Limonese Creole

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
"Mekatelyu" redirects here. For the musical group, see Mekatelyu (band).
Limonese
Limón Creole English
Mekatelyu
Native toCosta Rica
Native speakers
(55,000 cited 1986)[1]
English creole
  • Atlantic
    • Western
      • Jamaican Creole
        • Limonese
Language codes
ISO 639-3–
Glottologlimo1249
IETFjam-CR

Limonese Creole (also called Limonese, Limón Creole English or Mekatelyu) is a dialect of

English-based creole language, spoken in Limón Province on the Caribbean Sea coast of Costa Rica. The number of native speakers is unknown, but 1986 estimates suggests that there are fewer than 60,000 native and second language speakers combined.[2]

Origin and related creoles

Limonese is very similar structurally and

mutually intelligible
to Limonese and each other.

Names

The name Mekatelyu is a transliteration of the phrase "make I tell you", or in standard English "let me tell you".

In Costa Rica, one common way to refer to Limonese is by the term "patois", a word of French origin used to refer to provincial Gallo-Romance languages of France that were historically considered to be unsophisticated "broken French"; these include Provençal, Occitan and Norman among many others.

History

Limonese developed from Jamaican Creole that was introduced to the Limón Province by

railway, the banana plantations and on the Pacific railway. During the Atlantic slave trade, British colonizers in Jamaica and elsewhere in the British West Indies
delivered African slaves from various regions of Africa who did not speak a common language so various creoles developed to facilitate communication between them, largely influenced by slavers' English.

Early forms of Limonese had to adjust for context that they were being used in so two

mutually intelligible
to and heavily influenced by English for formal contexts and a common vernacular used among Limonese speakers in informal contexts.

Modern day status

Some linguists are undecided on the categorization of Limonese. According to some authors,[3] Limonese should be treated as a separate language altogether while others contend that it is merely a part of a dialect continuum between English and Jamaican Patois.[4]

Limonese is documented to have been and is being gradually decreolized.[citation needed]

See also

References

  1. ^ Jamaican Creole English (Costa Rica) at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. ^ "Costa Rica".
  3. ^ Museo Nacional de Costa Rica - Canal Oficial (2016-01-21), ¿Kryol, patwá, inglés, mekaytelyu? ¿Lengua o dialecto? ¿Qué se habla en Limón?, retrieved 2016-02-03
  4. ISSN 2215-2628
    .

Bibliography

External links
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Limonese_Creole&oldid=1195892863"