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“...that.
One of the earliest students of the odd tongue was a
Father Schabel who characterized it as a “broken kind of
Spanish.” Later, another scholar termed it “Negro-Span-
ish.” An encyclopedia states it derives from “the African
language.” Still another authority speaks of its having been
adapted from “Negro-Portuguese.” And the Curagao Cham-
ber of Commerce describes it as a mixture of Dutch, Span-
ish, English, French, Portuguese and South American
Indian!
Like the fabled three blind men of Hindustan, all of the
above definitions may be considered “partly in the right,
but all were in the wrong.” True, Papiamento is just about
90 per cent derived from Spanish. But the remaining 10 per
cent is almost wholly Dutch, with a small number of deriva-
tives of the other languages mentioned.
It has been called a dialect, but Papiamento certainly is
anything but that. It’s a sort of Esperanto of the Islands,
the universal language throughout the Territory, the only
tongue everyone, regardless of race...”
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