Arguments for the Bajan Creole, Iberian Influence
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This essay argues that Barbadian Creole bears an additional, understudied Iberian layer, particularly Judaeo-Portuguese, visible in definite-marking strategies (de/da), prepositional stacking, prosody, and proverb structure. While Bajan’s grammar is fundamentally depicted as an English-lexifier creole, Sephardic contact in 17th-century Bridgetown/Speightstown likely reinforced or contributed to specific function-word patterns already emerging in the island’s multilingual contact ecology.This essay thus argues that Barbadian Creole may carry traces of Judeo-Portuguese-influenced phonetic speech, brought by Sephardic Jews fleeing Iberia, which have been overlooked by dominant Anglo-African centric narratives of creole formation within the British Empire. The Judaeo-Portuguese and Afro-Portuguese dimensions of Barbadian life are an additional layer in context to British and African norms, not an erasure of them.For clarity, I’ve placed a glossary of technical terms at the end, so you can refer to it if required.
Author: Peter Anderson Bowen II, Gabriel
Institution: Barbados Community College
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7082647053
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