Samaná English
{{Short description|Variety of the English language spoken in the Samaná Peninsula, Dominican Republic}}
{{Infobox language
|name = Samaná English
|altname = Samaná Peninsula English
|states = Dominican Republic
|region = Samaná Peninsula
|ethnicity = Samaná Americans
|date =
|ref =
|speakers2 =
|familycolor = Indo-European
|fam2 = Germanic
|fam3 = West Germanic
|fam4 = North Sea Germanic
|fam5 = Anglo–Frisian
|fam6 = Anglic
|fam7 = English
|fam8 = North American English
|fam9 = American English
|fam10 = Older Southern American English
|fam11 = African-American Vernacular English
|script = Latin (English alphabet)
|isoexception = dialect
|glotto = none
|ietf =
}}
{{African American topics sidebar}}
Samaná English (SE and SAX) is a variety of the English language spoken by descendants of Black immigrants from the United States who have lived in the Samaná Peninsula, now in the Dominican Republic. Members of the enclave are known as the Samaná Americans.
The language is a relative of African Nova Scotian English, or also as a derivative of African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), with variations unique to the enclave's history in the area. In the 1950 Dominican Republic census, 0.57% of the population (about 12,200 speakers) said that their mother tongue was English.{{cite web |title=Historia, Metodología y Organización de los Censos en República Dominicana: 1920–1993 |url=http://inabima.gob.do/descargas/biblioteca/Autores%20Dominicanos/Irma%20Nicasio%20y%20Jes%FAs%20de%20la%20Rosa/Irma%20Nicasio%20y%20Jes%FAs%20de%20la%20Rosa%20-%20Historia,%20metodolog%EDa%20y%20organizaci%F3n%20de%20censos%20en%20Rep.%20Dom..PDF |publisher=Oficinal Nacional de Estadística |access-date=14 May 2014 |author=Irma Nicasio |author2=Jesús de la Rosa|location=Santo Domingo |page=44/131 |language=es |date=April 1998}}{{dead link|date=September 2016|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}
Immigration
Most speakers trace their lineage to immigrants who arrived at the peninsula in 1824 and 1825. At the time all of Hispaniola was administered by Haiti, and its president was Jean-Pierre Boyer. The immigrants responded to an invitation for settlement that Jonathas Granville had delivered in person to Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston, and New York City. Abolitionists like Richard Allen, Samuel Cornish, Benjamin Lundy, and Loring D. Dewey joined the campaign, which was coined the Haitian emigration. {{cite book|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=ia5tHVtQPn8C&pg=PA317&dq=%22Samaná+English%22+language+philadelphia&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiDy72k0LOKAxWKQvEDHS8mIoYQ6AF6BAgHEAM#v=onepage&q=%22Samaná%20English%22%20language%20philadelphia&f=false|title= The Cambridge History of the English Language: English in North America}}
The response was unprecedented, as thousands of African Americans boarded ships in eastern cities and migrated to Haiti. Most of the immigrants arrived during the fall of 1824 and the spring of 1825. More continued moving back and forth in later years but at a slower rate.{{cite book|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=AKzag18pyDMC&pg=PA44&dq=%22Samaná+English%22+language+african+americans+haiti&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjw4cjg0LOKAxXoR_EDHdK8OEwQ6AF6BAgJEAM#v=onepage&q=%22Samaná%20English%22%20language%20african%20americans%20haiti&f=false|title= The Origin of American Black English}}
Between 1859 and 1863, another immigration campaign brought new settlers to the island but at a fraction of the number in 1824 and 1825. Those who originally settled in Samaná were fewer than 600 but formed the only surviving immigration enclave.{{cite book | title=From North America to Hispaniola | publisher=Central Michigan University | author=Hidalgo, Dennis R. | year=2003 | location=Mt. Pleasant, Michigan | pages=1–50}}{{cite book | url=https://archive.org/details/searchforblackna0000mill/page/132 | title=The search for a black nationality : black emigration and colonization, 1787–1863 | publisher=University of Illinois | author=Miller, Floyd J. | year=1975 | location=Urbana | pages=[https://archive.org/details/searchforblackna0000mill/page/132 132–250] | isbn=0252002636 | url-access=registration }}
Survival
While more than 6,000 immigrants came in 1824 and 1835, by the end of the 19th century, only a handful of enclaves on the island spoke any variety of the antebellum Black Vernacular. They were communities in Puerto Plata, Samaná and Santo Domingo. The largest was the one in Samaná that maintained church schools, where it was preserved.
Enclaves across the island soon lost an important element of their identity, which led to their disintegration. Samaná English withstood the assaults in part because the location of Samaná was favorable to a more independent cultural life. However, government policies have still influenced the language's gradual decline, and it may well now be an endangered language.{{cite book | title=A Matter of Time: Past Temporal Reference Verbal Structures in Samaná English and the Ex-Slave Recordings | publisher=Université d'Ottawa | author=Tagliamonte, Sali Anna | author-link=Sali Tagliamonte | year=1991 | location=Ottawa, Canada|oclc = 33327596}}{{cite journal | url=http://elanguage.net/journals/bls/article/viewFile/2312/2274 | title=A Dialect That Time Forgot | author=DeBose, Charles E. | journal=Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society | year=1983 | pages=47–53}}{{cite journal | url=http://www.bagn.academiahistoria.org.do/boletines/boletin119/BAGN_2007_No_119-05.pdf | title=Asentamiento y vida económica de los inmigrantes afroamericanos de Samaná: testimonio de la profesora Martha Willmore (Leticia) | author=Davis, Martha Ellen | journal=Boletín del Archivo General de la Nación | year=2007 | edition=LXIX, Vol. XXXII, Núm. 119 | volume=32 | issue=119 | pages=709–734 | access-date=2014-06-15 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140714120545/http://www.bagn.academiahistoria.org.do/boletines/boletin119/BAGN_2007_No_119-05.pdf | archive-date=2014-07-14 | url-status=dead | author-link=Martha Ellen Davis (ethnomusicologist) }}
Similarities with other languages
Samana English is similar to that of Caribbean English creole spoken by the English speaking Caribbean. Samana English is related to that of Bahamian and Turks and Caicos Islands Creole due to same origins.{{cite journal |last1=Poplack |first1=Shana |author-link=Shana Poplack |last2=Sankoff |first2=David |author-link2=David Sankoff |title=The Philadelphia Story in the Spanish Caribbean |journal=American Speech |date=1987 |volume=62 |issue=4 |pages=291 |doi=10.2307/455406 |url=http://www.sociolinguistics.uottawa.ca/shanapoplack/pubs/articles/PoplackSankoff1987.pdf|jstor=455406|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240124184604/http://www.sociolinguistics.uottawa.ca/shanapoplack/pubs/articles/PoplackSankoff1987.pdf|archive-date=January 24, 2024}}
See also
References
{{reflist}}
External links
- [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=eng Ethnologue report for English]; Samaná English is described under the heading "Dominican Republic"
- [http://www.muturzikin.com/cartesamerique/ameriqueantille.htm Linguistic map of Caribbean English dialects] from Muturzikin.com
- [http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/case-studies/minority-ethnic/caribbean/ Caribbean English (British Library)]
- [http://www.wiwords.com/ Cross-Referencing West Indian Dictionary]
- {{Cite web |url=http://www.tc.columbia.edu/students/sie/LCEjr05/pdfs/Callender.pdf |title=Bajan (Barbadian) dialect in NYC |access-date=June 15, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110709141457/http://www.tc.columbia.edu/students/sie/LCEjr05/pdfs/Callender.pdf |archive-date=July 9, 2011 |url-status=dead |df=mdy-all }}
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Category:Languages of the Dominican Republic