| Limonese | |
|---|---|
| Limón Creole English | |
| Mekatelyu | |
| Native to | Costa Rica |
Native speakers | (55,000 cited 1986)[1] |
English creole
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | limo1249 |
| IETF | jam-CR |
Limonese Creole (also calledLimonese,Limón Creole English orMekatelyu) is a dialect ofJamaican Patois (Jamaican Creole), anEnglish-based creole language, spoken inLimón Province on theCaribbean Sea coast ofCosta Rica. The number of native speakers is unknown, but 1986 estimates suggests that there are fewer than 60,000 native and second language speakers combined.[2]
Limonese is very similar structurally andlexically to theJamaican Creole spoken in Jamaica and Panama and to a lesser extent other English-based creoles of the region, such asColón Creole,Mískito Coastal Creole,Belizean Kriol, andSan Andrés and Providencia Creole; many of these are also somewhatmutually intelligible to Limonese and each other.
The nameMekatelyu is a transliteration of the phrase "make I tell you", or in standard English "let me tell you".
In Costa Rica, one common way to refer to Limonese is by the term "patois", a word of French origin used to refer to provincialGallo-Romance languages of France that were historically considered to be unsophisticated "broken French"; these includeProvençal,Occitan andNorman among many others.
Limonese developed from Jamaican Creole that was introduced to the Limón Province byJamaican migrant workers who arrived to work on the construction of the Atlanticrailway, thebanana plantations and on the Pacific railway. During theAtlantic slave trade, British colonizers in Jamaica and elsewhere in theBritish West Indies delivered African slaves from various regions of Africa who did not speak a common language so various creoles developed to facilitate communication between them, largely influenced by slavers' English.
Early forms of Limonese had to adjust for context that they were being used in so twolanguage registers developed, onemutually intelligible to and heavily influenced by English for formal contexts and a common vernacular used among Limonese speakers in informal contexts.
Some linguists are undecided on the categorization of Limonese. According to some authors,[3] Limonese should be treated as a separate language altogether while others contend that it is merely a part of adialect continuum between English andJamaican Patois.[4]
Limonese is documented to have been and is being graduallydecreolized.[citation needed]