Palenque de San Basilio

Palenque de San Basilio or San Basilio de Palenque is the village from which Palenquero originated from and in which it is most commonly spoken in the 21st century.

The village was formed in the early 17th century to the south of Cartagena by fugitive slaves who escaped from surrounding districts, under the leadership of Benkos Biohó.^[6] The dissolution of the Spanish language intensified as maroons settled in armed fortified territories. The Palenqueros maintained their physical distance from ethnic Europeans as a form of anti-colonial resistance but they likely intermarried with indigenous women. They developed a creole based mostly on their own African languages and Spanish.

In the early 20th century, residents of this area were noted as having been bilingual in both Palenquero and Spanish. A 1913 document noted that residents of Palenque de San Basilio had a 'guttural dialect that some believe to be the very African language, if not in all its purity at least with some variations'.^[8]

Decline

For almost two decades in the 21st century, Palenquero has been classified as an endangered language. Although it is spoken in parallel with Spanish, the latter has dominated the regular linguistic activity of Palenque de San Basilio. Some 53% of residents are unable to speak Palenquero.

The decline of Palenquero can be traced to the establishment of sugar and banana plantations. Many natives left the village in order to find work either in the Panama Canal or the Department of Magdalena.^[6] There they came into contact with other languages. In the 20th century, with the introduction of a standard Spanish educational system, Spanish became the supra regional prescriptive speech, and Palenquero was often criticized and mocked.^[9]

Racial discrimination against people of ethnic African descent added to the decline of Palenquero. Some parents did not feel comfortable continuing to teach their children the language.^[10]

Revitalization

With its legacy of cultural resistance, Palenquero has survived since the early 17th century despite the many challenges. In recent years, scholars and activists have encouraged teaching and use of Palenquero, and native speakers are encouraged. ^[11] Three major events have contributed to the revived interest in the Palenquero creole:

Gender

Grammatical gender is non-existent, and adjectives derived from Spanish default to the masculine form: lengua africano ‘African language’.^[13]

Plurality

Plurality is marked with the particle ma. (for example: ma posá is "houses"). This particle is believed to derive from Kikongo, a Bantu language, and is the sole Kikongo-derived inflection present in Palenquero.^[14] The younger speakers of Palenquero utilize ma for plurality more so than the speakers that came before them.

This particle is usually dropped with cardinal numbers greater than two: ma ndo baka "two cows" but tresi año "13 years".^[13]

Verbs