Page 19 - ATA

A14 LOCAL
Monday 29 July 2019

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Why we speak 4 languages.
In the beginning of the 19th century the majority of our fore fa-
thers were farmers and fishermen. A few also worked on ships
as sailors and sailed between the ABC islands, the Caribbean
and countries on the north coast of South America like Ven-
ezuela and Colombia. Some others were sent to Cuba and the
Dominican Republic to cut sugar canes and some to Venezuela
to work in the oil refinery that opened in 1914. My grandfather
from my mothers’ side went to work as a sailor and then cap-
tain on ships between Venezuela and Cuba transporting coffee,
sugar canes and rum. All this connection with Spanish speaking
countries in the region forced our people to speak Spanish. With
the opening of the Oil Refinery here in Aruba many workers from
English speaking islands came to work here and influenced our
islanders to speak English and also due to the refinery being a
US company all communication was in English. The education
system was in Dutch and still is, so that’s why our people learned
to communicate in all the languages active on the island. Pa-
piamento language was created during the 17thcentury as a
communication tool in a so diverse Caribbean trading market
and it has influences from the languages Dutch, Portuguese,
West African languages, Judaea Portuguese, Hebrew, English,
French and Spanish. So Dutch is the instructional language,
English, Spanish and Papiamento as subject, but the majority
speaks Papiamento at home. Basically we all speak all the 4
languages on a daily basis. Spanish was also an instructional
education language for some time in the 18th century.

Winnie and Skip are true ambassadors
There are many tourists that came to our island as guests and
now are friends and adopted our island as their second home.
This couple comes twice a year to our island and have been
doing that for more than 30 years. They have brought in all of
their families and friends over the years and now they are back
on the island and we all are happy to have them back.