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Pronunciation

This version was saved 15 years, 7 months ago View current version Page history

Saved by Franz Sledge
on September 11, 2008 at 10:18:53 pm

WARNING This whole page is still under construction. I have not been able to find a coherent description of Papiamentu phonology written by a linguist. Therefore I am trying to piece together a description based on information from textbooks and tourist phrasebooks written by non-linguists, plus my own study of audio samples. If you are a linguist and would like to comment, contact me at f_a_sledge@yahoo.com

Don't Worry

A detailed description of any language's pronunciation is going to seem long and complicated at first glance. Don't worry. If you make an effort, you will be able to learn the pronunciation. (Unless you have a chance to practice every day, you might not be able to masquerade as a native speaker, but that's okay.) Relax!

You will get better results by carefully listening to spoken Papiamentu and imitating what you hear, rather than relying on a written description. Check the Links page to find sources of audio and video files that you can stream or download. The best results would come from conversing or taking lessons with a native speaker.

The Overall Sound

In general Papiamentu sounds a lot like Spanish. If you have studied Spanish or any of its relatives in the past, most of the vowels and consonants in Papiamentu will already be familiar to you. However, there will be a few surprises.

Stress

"Stress" refers to pronouncing one syllable more loudly than the other syllables in a word.

The stress in most words can be determined by these rules:

1) When a word ends with a vowel, the next-to-last syllable is stressed.

Examples: hende, ayuda, kabana, papiamentu

2) When a word ends with a consonant, the final syllable is stressed.

Examples: nashonal, popular

When a word does not obey the above rules, an acute accent mark indicates the syllable that is stressed. Examples: fásil, fonétiko, Perú

There are some variations that will seem like exceptions to the above rules. Some words of Spanish origin are accented on the next-to-last syllable even though they end in consonants, for example nomber. When the suffix -nan is added to a noun the stress does not move onto nan even though nan ends with a consonant.

NOTE: Stress is not the same thing as tone. Some Papiamentu words, especially two-syllable words, have a distinctive tone pattern – one syllable is pronounced with a distinctly lower pitch or higher pitch than the next syllable. We will discuss these tone patterns at the end of this chapter.

There are some webpages which incorrectly claim that the accent marks in Papiamentu indicate the tone. That's just plain wrong. Acute accents indicate stress, as stated above, and the three vowels that use grave accent marks represent completely different vowel-sounds from their unaccented counterparts.

Consonants

digraphs

ch in Papiamentu sounds like the ch in the English word chip

dj in Papiamentu sounds like the letter j in the English words juice and jam

sh in Papiamentu sounds the same as it does in the English word ship

zj in Papiamentu sounds like the j in the French word bonjour and the z in the English word azure

regular consonants

b UNDER CONSTRUCTION

retired consonants

The letter Q is not generally used in writing the Curaçao dialect of Papiamentu.

Except when it's part of the digraph "ch," the letter C is also not generally used.

Words that used to be spelled with X have been respelled with "ks" in the official Curaçao orthography: exacto has become eksakto.

You may occasionally see these "retired" letters in proper nouns (such as people's names or the names of countries), in older texts, in other dialects of Papiamentu, in loanwords from English or Spanish, etc.

Vowels

a in Papiamentu sounds similar to the a in Spanish padre or the a in English father

e in Papiamentu is described differently by various authors. Some say it is like the e in Spanish mesa, Dutch heer; this is like a purer version of the vowel in the English word they (without the glide towards an "ee as in free" sound). Others say it is closer to the short i in the English words stick, tin. Current hypothesis: this Papiamentu vowel is halfway between these two descriptions, or varies allophonically between these two positions.

i in Papiamentu usually sounds like the i in the English words ski, police and machine. In words of Dutch origin such as mik and bril, it sounds like the i in the English words stick and tin. Sometimes i is like the y in English yawn and yet; this occurs in piesa and sabio which are both two-syllable words.

o in Papiamentu sounds like o in Spanish and Italian; similar to the o in the English word note but purer.

u in Papiamentu usually sounds like the u in the English word truth. When followed by another vowel, u is usually pronounced like the English letter w; this occurs in words like kuadra, kuenta, kuido.

ü (the letter u with two dots above it) in Papiamentu is pronounced like the ü in German. This vowel does not exist in English. You can approximate it by pronouncing the "ee" vowel of the English word "free" while rounding your lips into a circular pucker as if you were going to kiss someone. This vowel only occurs in a few Papiamentu words; notable examples are hür (to rent or lease something) and minüt (a minute).

the vowels with grave accents (`)

The grave accent mark does not indicate stress or tone; it indicates a completely different vowel-sound (phoneme) for the letter in question.

è (the letter e with a grave accent), according to most sources, represents the vowel that occurs in the English words bed and stem, HOWEVER, Goilo says it is closer to the a in English cat. Papiamentu words containing this vowel include pèn (pen), ènkel (ankle), pèst (pest), sèntwich (sandwich).

ò (the letter o with a grave accent) represents the vowel that occurs in the Dutch word kok. This vowel is represented by the symbol ɔ in the International Phonetic Alphabet. This sound does not exist as a distinct phoneme in all regional varieties of English, but if you think of the way got is pronounced in the northeastern US, you may get the idea. Papiamentu words containing this vowel include shòt (injection / scene in a film), dòkter (doctor), stòf (dust / drizzling rain).

ù (the letter u with a grave accent) working on four hypotheses:

1) ù represents the vowel that occurs in the English words cup andtruck. Source of this idea: Getting around the Islands in Papiamentu

2) ù represents the Dutch vowel [Y] as in the first syllable of Dutch juffrouw which corresponds to Papiamentu yùfrou. Source of this idea: Basiscursus Papiaments says ù "klinkt altijd als de e van het Nederlandse de of de u van vlug."

3) ù represents the vowel which is represented by the symbol ø in the International Phonetic Alphabet. This vowel occurs in the French word feu and the German word können. Source of this idea: I have a clear recording of the word klùrmentu in which the first vowel seems to be [ø].

4) some combination of the above