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caribbean, dutch language, english language, language, links, suriname

[LINK] "In Babel of Tongues, Suriname Seeks Itself"
Simon Romero's article in The New York Times "In Babel of Tongues, Suriname Seeks Itself" surveys the language situation in the South American country of Suriname.

Walk into a government office here and you will be greeted in Dutch, the official language. But in a reflection of the astonishing diversity of this South American nation, Surinamese speak more than 10 other languages, including variants of Chinese, Hindi, Javanese and half a dozen original Creoles.

Making matters more complex, English is also beamed into homes on television and Portuguese is the fastest-growing language since an influx of immigrants from Brazil in recent years. And one language stands above all others as the lingua franca: Sranan Tongo (literally Suriname tongue), a resilient Creole developed by African slaves in the 17th century.

So which language should Suriname’s 470,000 people speak? Therein lies a quandary for this country, which is still fiercely debating its national identity after just three decades of independence from the Netherlands.

“We shook off the chains of Dutch colonialism in the 1970s, but our consciousness remains colonized by the Dutch language,” said Paul Middellijn, 58, a writer who composes poetry in Sranan Tongo.

Nevertheless, Mr. Middellijn said English should be declared Suriname’s national language, a position shared by many Surinamese who want stronger links to the Caribbean and North America. “Sranan will survive because nothing can replace it as the language of the street,” he said.

The position of Dutch in Suriname reminds me somewhat of the position of French in Canada, that last language spoken by seven or eight million people in a hemisphere populated by hundreds of millions of speakers of English, Spanish and Portuguese. The comparison quickly fails on the grounds that Dutch isn't a first language in Suriname and--honestly--Dutch isn't nearly as much of a world language as French. A creeping normalization of Suriname's creole language of Sranan on the model of Haiti's normalization of Haitian Creole, even as English steadily displaced Dutch as a language of wider communication, is probably in the cards for Suriname.