, literacy in Spanish was widespread among the elite and the civilian population and, more often than not, was far better known than D

hich have not, however, prevented the present co-existence of two ways of spelling the language - one for Aruba and one for Bonaire and Curaçao.

two volume dictionary

When, after the abolition of slavery, Papiamentu was used more and more in writing, the demand for grammatical and spelling rules gradually grew. As th

863,

oth its slave population and its elite

panish-Portuguese based Creole languag

Spanish.

Liberal lexical borrowing from Span- ish is likely to contin

e will continue to be a part of the urban, literary language; and it is highly likely that, with the increasing use of Papiamentu, in this dialect, in the mass media, such constructions will spread to all but the most isolated spea

but of c

is strongly and consistently heard in such words as humZa 'smoke,' haiia 'find,' hasi 'do, make.' Initial h-

The Papiamentu adjective is invariab

. Papiamentu, as a typical Creole, and in contrast with Span- ish and Portuguese, shows no agreement between adjective and noun, whether for gender (logical or grammatical) or num- ber.

A second major instance of syntactic decreolization is the introduction of the present participle of verbs, b

as

anish,

. Such educated speakers may be said to belong to a puristic or populistic schoo

Spanish influences have contributed to the creation of a sep- arate literary or written dialect of Papia- mentu, distinguishable from that of un- sophisticated speake

Papiamentu has moved, in certain respects, away from the structure of a Creole lan- guage of the "classical" ty

arliest catechisms, prayerbooks and Bible translations which date from the mid-nineteenth century. This has led to a great increase in the lexicon of Papiamentu, with almost total freedom of lexical borrowing from Spanish above and beyond the basic vocabulary which is common to all native speakers, much of which is itself of Iberian origin, both Castillian and non-Castillian.

e terminology of the Catholic religion', to which the majority of Antillians adhere, was borrowed from Spanish largely on the initiative of Dutch priests, a

Sociologically

Although the example cited by Dillard is actually Papiamentu-tinged Spanish, rather than true Papiamentu, he is, in fact, entirely correct in stating that this Iberian- based Creole is, today, undergoing His- panization. This affects the syntax and morphology of Papiamentu, and may additionally, as claimed by Navarro,2 affect its phonology.

tow

mainly the Catholic Church

Two problems have attracted much attention

he first known Papiamentu text dates from 1776 (

'It is a fully accepted national language whose speakers (and writers) span the entire social spectrum' (Birmingham 1971

eized by the Netherlands from Spain in 1634

national language of the leeward islands of the Netherlands Antilles.