Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on the Appendix
- Introduction
- 1 Africans in the Iberian peninsula, the slave trade, and overview of Afro-Iberian linguistic contacts
- 2 Early Afro-Portuguese texts
- 3 Early Afro-Hispanic texts
- 4 Africans in colonial Spanish America
- 5 Afro-Hispanic texts from Latin America: sixteenth to twentieth centuries
- 6 Survey of major African language families
- 7 Phonetics/phonology of Afro-Hispanic language
- 8 Grammatical features of Afro-Hispanic language
- 9 The Spanish-Creole debate
- References
- Index
9 - The Spanish-Creole debate
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on the Appendix
- Introduction
- 1 Africans in the Iberian peninsula, the slave trade, and overview of Afro-Iberian linguistic contacts
- 2 Early Afro-Portuguese texts
- 3 Early Afro-Hispanic texts
- 4 Africans in colonial Spanish America
- 5 Afro-Hispanic texts from Latin America: sixteenth to twentieth centuries
- 6 Survey of major African language families
- 7 Phonetics/phonology of Afro-Hispanic language
- 8 Grammatical features of Afro-Hispanic language
- 9 The Spanish-Creole debate
- References
- Index
Summary
Introduction
Having reviewed a wide spectrum of Afro-Iberian linguistic manifestations, spanning four centuries and four continents, we are in a position to reassess the question of whether Spanish ever creolized, and if so, where, under what circumstances, with what antecedents, and with what long-term effects on the surrounding Spanish dialects. First it is necessary to revisit the question of why so few (if any) Spanish-derived creoles are found throughout the world, in comparison with the large and diverse collection of Portuguese-, French-, and English-based creoles scattered across five continents. Attempts – sometimes only implicitly stated – at answering this question for Spanish have taken at least the following forms: (1) the demographic proportions of Europeans to Africans in the Caribbean were not favorable to the formation of creoles; (2) Spanish colonization was somehow “different” from that undertaken by Portugal, France, and England, thus accounting for greater Hispanization of the Spanish colonies; (3) all Afro-European creoles formed in West Africa, where Spain held no slave depots; (4) Spanish did once creolize in the Americas, and certain vernacular varieties of Caribbean Spanish are the post-creole remnants of what was once a more extensive creole language; as yet undiscovered enclaves of vestigial Spanish creole language may still be uncovered, as the creole nature of Afro-Colombian Palenquero was revealed only a few decades ago. The bulk of this chapter will consider the last viewpoint, which is of direct relevance to the evaluation of the Afro-Hispanic materials discussed in the preceding chapters.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A History of Afro-Hispanic LanguageFive Centuries, Five Continents, pp. 277 - 304Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005