Samaná English
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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
Immigration
Most speakers trace their lineage to immigrants who arrived at the peninsula in 1824 and 1825. At the time all of
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.[citation needed]
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.[2][3]
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
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.[4][5][6]
Nature
Samana English is similar to that of
Ethnologue
The 15th edition (2005) of
See also
References
- ^ Irma Nicasio; Jesús de la Rosa (April 1998). "Historia, Metodología y Organización de los Censos en República Dominicana: 1920–1993" (PDF) (in Spanish). Santo Domingo: Oficinal Nacional de Estadística. p. 44/131. Retrieved 14 May 2014.[dead link]
- ^ Hidalgo, Dennis R. (2003). From North America to Hispaniola. Mt. Pleasant, Michigan: Central Michigan University. pp. 1–50.
- ISBN 0252002636.
- OCLC 33327596.
- ^ DeBose, Charles E. (1983). "A Dialect That Time Forgot". Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: 47–53.
- Davis, Martha Ellen (2007). "Asentamiento y vida económica de los inmigrantes afroamericanos de Samaná: testimonio de la profesora Martha Willmore (Leticia)" (PDF). Boletín del Archivo General de la Nación. 32 (119) (LXIX, Vol. XXXII, Núm. 119 ed.): 709–734. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2014-07-14. Retrieved 2014-06-15.
- JSTOR 455406.
External links
- Ethnologue report for English; Samaná English is described under the heading "Dominican Republic"
- Linguistic map of Caribbean English dialects from Muturzikin.com
- Caribbean English (British Library)
- Cross-Referencing West Indian Dictionary
- "Bajan (Barbadian) dialect in NYC" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on July 9, 2011. Retrieved June 15, 2014.
