Minority languages in France’s Guyane
(Illustration by Francky Lauret representing participants in the Conference for Multilingualism in Overseas Territories)
France is well-known for its linguistic policies and its propensity to silence and hinder local languages. However, this doesn’t mean the country isn’t linguistically diverse and the Overseas Département of Guyane, in northern South America, is home to numerous languages and not solely from the Americas or Europe.
Some historical and geographical facts
Guyane is sandwiched between Brazil to the east and south, Suriname to the west and the Atlantic Ocean to the north. It is part of the “Five Guianas”: Spanish, Dutch, English, Portuguese and French.
French presence in the region goes back as early the beginning of the 17th century, even though there were no proper establishment of colonies until the mid-17th century. Many slaves were brought over from Africa. After the sale of France’s territories in North America in the early-19th century, Guyane became a penal colony and convicts from Metropolitan France were sent there. After being simply a colony for centuries, it finally was given the status of département in 1946. Guyane is 83,534 km2 , equal to 1/7th of France’s metropolitan territory and, according to projections, was home to 296,711 people in 2019.
In 1965, by then-President Charles de Gaulle’s decision, the Guiana Space Centre was established. In 2011, 16% of the Guyane population worked for the GSC.
Being a French département, French is of course the sole official language recognised in Guyane. Despite French’s supremacy, there are more than 20 languages spoken all over the territory. These languages can be broken down into 5 main categories:
Native American languages
Native American languages
Native American languages belong to three distinct families: the Cariban languages (comprised of Carib and Wayana), the Tupi-Guarani languages (comprising Wayampi and Emerillon) and the Arawak languages (Arawak and Palikúr). All combined, less than 5 percent of the population speak these languages. Some of them are considered endangered because of the relatively low inter-generational transmission and small numbers of speakers. For instance, Emerillon has a total of 400 speakers.
There are quite a few creoles spoken in Guyane, and the most widespread of them is, of course, Guyanese creole, which is spoken as a First Language by up to a third of the population. Also found in Guyane are the creoles of nearby French Overseas Territories and former French colonies. Many Haitians left their country in the hope of economic opportunities in Guyane and thus brought their language with them. Haitian people are estimated to represent between 10 to 20% of the population; which suggests a very high number of speakers. Around 5% of the population speak a creole from Guadeloupe or Martinique, and less than 1% speak Saint Lucie creole.
Due to language proximity, some features of the majority creole, Guyanese creole, can also be found in other creoles, such as the pronouns “mo” and “to” used in Haitian. Guyanese creole is the only language which was given the status of “Language of France”.
English-based creoles are spoken by descendants of Bushinengue (the name comes from Bushi Nenge in Sranan, derived from Bos Negers in Dutch and Bush Negroes in English), former slaves brought from Africa who managed to flee the plantations where they were exploited.
Ndyuka creole has three varieties: Ndyuka, Aluku and Pamaka. This creole has its own writing system; it is written in the Afaka syllabary, created by Afaka Atumisi. Interestingly, Ndyuka itself served as the basis of the Ndyuka-Tiriyó Pidgin, a trade language used until the 1960s between speakers of Ndyuka, an English-based creole, and Tiriyo and Wayana, both Cariban languages.
Another notable creole is Sranan Tongo, coming from neighbouring Suriname, spoken as a lingua franca by Chinese, Hindustani or Native communities.
And finally, the Saramaccan dialect. It is quite remarkable for incorporating elements from English, Portuguese, Fon, KiKongo and Akan and conserving phonemes like implosives, prenasalised stops and labio-velar stops.
These creoles are found in the west of Guyane, close to the Surinamese border. Approximately one third of the population use one of these varieties.
French is of course the majority language but one can also find English from nearby English-speaking Guyana (spoken by 2% of the population), Dutch from Suriname, Spanish from Colombia and Peru (less than 1%) , and Portuguese from Brazil (between 5 and 10%). The latter is used as a lingua franca in the east of Guyana, bordering Brazil.
On top of native, European and creole languages, languages from the Asian continent can also be heard. The Hmong language, spoken in Laos, was brought over to Guyane in the 1970s when many people from Laos fled their country because of the rise of communism. They were settled in Guyane in the hope of increasing the département’s population. There were 20,000 Hmong people fleeing their country; France took 1,000 in between 1977 and 1988. Today, they represent 2% of the population, spread over 4 villages.
Due to immigration from China, from two different waves, Hakka Chinese as well as Cantonese and Wu dialects are also spoken. Some Chinese people left their homeland during the Opium Wars in the mid- to late-19th century, constituting the first wave of Chinese immigration. The second wave dates back to the early-20th century. In 2009, people of Chinese descent constituted around 1.5% of the total population.
Due to a lack of data, I couldn’t find any numbers but there are also speakers of Caribbean Hindustani, spoken by Indo-Caribbeans and the Indo-Caribbean diaspora, based on Bhojpuri with influences from Awadhi.
This is very matter-of-fact post was to illustrate the extreme diversity of languages found in one of France’s former colony and how its history shaped the linguistic landscape of the second biggest region of the country. In my next post, I’ll delve into education, language policy and language repartition in Guyane. I’ll focus on L1/L2/L3/L4 usage.
Sources and further readings:
Langues et Cité: Les langues de Guyane
Langues de Guyane (Académie de Guyane)
Langues parlées en Guyane
Du Laos à la Guyane, la nouvelle vie des réfugiés Hmong
Il y a 40 ans, les premiers réfugiés politiques Hmong arrivaient en Guyane