Sranan

Sranan, also called Sranantongo (literally, “Suriname tongue”), Taki-taki (“talk-talk” or “say-say”), or Ningre-tongo (“blacks’ tongue”), creole language spoken in Suriname (formerly Dutch Guiana) in northeastern South America. Sranan is spoken by almost the entire population of Suriname as either a first or a second language, as well as by a large emigrant population in the Netherlands. It functions as a lingua franca and as a national language of Suriname, although it has less prestige than Dutch, the country’s official language.

Like Saramaccan, a creole that developed in the region’s interior, the ultimate origins of Sranan lie in the nonstandard varieties of English spoken by colonists during the period of English control (1651–67). However, Sranan evolved on the coast. There, near the capital city of Paramaribo, resided a much higher concentration of Dutch colonists than in the interior. Also in contrast to the interior, the coastal region had a dearth of Portuguese speakers.

When the Dutch took over Suriname in 1667, they decided to keep the local colonial English vernacular, rather than their own national language, as the lingua franca for communication with the slaves. Sranan evolved gradually and increasingly diverged from English during the 18th century, although at all times under heavy Dutch influence. Because some Dutch language structures are similar to English, Sranan is less divergent from English than Saramaccan, although both were equally influenced by the African languages spoken by slaves. The question of the specific contributions of Dutch, and of various African languages, to the structures of Sranan has hardly been investigated, unlike those of Portuguese to Saramaccan.

Examples of typical sentences in Sranan are Mek konu gi-em moni en bai sani, dan eng sa go kir eng ‘Let the king give him money to buy things, then he will go (and) kill it’; Mi sa gi(bi) yu tin sensi ‘I’ll give you ten cents’; and Mi doifi frei gowe, ma mi xoluk, dati tan ‘My dove flew away, but my luck, that stays.’