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In:Spanish Socio-Historical Linguistics: Isolation and contact
Edited by Whitney Chappell and Bridget Drinka
[Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 12] 2021
► pp. 141–162

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Searching for the sociolinguistic history of Afro-Panamanian Congo speech

 | The Pennsylvania State University
Published online: 13 May 2021
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ahs.12.c06lip
Abstract
Among the surviving Afro-Hispanic linguistic manifestations, one of the most difficult to trace historically is the speech of the Congos of Panama’s Caribbean coast, who maintain a series of folkloric manifestations occurring during Carnival season that includes a special language. According to oral tradition, Congo speech was devised among captive and maroon Africans in colonial Panama as a means of hiding their speech from their colonial masters. Putting together the contemporary variation in Congo speech and what diachronic developments can be extrapolated, a complex picture emerges that cannot be easily resolved with the notion that this dialect developed exclusively as a cryptolect in contact with Spanish colonists. The present study offers a plausible scenario, based on synchronic variation and available historical documentation.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Afro-Panamanian Congo speech and culture
  • 3.When and where did Congo language first emerge?
  • 4.To what extent does Congo language reflect earlier Afro-Hispanic pidginized speech?
  • 5.To what extent was – and is – Congo language used for effective communication?
  • 6.Conclusions: In search of the Congo sociolinguistic trajectory
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
References (76)
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Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Lipski, John M.
2026. Moving past the Afro-Hispanic past. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages DOI logo
Lipski, John
2022. La historia (socio)lingüística del habla "congo" afropanameña: una primera aproximación. Revista de Historia de la Lengua Española :17 ► pp. 145 ff. DOI logo

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