparison of the two should throw light on the effects of decreolization as it proceeded in the mid-nineteenth century.⁸ That comparison will not be attempted here, but from a few relics, presumably of the formative period when the CVCV pattern was exerting pressure, one may safely posit that early Jamaican creole also added final vowels to consonant-ending loan-words: ratta rat,⁹ rakatuon rock-stone, dedi death, wara what, dari that. Sranan, not much affected by decreolization, retained the majority of such added vowels.

A second index to relative importance of elements borrowed into a language - the degree to which they ‘penetrate’ it - is found through the compounds and phrases it is used to form. The English element in Sranan came in early and therefore included words for basic things and relationships. These were also used to elaborate the vocabulary and to calque from African languages. All these uses may be illustrated with a few examples. The body parts from English: hede head, hai eye, noso nose, foetoe foot/leg, han hand/arm, bere belly, lasi arse, fienga finger, with elaboration: fienga foe foetoe toe. These enter further into compounds and phrases, especially proverbs and calques. A typical one is: wiwiri probably of mixed English source combining wire, withe (cf. JC wis(-wis), and perhaps weed, was used of hair, feathers, grass, leaves, plants, vines, and other metaphorically associated things.¹⁰ I translate Focke: ‘Wiwiri (abbr. of wiri-wiri) hair, locks, wool; 2) feathers, down, 3) leaves, foliage, grass, plants, weeds, rushes.’ Phrases are koti wiwiri cut hair, meki wiwiri dress hair, fowloe-wiwiri bird (fowl) feathers, and two proverbs: 1) Altough the Tjotjo-bird is so small, you had better not swallow it entirely hide-and-hair; 2) I did not eat the chicken; must I now pay for the feathers?’ Also: Hasi wiwiri horsehair; hassiwiwiri matrassi horsehair mattress; stoeloe wiwiri rushes for chair seats; smeri wiwiri grease bush; korsoe wiwiri short plant, grass.

Because so many languages, including the African, use eye not only literally but in transferred and metaphorical senses, it illustrates creole developments

6 See note 2: Ibid, pp. 240-241.

7 For example, in Twi and other West African languages spoken by slaves brought to the Caribbean plantations.

8 Focke's dictionary of 1855 may be compared with the almost contemporary Etymology of Jamaican Grammar, Kingston, Ja., 1868 [Thomas Russell].

9 Portuguese rato may have had some influence here in supporting the final vowel.

10 On this subject see further F.G. Cassidy, ‘Tracing the Pidgin Element in Jamaican Creole’ in Pidginization & Creolization of Languages, pp. 216-221.

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very well. Sranan has:

Mi hai de lon watra my eyes are running water (shedding tears)
Watra hai water eye (tears) - cf DJE¹¹ eye-water
Soro hai sore eye(s) (eye disease)
Hai boeba eye skin (the eyelid) - cf DJE eye-skin
Blakka foe hai black for eye (the pupil)
Hai-drai eye-dry (dizziness)
Broko-hai break-eye (look of contempt) - cf DJE cut-eye
Bigi-hai big-eye (greedy, covetous) - cf DJE big-eye
Ogri-hai ugly-eye (envy; hostile look to which the Negroes attach great importance)
Tranga-hai strong-eye (bold, audacious) - cf DJE strong-eye
Hai na hai eye on eye (in one's full sight)
Tan na hai stand with eye (remain on watch)
Potti hai put eye (see to, pay attention)
Poeloe hai gi wan soema pull eye give it to someone (warn some body)
Piri hai peel eye (observe carefully)¹²
Hai foe foetoe eye of foot (the ankle)
Hai foe nanai eye of needle (needle's eye)
Wan hai karoe eye of corn (grain of maize)
Wan hai krara eye of coral (coral bead)
Wan hai soutou eye of salt (small bit of salt)

It is significant that, desplite decreolization, JC preserves nearly a third of those features preserved in Sranan. We may be certain that items found in both must have been calques from some African language or languages, and that they must have been among the earliest adoptions. Focke gives no examples of Dutch words that developed similarly or to such an extent: the Dutch component came too late to penetrate as deeply as the English. The examples just given, wiwiri and hai, are only two of a great many words that had kind of development and which form the core of Sranan. And JC is only one of several anglophone creoles which had parallel developments. The latter show us the results of decreolization despite the many distinctively creole features they preserve. In Sranan (and other Surinam creoles) as Jan Voorhoeve understood, we have an extremely conservative creole which shows, still in force after two centuries, the effects of African structures into which or under the forces of which the borrowed non-African lexical element was absorbed. Voorhoeve contributed splendidly to the opening of this field but many further studies are still to be made. To begin making them would be somewhat to repay the debt that creole studies owe him.

11 DJE = Dictionary of Jamaican English.

12 This is independent of the English slang phrase to peel one's eyes, to look sharply (for something).

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References

Cassidy, F.G., 1971: Tracing the Pidgin element in Jamaican Creole. In: Dell Hymes (ed.), Pidginization and Creolization of Languages; 216-221. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Cassidy, F.G. and R.B. LePage, 1976 (rev. 1980): Dictionary of Jamaican English, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Focke, H.C., 1855: Neger-Engelsch Woordenboek, Van den Heuvel, Leiden.

Voorhoeve, J., 1962: Creole languages and communication. In: Colloque sur le Multilinguisme / Symposium on Multilingualism. CSA-CCTA Publication No. 87; 233-242. CSA Publications Bureau, London.