The Spanish of Equatorial Guinea: research on la hispanidad's best-kept secret
John M. Lipski
Introduction
The Republic of Equatorial Guinea is sub-Saharan
Africa's only Spanish‑speaking nation, which makes it somewhat of a
linguistic curiosity, and which has contributed to its political isolation from
neighboring countries. At the same
time, the role of the national, ex‑colonial language is significantly
different in Equatorial Guinea than in most of English‑, French‑
and Portuguese‑speaking Africa, and the linguistic situation of
Equatorial Guinea has considerable importance for theories of creolization of
European languages, and the diversification of Spanish and Porutugese
throughout the world. As a result, a
detailed description of the status of Spanish in Equatorial Guinea transcends
the limits of this tiny nation and reflects a potential impact on more general
areas of study.
Equatorial Guinea consists of the island of Bioko
(formerly named Fernando Poo), which contains the capital, Malabo (formerly
Santa Isabel), and the continental enclave of Rio Muni (with capital Bata),
between Gabon and Cameroon, as well as tiny Annobón Island, located to the
south of Sno Tomé. In
1964 Spanish Guinea (as the colony was known) achieved status as an autonomous
region, and the nation became independent in 1968, when Spain yielded to
international pressure. Despite the
lack of colonial independence wars, Equatorial Guinea lurched violently into
the post‑colonial era with a nightmarish 11‑year regime, headed by
Francisco Macías Nguema, which nearly destroyed the country's infrastructure.
expelled all foreigners and exiled, jailed or murdered nearly half of the
Equatorial Guinean population.1
Following the overthrow of Macías in 1979, Equatorial Guinea continues
to struggle under the crushing weight of post‑colonial destruction, and
while highly dependent on Spanish technical aid, moved gradually into the
French sphere of influence in Africa, underlined by the entry of Equatorial
Guinea into the CFA monetary zone in the late 1980's.
Like most other African nations, Equatorial Guinea
contains a variety of ethnic groups, each speaking its own language. The major group on Bioko is the Bubi. Also found in Malabo and its environs are
numerous Fernandinos, descendents of
pidgin English‑speaking freed slaves from Sierra Leone and Liberia, who
arrived in Fernando Poo in the 19th century, as well as a handful of natives of
Sno Tomé and Principe, Cape Verde and other African nations.2 During the colonial period, nearly half of
the island's population consisted of Nigerian contract laborers (largely Ibos
and Calabars), who worked on the cacao plantations, and although nearly all
Nigerians were expelled by the Macías government (and few have returned), this
group reinforced the English spoken by the Fernandinos, with the result that
nearly all residents of Fernando Poo speak pidgin English, known as pichi, pichinglis or broken‑inglis, which constitutes the true
lingua franca of Fernando Poo/Bioko (Lipski 1992).
The principal ethnic group in Rio Muni is the Fang,
also found in Gabon and Cameroon, who have dominated the remaining groups and
have formed the strongest nuclei in the national government; the Fang have also
emigrated in large numbers to Fernando Poo, although not originally native to
that island. The playero groups (Ndowé/Combe, Bujeba, Benga, Bapuko, etc.) are found
along the coast of Rio Muni, and most of their languages are at least partially
intelligible mutually. There are few
remaining pygmies in Rio Muni, and those that are found live in scattered areas
of the interior and do not constitute a linguistically or culturally
influential group.
Pidgin English is not widely used in Rio Muni,
except in Bata, due to the influx of residents of Fernando Poo and of natives
of Cameroon, Nigeria and other English‑speaking areas. Most playero
speakers and a large number of Bubis also speak Fang, due to the impact of the
latter group in the national government, and the forced learning of Fang during
the Macías government, although the Fang rarely speak other indigeneous
languages. In Rio Muni, the principal
lingua franca for inter‑ethnic communication is in theory Spanish,
although Fang vies with Spanish, given the political and social hegemony of
this group. On Fernando Poo, pidgin
English has generally been preferred, despite fierce campaigns by Spanish
missionaries and educators and complaints by many Equatorial Guineans, who
scold their children for speaking pichi. Spanish is also widely used for inter‑ethnic
communication, and occasionally French surfaces, due to the presence of
numerous natives of Cameroon, and the fact that thousands of Guineans took
refuge in Cameroon and Gabon during the Macías regime, and learned at least the
rudiments of French.
The
status of Spanish in Equatorial Guinea
In comparison with most other West and Central
African nations, Equatorial Guinea contains a high proportion of proficient
speakers of the metropolitan language, in this case Spanish, which is largely
attributable to the efforts of the Spanish educational system (cf. Negrín
Fajardo 1993). Colonial education was predominantly in the hands of missionary
groups, particularly the Claret order, but Spanish government schools also
played a significant role in implanting Spanish as an effective language of
communication. On Fernando Poo, nearly
all natives of the island speak Spanish with considerable fluency, although
there are a few elderly residents who had little or no contact with Spaniards
during the colonial period and who consequently have limited abilities in this
language. On Annobón Island, despite
its nearly total isolation from the remainder of the country (and indeed, from
the remainder of the world), nearly all residents speak Spanish quite well,
although this language is rarely used spontaneously in daily communication,
since Annobón Islanders speak fa d'ambú,
a Portuguese‑derived creole similar to the dialects of Sno Tomé and Príncipe. In Rio Muni, nearly all playeros speak Spanish, except for those who have remained in
isolated areas distant from schools and government centers, and the same is
true for Fang living in the principal cities and towns. In the interior, it is still possible to
find many Fang in more remote areas who speak little or no Spanish, despite its
status as the national language, and official announcements, masses and
speeches are often delivered in Fang to ensure communication. This diversity of language ability is
largely due to the historical facts of colonization, for although Fernando Poo,
Annobón and Rio Muni were ceded to Spain in 1778 by Portugal, effective
colonization of Fernando Poo by the Spanish only began after 185O, and Annobón
contained no Spanish presence until 1885.
Rio Muni was not colonized until after 19OO, when territorial disputes
with French African territories were finally settled, and Spanish colonization
of the interior of Rio Muni did not become effective until after 193O.
From the beginning, the Spanish government insisted
on exclusive use of Spanish as the colonial language, although missionaries and
other functionaries had to learn pidgin English and the native languages in
order to function effectively, and Equatorial Guinea had and has one of
Africa's highest functional literacy rates.
This has occurred despite the fact that during the last 7‑8 years
of the Macías regime, use of Spanish in public functions and even in private
life was prohibited, and a largely unsuccessful attempt was made to implement
Fang as the sole national language. At
the same time, the post‑colonial educational system largely ceased to
function. The result of this hiatus is
a generation of young Guineans whose active competence in the Spanish language
is significantly below that of older and younger compatriots, although it is
not likely that this relatively short time period of separation from active use
of Spanish will have any major long‑range linguistic consequences for
Equatorial Guinea.
It is impossible to calculate exactly the proportion
of Equatorial Guineans who are reasonably fluent in Spanish, given the lack of
official data, but on Fernando Poo and the urban areas of Rio Muni this
percentage is almost certainly around 9O%, and even in the interior of Rio Muni
a figure of around 6O%‑7O% would probably not be unrealistic; this in
effect places Equatorial Guinea at the forefront of African nations which have
successfully implanted the former metropolitan language as an effective vehicle
of national communication. At the same
time, it is safe to affirm that few Equatorial Guineans are true native
speakers of Spanish, in the sense of Spanish being spoken naturally in the
first years of the home environment, and no legitimate Equatorial Guinean
raised in that nation is a monolingual speaker of Spanish. Many Guineans speak Spanish spontaneously
(and even exclusively) in their homes, often encouraging their children to
speak Spanish in preference to indigeneous languages or pidgin English, but
according to my extensive observations, which include considerable personal
contact with Equatorial Guinean households, the reality is somewhat different,
with Spanish being freely mixed with the native languages of the respective
speakers. Objectively, it is frequently
impossible to assign a conversation to a single language category. and in this
fashion many Equatorial Guineans are certain that they are speaking `only'
Spanish, Fang, Bubi, etc., when in reality their linguistic production is
marked by a high degree of code switching and introduction of words from other
languages. There is a small population
of virtual monolingual pidgin English speakers, the `street children' in
Malabo, of Bubi parents but raised as homeless orphans, who speak no Bubi,
almost no Spanish, and whose linguistic interactions are carried out entirely
in pichinglis, in direct reflection
of the only linguistic common denominator in the Malabo streets and
marketplaces.
Domains
of usage of Spanish
Despite the high percentage of Guineans who possess
a considerable active competence in Spanish, this language is not used
extensively in daily interaction, at least not in pure form; in Equatorial
Guinean homes, the vernacular languages continue to hold sway, mixed with
pidgin English on Fernando Poo. In
those cases of mixed‑ethnic marriages, originally rare but recently
somewhat more frequent, use of Spanish or pidgin English is more common,
although given the wide knowledge of Fang, if one of the partners is Fang this
language is also used. Officially, all
government activities are carried out in Spanish, and yet a visit to any
government dependency reveals that whenever Guineans sharing a common native
language (including pidgin English) come together, these languages predominate
in all but the most formal ritualized communications. Even the socially stigmatized pichinglis
continues to play an important role in day‑to‑day activities of the
government, although not the slightest mention is made of this language in any
government document. This is in
striking contrast to the native Equatorial Guinean languages, which are given
official recognition in publications, and which are used for a few hours each
day in radio broadcasting over the two (government‑operated) radio
stations; the languages used are Fang (the greatest proportion), Bubi,
Combe/Ndowe, Bisio/Bujeba, and Annobonese.
Pidgin English is conspicuous by its absence, despite the fact that it
probably has more active speakers than Bubi, and surely more than Combe, Bujeba
and Annobonese. In fact the only
consistent reference to the existence of pidgin English comes in the works of
Spanish educators and missionaries, who generally have deplored this
`degenerate' language and have sought to devise strategies for its elimination,
although in recent years a more tolerant attitude has developed. Thus the first‑time visitor to
Fernando Poo is surprised at the unexpectedly widespread use of pichinglis, and is struck by the utter
futility of campaigns to exterminate it. In terms of the official versus real
language standards, Equatorial Guinea thus falls in line with many former
European colonies in Africa and Asia, and yet despite its limited use as a
medium of natural daily communication, Spanish continues to enjoy a vigorous
existence in Equatorial Guinea, a fact which sets this nation apart from many
others which have traversed a similar colonial and post‑colonial
linguistic evolution. The reasons for
this phenomenon are many and difficult to trace, but one important factor is
the poignant search for national identity, the fact of being the only Spanish‑speaking
nation in the midst of French‑, English‑ and Portuguese‑speaking
neighbors, and of being a tiny unknown nation struggling to throw off the
devastating effects of postcolonial destruction. Equatorial Guineans abroad often prefer use of Spanish even when
they share a common vernacular language, reinforcing their identity as
Equatorial Guineans and adopting the Spanish language as an unmistakable badge
of national origin. The continued
cultural, economic and political dependence on Spain was another important
factor, for since Spain itself is a small somewhat isolated nation, the projection
of Spanish national identity onto Equatorial Guinea has had the effect of
doubly reinforcing the natural isolation and cultural ethnocentrism of this
small African nation. Even more so than
in other African colonies, which depended on European nations that were more
diversified and that had a greater impact on the rest of the world, Equatorial
Guineans were molded into a mentality which found it difficult to conceive of
international cultural contacts separate from Spain, and which regarded Spanish
national phenomena as properly Guinean concerns. Unlike other African nations whose linguistic diversity is so
immense that the former colonial language is the only viable medium of national
communication, Equatorial Guinea could probably have implemented Fang as a
national language, given the hegemony of the Fang over the other ethnic groups
and the fact that many of the latter have already learned Fang out of
necessity. Even pidgin English could be
suggested as a means of rejecting the inevitable colonial stigma of the
European languages, since pidgin English, while of European origin, has a
distinctly African character, and has quasi‑official status in
neighboring Nigeria and Cameroon. The
choice of Spanish as a national language is both a reflection of close cultural
ties with the metropolis, and of the realistically high level of proficiency in
Spanish which characterized Equatorial Guinea poised for independence.
The
reasons for the non-creolization of Equatorial Guinean Spanish
On the surface, Equatorial Guinea might appear to be
a typical example of Spanish‑African interfacing, paralleling the
developments in the Spanish‑speaking areas of the Americas, and leading,
in the latter areas, to the formation of various forms of pidgin and creole
Spanish, and to a series of linguistic deformations whose precise origin
remains puzzling up to the present. The
native languages of Equatorial Guinea belong to the Bantu family, and are
similar in general structure to many of the languages brought to the Caribbean
region by Portuguese slave traders, coming from the Congo/Angola/lower Guinea
region. It is likely that a certain
percentage of the slaves (particularly some of those known as gangá; cf. Castellanos and Castellanos
1988: 32-4) came from the very
territories that are now part of Equatorial Guinea, particularly the island of
Fernando Poo, which was at times used as a slaving station. Phonetically, morphologically and
syntactically, the Bantu languages share a number of important similarities,
although of course the differences are equally significant. Few employ word‑final consonants with
any regularity, and none employs consonantal desinences for such operations as
verbal and nominal inflection, using systems of prefixation instead. Most of the Bantu languages use a phonemic system
of tonal contours in addition to segmental contrasts, a number of them do not
differentiate /l/ and /r/ phonologically, and a great number have word‑initial
prenasalized consonants, generally written mb‑,
nd‑, ng‑, etc. Few have
the equivalent of a second person vs. third person pronominal distinction,
corresponding to the tú‑usted distinction in Spanish.
At any given time, the proportion of Spaniards to
Guineans was quite small, rising to a maximum of about 5% in the capital city
of Santa Isabel, but dropping to a fraction of a percent in rural regions of
Rio Muni. Those Guineans in most
constant contact with the Spaniards generally came to be employed in plantation
labor, particularly on Fernando Poo, and while no system of slavery ever
existed in Spanish Guinea, the working conditions and socio‑cultural
setting of large‑scale farming on Fernando Poo was not radically
different from that found in such areas as Cuba, coastal Mexico and
Brazil. Black laborers worked under a
system of overseers, with the transition from black to white in supervisory
capacities being effected toward the top of the administrative hierarchy. The lack of a significant creolization of
Spanish in Equatorial Guinea, and the lack of distinctly `Caribbean' Spanish
structures which have largely been attributed to African influence in the
latter region, have to be sought in the fundamental differences that
characterize Spanish colonization in Africa and in the Caribbean.
Although the time factor of colonial presence might
seem significant (5O‑1OO years in Equatorial Guinea versus several
centuries in the Caribbean), it is of little real importance, as evidenced by
two facts. The first is that pidgins
and creoles can easily develop after only one or two generations, as
exemplified by such areas as Hawaii, Cape Verde, the Netherlands Antilles,
Surinam, the Virgin Islands, and Annobón.
Morever, despite the presence of black slaves in Spanish America from
the middle of the sixteenth century, the large plantation societies which gave
rise to the conditions propitious for creolization did not come to prominence
until well into the nineteenth century, when the proportion of black slaves and
freedmen became significantly larger than the white population in many
areas. Thus, for all intents and
purposes, the time interval under consideration for both areas is comparable.
The sociocultural profile of the Spanish who resided
in Equatorial Guinea was in general considerably different from that of the
colonizers of the New World. The latter
came in large measure from the poorest and most remote areas of Spain; the
first conquistadores were largely
small farmers or artesans who exchanged the risk of hardship and death in the
new world for the possibility of acquiring wealth and a noble title that were
completely beyond their reach in Spain.
Later settlers were largely soldiers of fortune, followed by small
farmers who had exhausted their
opportunities in Spain. Even at the end
of the Spanish empire in the Americas, represented by Cuba and Puerto Rico at
the end of the 19th century, most recently arrived Spaniards came from the
parched areas of the Canary Islands, and from the most backward regions of
Galicia and Extremadura. The majority
of these settlers were only partially literate, and few could be considered
well‑educated professionals, although many subsequently acquired a
significant educational and professional level in their new homelands. Spanish Guinea, on the other hand, was from
the beginning settled by a combination of civil servants, missionaries, and
small entrepreneurs, both in agriculture and in commerce. A group of prosperous plantations was set up
by Castilian and above all Valencian landowners, whose cultural level was
considerably above that of the Spaniards that continued to emigrate to America,
and since Guinea was never an attractive place for massive immigration, those
Spaniards that chose to live in Guinea generally made this choice in view of
superior salaries or perquisites, available only for the middle and
professional classes. Indirect evidence
of the cultural and educational level of the Spanish colonizers in Guinea is
found in the particulars of Equatorial Guinean Spanish, which while containing
a number of significant differences from peninsular Spanish, contains virtually
no elements typical of uneducated Spanish usage, such as abound in Latin
American Spanish. Analogical forms such
as haiga, losotros, etc., are not found in Guinean Spanish, nor are non‑etymological
prefixes such as arrecordar, entodavía, etc. The only consistent
phonetic deformations are those characteristic of middle‑class Spaniards
from central Spain: reduction of ‑ado to ‑ao, luego to logo, etc.
Also of importance is the fact that, unlike in the
Americas, Spaniards in Equatorial Guinea did not generally immigrate with the
intent of permanently establishing themselves, but rather of working for a
given time period, and nearly always returned to Spain. The result was a
reduced sense of permanency, and a greater bilateral contact between Spain and
expatriate Spaniards in Guinea. Even
though a number of Spaniards were born in Guinea, few considered themselves as
anything other than Spaniards, similar to their countrymen in the Canary
Islands or Ifni, and there were few families that had lived continuously in
Spanish Guinea for more than a single generation. The amount of miscegenation was also considerably less in Guinea
than in the Americas, as Spanish settlers brought a higher proportion of
Spanish women, a fact visibly evident in the small number of mulatto Guineans,
as opposed to the Caribbean region of Latin America.
A principal difference between life in Spanish
Guinea and in Spanish America is that in the African territories, there never
occurred the massive linguistic and ethnic fragmentation that resulted from the
Atlantic slave trade, which placed in daily contact Africans who spoke a myriad
different native languages and who shared no common language. These circumstances forced the colonial
languages (or the incipient pidgin Portuguese learned on shipboard or in the
slaving stations) into the role of lingua franca, and the rapid push to convert
a rudimentary and partially understood
language into an effective vehicle for daily communication resulted in the fixation
of non‑standard forms which, left to drift in the absence of normative
influences, eventually gave rise to creolized variants, a few of which continue
to exist. Equatorial Guinean laborers
rarely embodied the juxtaposition of more than two ethnic groups, and when in
the present century the indigeneous labor force was virtually replaced by
nearly 5O,OOO Nigerians, the latter's lingua franca, pidgin English, rapidly
became the most useful vehicle of communication on Fernando Poo, continuing
even past the exodus of the Nigerians.
So effective was the transference of pidgin English to Fernando Poo
(spoken originally by the Fernandinos and other descendents of settlers from
Sierra Leone and Liberia), that it was adopted for daily communication by
native Guineans, even those sharing the same native language. This is in striking contrast to the use of
Spanish in Equatorial Guinea, where except for more highly educated citizens,
or in the case of official public functions, communication among members of the
same ethnic group is conducted primarily in that group's language. This preference may be explained by the more
cosmopolitan nature of Fernando Poo, particularly its capital, in comparison
with Rio Muni. In the latter territory,
despite its land frontiers with the rest of continental Africa, little contact
with neighboring nations has taken place, due to poor communications and
political difficulties, both in colonial times and more recently. During the Macías government, thousands of
Guineans took refuge in Gabon and Cameroon, and those that have subsequently
returned have brought a somewhat expanded perspective, but few residents of
neighboring countries ever moved to or even visited Rio Muni. Fernando Poo, on the other hand, has been a
way‑station in west Africa for several centuries, changing hands nearly
half a dozen times, and because of its insular nature, straddling the Gulf of
Guinea, it is a cultural crossroads.
From the earliest days of Spanish colonization, Santa Isabel contained
numerous Europeans of various nations, as well as Kru (Sundiata 1975), Mende,
Ibo, Calabar, Hausa, Angolans, and Sno Tomenses, and even a small
contingent of Asians. Even in post‑colonial
times, the constant influx of merchants and temporary residents from other
parts of AFrica, such as Cameroon, Nigeria and Ghana, has reinforced the Babel‑like
atmosphere of Malabo, and particularly in the marketplaces, where a sizeable
portion of the market vendors are not native Guineans, the need for more
effective trans‑lingual communication is strongly felt. Most non‑Guineans resident in Malabo
come to learn some Spanish, and some speak it quite well, on a par with native
Guineans, but conversations with Africans of unknown ethnic origin usually use
pidgin English as an opening gambit, and rarely Spanish. When the unknown interlocutor is dressed in
traditional Moslem fashion, Hausa may also be attempted. The total result is a lack of pressure on
the Spanish langauge to fulfill all needs of daily communication, being
acquired only in the measure necessary to fulfill school or professional
functions. It is noteworthy that hardly
any Equatorial Guineans use Spanish to curse or insult, and indeed most do not
even possess the requisite vocabulary items.
Those in daily contact with Spaniards have picked up the ubiquitous coño, and occasional joder, but these words are not used in
the same fashion as by native Spanish speakers. At the other extreme of the emotional dimension, Spanish is
rarely used to express high degrees of affection, love, passion or endearment. When carressing a child belonging to another
ethnic group, most Guineans will either use their own native language, whether
or not it is understood by the child, or in appropriate cases will use pidgin
English, at times with some Spanish words mixed in. Guineans involved in professional situations are well acquainted
with the Spanish vocabulary appropriate to their profession, but may not be
comfortable with words dealing with home life or small farming, which they
would rarely have occasion to use in Spanish.
As well as never serving as the sole vehicle for
inter‑ethnic communication, the Spanish language was never removed from
the national environment of Spanish Guinea for a long enough time to result in
the loss of awareness of its structure, nor were cultural and linguistic
contacts with Spain interrupted for a significant period. One of the factors that most facilitates the
formation of creoles is an initial contact with the colonial langauge, followed
by a rapid cutoff of contact with native speakers of that language, a process
in which the colonial language suffers no constraints and receives no infusions
from the continued presence of native speakers of the colonial language. In this linguistic vacuum, influence of the
native languages of the soon‑to‑be creole speakers is free to grow,
and the end result is frequently a new language containing large proportions of
both the original language and the supraordinate language. Such has occurred, for example, in Haiti, Cape
Verde and Guinea‑Bissau, Annobón, Seychelles, Trinidad, the Philippines,
and most probably with Afrikaans in South Africa. In Spanish Guinea, contact with Spain was never broken off,
except for the last 7‑8 years of the Macías government, an insufficient
time for any significant linguistic changes to take place. From the arrival of the first permanent
Spanish settlers, the Spanish language was a living force in Equatorial Guinea,
and those Equatorial Guineans who had any contact at all with the Spanish
language were at the same time in contact with Spanish nationals who travelled
freely to Spain, and who insured the presence of Spanish linguistic usage as
current in Spain.
The impact of a small group of religious figures is
not to be underestimated, particularly on Fernando Poo, for in the majority of
the small towns, mass is said once or twice a week by a visiting priest, and
attendance at these masses is impressively high. The masses are held entirely in Spanish (except in the case of a
few Guinean priests), and parishoners often present spontaneous prayers and
offerings in the congregation. The
sacristans and other attendants are residents of the respective towns, and
their active participation in the mass adds to the contact with the Spanish
language in areas where few if any resident Spaniards are to be found. In many areas the religious personnel also
provided the only consistently available medical services, which increased
their contact with all members of the population. Subsequently, the Spanish government's cooperative mission has
established a network of doctors and paramedics throughout Equatorial
Guinea, which has the secondary effect
of insuring constant contact with the received Spanish langauge for large
segments of the Guinean population.
Variation
within Equatorial Guinean Spanish
At first acquaintance, the most striking difference
between the Spanish of Equatorial Guinea and the principal dialects of Spain or
other Spanish‑speaking countries, lies in the area of segmental phonetics
and intonation. Grammatically, Guinean
Spanish has no systematic differences from Peninsular Spanish, but is rather
characterized by a considerable instability with regard to verb conjugation,
syntactic formation, prepositional usage, sequence of tenses, etc. That is to say, there are no expressions or
grammatical modalities that are distinctly characteristic of Guinean Spanish
(or distinctly lacking in Guinean Spanish), and among its most educated
speakers, Guinean Spanish contains the same breadth of grammatical structures
found in the Spanish spoken in central and eastern Spain, whence came the
majority of colonists, administrators and later settlers and advisors. Striking in Guinean Spanish is the high
degree of random errors of verbal stems, conjugations and declensions, verb
tenses, prepositional usage, etc. Much
of the verbal variation appears to stem from phonetic instability of the vowels
in Guinean Spanish, which results in apparent shifts of verbal mood, tense and
person. Nominal gender is also somewhat
unstable, not only in certain problematic words (el/la dote), but even in other elements which are normally fixed in
other Spanish dialects. Prepositions are occasionally omitted, and more
frequently interchanged.
Excursus: the arrival and spread of Pidgin English on
Fernando Poo/Bioko
On the island of Fernando Poo (Bioko) Pidgin English
has successfully resisted social, political and linguistic pressures for more
than 150 years. In the 19th century, PE
was also used on Corisco and the smaller islands even before the arrival of
Spanish colonizers (Guillemar de Aragón 1852:
78; Iradier 1887), but current residents of Corisco (the smaller islands
have no resident population) do not learn PE unless they travel to Malabo. Saavedra y Magdalena (1910: 184) found many Corisco residents who could
also speak some French, and described this group as the most Europeanized in
all of Spanish Guinea. Granda (1985a,
1985b) noted that even on Annobón, residents who had spent time in Malabo spoke
PE amongst themselves, due to the higher prestige accorded to those who had
travelled to Fernando Poo; he claimed that PE forms were actually penetrating fa d'ambú. The present writer also did fieldwork on Annobón, as well as
among the relatively large Annobonese community in Malabo, and observed very
few incursions of PE into Annobonese speech; indeed, Annobonese are proud of
speaking their own language, which unlike PE is used on radio broadcasting, and
for which several grammar books have been written.
Unlike most other West African regions, where a
single series of events led to the use of English and PE, PE on Bioko has
multiple origins, all deriving ultimately from PE-using communities along a
large segment of the West African coast.
González Echegaray 1959: 22)
simply assumed that PE as used on Fernando Poo and elsewhere along the West
African coast was a direct implantation of sailors' jargon, but the matter is
much more complex. The use of varieties
of English on Bioko began with the de
facto British control of the island, in the first half of the 19th century,
during which time period Spain made no serious efforts toward colonizing its
African colony. In 1827, Great Britain
negotiated with Spain in order to set up a joint anti‑slavery tribunal on
Fernando Poo, to aid in the campaign against African slavery. The principal city of Fernando Poo was
founded by Captain William Owen in the same year, and was named Port
Clarence. The seat of the tribunal was
returned to Freetown in 1833 and use of Port Clarence as a base for
anti-slaving raids ended in 1835, but the British presence and influence
remained. John Beecroft, an English
trader and entrepreneur, was eventually named as governor by the Spanish
government; the British government simultaneously made him consul for the Bight
of Benin/Biafra area. During this
period, Britain made several attempts to purchase Fernando Poo outright, but
the efforts always dissolved at the last minute. When Spain finally took de facto control of the island several
decades later, the name of the main city was changed to Santa Isabel; during
the Macías regime the name was changed once more, to Malabo, honoring the last
of the Bubi kings. However, until well
into the twentieth century, PE-speaking islanders, collectively known as fernandinos (cf. Sundiata 1972; also known
as portos/potos < Portuguese;
cf. Foreign Office 1920: 5) continued
to look to England for cultural and educational models, and many sent their
children to England to be educated. The
presence of standard English on Fernando Poo together with PE was significant
during much of the 19th century, and must be factored into the history of
Equatorial Guinean PE.
Despite the de facto British control of Fernando Poo
during nearly half of the 19th century, the number of British citizens, either
military or civilian, was never very large.
However, an increasingly large number of PE speakers arrived on Fernando
Poo, first as the result of anti-slavery activities and unsuccessful
colonization and resettlement schemes, and later to fulfill labor
requirements. A brief historical sketch
will illustrate the multiple routes of arrival of PE on Fernando Poo, as well
as the chronological and geographical diversity which contributed to `Guinean'
PE. It will also help explain the fact
that, from the beginning, PE has been the lingua franca of choice even when
African languages were readily available as alternatives. PE has been a vigorous linguistic
undercurrent which although neglected by colonial and postcolonial governments,
is by several measures more viable than either Spanish or Bubi, and rivals Fang
at the national level. Holm (1989: 419) states that `Spain's efforts to replace
[PE] with Spanish were only partly successful.
This is probably a bit overstated, since toward the end of the 1800's PE
was not yet widespread beyond the pale of Santa Isabel, while Spanish was
already in use throughout Fernando Poo, albeit in rudimentary fashion.
The majority of captured slaves repatriated on
Fernando Poo during the 1820's and 30's were from adjoining coastal waters,
particularly from the slaving region of Calabar, where PE was already well
established (cf. Fayer 1990; Sundiata 1990: 21). The British citizens and even the Sierra Leonean recruits spoke
more or less standard English, whereas the freed slaves provided the first
inklings of a lasting PE presence on Fernando Poo; because of their precarious
situation, little record of their presence on the island has survived. Settled during the same period was a group
of free Africans from Sierra Leone and Liberia, brought in 1826 by William Owen
as part of a scheme to found a permanent Anglophone colony (Liniger-Goumaz
1988: 25). The group, which included a Sierra Leonean minister, was ravaged
by tropical diseases, but the survivers were among the first permanent bearers
of Africanized English, including PE, to Fernando Poo. This is the group which the Fernandinos
consider as their first legitimate ancestors.
Only a few years later, the British Baptist Missionary Society attempted
another colonization scheme, this time using Jamaican settlers. These `English-' speaking blacks, like the
Sierra Leoneans and Kru, formed a class of middlemen, between the indigenous
Bubi and the European traders, and created for themselves a privileged
socioeconomic position that Fernandinos enjoy even to this day.
By far the largest number of PE speakers arrived in
Fernando Poo as contract laborers on the cacao plantations. Cacao became an important crop on Fernando
Poo, Sno Tomé, and other West African regions in the second
half of the 19th century. The labor
demands of the cacao plantations on a relatively unpopulated island like
Fernando Poo could not be met by indigenous labor sources, as the native Bubis
preferred not to work on the plantations.
Many important planters were from Sierra Leone, and they began to import
laborers from coastal Africa. At first,
some were brought from the Gold Coast and Sierra Leone, but more were drawn
from Yoruba-speaking areas of western Nigeria.
Near the turn of the 20th century, West African sources in Sierra and
Liberia were again tapped in large numbers, and thousands of Kru laborers were
brought to Fernando Poo. Most worked on
the cacao plantations, but the Kru skill at fishing and navegation also made
them important in maritime commerce, and many Kru joined the ranks of the
relatively prosperous Fernandinos (cf. Sundiata 1990: 44-45 for some representative figures). During and immediately following World War I, Germans began to
leave Cameroon, and hundreds of Germans, together with as many as 60,000
Cameroonians, crossed into Río Muni (Vincent 1901). Most of the Cameroonians were eventually repatriated, but as many
as 16,000 Cameroonians and Germans migrated to Fernando Poo, where they set up
quasi-military settlements in the interior of the island. The Germans had not eliminated PE from
Cameroon (Todd 1982, 1984), so that at least some of the Cameroonians who
settled on Fernando Poo must have spoken PE.
Labor migration from Liberia was particularly strong until the 1930's,
when international scandals and investigations by the League of Nations caused
its cessation. In the early 1940's,
large-scale recruitment of Nigerian laborers was begun; to give an idea of the
importance of this last wave of mainland Africans to Fernando Poo, in 1941
there were approximately 10,000 Nigerians on Fernando Poo, while by the late
1960's the number had risen to nearly 90,000, representing almost 90% of the
island's population (Sundiata 1990:
47). Most of these Nigerians
were from eastern regions, where PE was already prevalent, and there is ample
documentation that PE continued to fortify its position as the most viable
lingua franca on Fernando Poo. The
Nigerians remained on Fernando Poo until the first years of the postcolonial
regime, when the Macías government ordered the expulsion or extermination of
most foreign workers. The linguistic
traces of such massive numbers of Nigerians, who preferred using PE rather than
Nigerian languages as a lingua franca, remain in Malabo and even in rural
areas, where Bubis had daily contact with Nigerians.
In partial summary, some form of PE has been used on
Fernando Poo/Bioko since the first years of the British presence. This fact can be established not only by
reference to oral tradition, but also by establishing an overlapping chain of
historical accounts of PE usage on Fernando Poo, from the 1830's to the present
time. Moros y Morellón and de los Ríos
(1844: 61-2), part of the first Spanish expeditionary force which took de facto
possession of Fernando Poo from the British, discovered [English-speaking]
Sierra Leoneans in Port Clarence. By
the 1840's, Clarke (1848: v) was able to report that `many [natives] are
acquiring English'; presumably the use of `natives' also referred to
repatriated Africans freed from captured slaving ships. Many of these slaves had also acquired a
rudimentary form of English, which, when combined with that spoken by British
citizens and natives of Sierra Leone, sowed the seeds for a permanent PE usage. Guillemar de Aragón (1852: 61), who visited Fernando Poo in the early
1840's, observed that in Clarence there lived `unos 900 negros civilizados y
solo 15 europeos. Casándose
segun el rito protestante, se dicen ingleses, y todos hablan inglés' [900
civilized Negroes and only 15 Europeans.
They {=
the Negroes: JML} marry within the
Protestant Church, call themselves English, and they all speak English]. Balmaseda (1869: 18), reporting on the
situation only a few years later, found a prosperous African `aristocracy' in
Santa Isabel who spoke `English.' That
at least some of these individuals may have spoken standard English rather than
PE is suggested by a few words reported in the text, including meat instead of the more usual PE bif.
Saluvet (1892: 33), describing
the same time period, observed `English'-speaking Africans on Fernando Poo,
many of whom were engaged in trade with Bonny in Nigeria. Schuchardt (1888: 243), citing reports from the early 1880's, gave examples of a
fluid mixture of `Spanish [and Portuguese:
JML] and English' on Fernando Poo:
`buenos dias, sir, mi vista tu marcha en la wharf,' `esta hombre llama
krooboy, krooboy no quiere viene,' `él fala mucho malo para mí, porque mi dise
que tifi mucho moni a su massa.'. An
official report a few decades later (Foreign Office 1920: 5) noted that `English and Spanish are both
spoken at Santa Isabel, but English has been the common speech of the coast
peoples since the British occupation.
Trade or pidgin English is used as a lingua franca not only between
whites and blacks, but also between natives with distinct languages of their
own.' Bravo Carbonel (1917: 46) also noted that non-Bubi Africans on
Fernando Poo preferred using PE to Spanish, often denying knowledge of the
latter language (which the author claimed they really could understand). Zarco (1938), originally published almost 20
years earlier, described PE as more important than Spanish on Fernando Poo,
suggesting that a century or more might be required for it to be totally replaced
by Spanish. All subsequent descriptions
of Fernando Poo have recognized, sometimes disapprovingly, the use of PE as a
lingua franca throughout the island.
Many of the preceding citations come from observers
whose native language was not English, and who used the term `English'
indiscriminately to refer to PE as well as to non-pidginized European varieties
of English. Some Spaniards were
evidently unable to distinguish PE from standard English, while others, equally
ignorant of the English language, automatically assumed that all Africans'
attempts at speaking a European language fell into the category of
`broken.' Some of the original
Fernandinos received formal education in England and upon return to Fernando
Poo continued to use the European standard.
However, PE was the predominant English-derived language on Fernando Poo
starting in the second half of the 19th century. The language described by Zarco for the beginning of the 20th
century is a well-established West African PE, showing greatest similarity with
Sierra Leonean Krío and also with Cameroonian PE, but nearly half a century
earlier, observations by British missionaries on Fernando Poo demonstrate that
stable forms of PE were already well implanted on Fernando Poo. The most thorough attestations come from Roe
(1874), describing the situation encountered by English missionaries in the
late 1860's, where the term `broken English' was already in use: `At first I could not understand her words
[a woman on Fernando Poo: JML] any more
than if they had been Coptic or Sanskrit, though they were what are commonly
called broken-English' (Roe 1874:
19). Boocock (1906) describes,
in much less detail than Roe, PE on Fernando Poo as it was found in 1880. His observation on the language in use on
Fernando Poo was that `Pigeon [sic.] English was used because good English was
not understood' (p. 51). Each variety
of PE draws on the lexicon of locally-spoken languages, as well as on
patrimonial English words. Equatorial
Guinea is no exception, and the most common non-English source is Spanish. It might be expected that Bubi, the
indigenous language of Fernando Poo, would contribute to the PE lexicon, but
the history of PE in Equatorial Guinea explains the total lack of Bubi
elements. PE was introduced into
Fernando Poo by the British, at a time when the Bubi were still living outside
the pale of colonial civilization, and had no contact with English- or
PE-speaking Africans living in the European colonies. British missionaries made some attempt at teaching standard
English to the Bubi, but these efforts were rapidly replaced by the Spaniards,
and most Bubi eventually learned to communicate in Spanish. The main vector for the spread of PE on
Fernando Poo was urban-based commerce, in which the Bubi never actively
participated. From the outset, this
commerce was in the hands of natives of coastal Africa, beginning with the
Fernandinos and more recently including Hausa speakers from Nigeria, as well as
natives of Cameroon. PE is the
vehicular language of choice among merchants and traders, and Bubis living in
cities and towns have learned PE accordingly.
Within Equatorial Guinea, the Fang from Río Muni have been the only
ethnic group to enjoy any measure of success in imposing their language on
other sectors of the population. Bubi
has never been learned widely by other Equatorial Guineans, and even Fang has
made only negligible contributions to PE on Fernando Poo. PE has the advantage of being an ethnically
neutral lingua franca, which can be freely spoken without yielding to a rival
ethnic group. At the same time, PE is
more closely associated with popular levels, while Spanish, although widely
spoken and with considerable fluency, is still identified with
`Europeans.' Over the years, a not
inconsiderable number of Spaniards resident on Fernando Poo acquired some
proficiency in PE, which added to the incorporation of Spanish lexical
items. Yet another factor responsible
for adding Spanish lexical items to Equatorial Guinean PE is the search for a
national identity. This search, from
natives of a tiny country who in postcolonial times have been forced to seek
exile in disproportionately high numbers (cf. UNED 1993), has fostered use of
Spanish among the Equatorial Guinean intellectual classes, particularly when
travelling abroad. At the popular
level, the same effect has been produced through the free incorporation of
Spanish lexical items. No discernible
pattern is followed; Spanish words sometimes refer to concepts or items forming
part of Hispanic culture or introduced by Europeans, but may also refer to
commonplace items in which a European connotation is lacking.
Despite a historical presence on Bioko which
antedates that of Spanish, PE has never been officially recognized, by Spanish
or Guinean governments. Instead of the
often polemical and negative campaigns which some West African nations have
waged in an attempt to root out PE, colonial and post-colonial governments in
Equatorial Guinea have simply ignored PE, as though refusal to acknowledge the
nation's most viable lingua franca would cause it to disappear of its own
accord. Spanish missionaries and
teachers were aware of the use of this language and often lamented its
existence and the impossibility of rooting it out, but few took the trouble to
learn it. Known as broken English, they regarded PE simply as an imperfectly learned
colonial English which, since it could not be corrected, should be
eliminated. Bravo Carbonel (1917: 46)
referred to the `English' spoken by the Fernandinos as follows: `no es el inglés puro, sino bastardeado,
empobrecido y sin la elegante pronunciación de ese idioma.' González Echegaray (1959: 23) bemoaned the fact that `el pichinglis, por este aspecto que posee
de esperanto de los negros, es hoy el mayor enemigo en nuestra zona de la
difusión del castellano, puesto que es éste el papel que debiera desempeñar
nuestro idioma.' Moreover, the survival
of PE in Spanish Guinea was an embarrassing reminder of former British presence
which, in a few short decades and in an informal manner, had implanted its
language more successfully than Spain, with its structured colonization. Despite widespread individual feelings
against the use of PE, the current Guinean government continues the policy of
treating PE as an `invisible' language.
Radio broadcasts are transmitted in the country's principal indigeneous
languages, for several hours each day, politicians at times feel the need to
give speeches in the vernacular, and Guinean teachers are permitted if not
encouraged to use the national languages as pedagogical aids. However, nowhere does PE appear, although
use of this language would in many cases be more effective and reach a wider
audience than either Spanish or one of the indigeneous languages.
Early
examples of Spanish in Equatorial Guinea and West Africa
There is testimonial evidence to the effect that
toward the end of the last century and well into the present century, many
residents of Fernando Poo spoke what appears to have been a pidgin
Spanish. For example: `Vayamos a la
relación del indígena con esta otra autoridad que es el maestro. Si éste es misionero, aprende malogradamente
el castellano. Sabe decir "buenos
días" cuando es por la noche y "buenas tardes" cuando es por la
mañana. No sabe apenas el castellano
para poderlo hablar ... si van a la escuela oficial, aprenden un castellano
correcto y enrevesado, y saben escribir con bastante claridad' ; `El castellano de los indígenas es por regla
general el mismo que puede balbucir un niño de tres años. No sabe lo que es conjugar un verbo ni
analizar una frase cualquiera en castellano' (Madrid 1933: 114-5, 145); cf. also Ferrer Piera
1900: 105-8; Soler 1957; Manfredi 1957;
Ramos Izquierdo y Vivar 1912: 46; Bravo
Carbonell 1917: 51, 68). However, the proportion of pidgin Spanish‑speaking
natives of Fernando Poo was probably not as high as suggested by the Spanish
authors mentioned above, for current surveys among older Guineans, whose
acquisition of Spanish dates from the first decades of this century, do not
confirm such observations, and anecdotal evidence offered by these citizens
about the linguistic abilities of their parents suggests that by the turn of
the century, Spanish was already on its way to being a truly usable language on
Fernando Poo.
Few accurate statements about language usage on
Annobón exist, and none deal with earlier time periods, but by the time the
Spaniards arrived to take possession of the island, the residents already spoke
fa d'ambú, rather than a strictly
African language. Muñoz y Gaviria
1899: 219) remarked that the Annobonese
spoke `una especie de chapurrado portugués-español.' Spanish colonizing efforts were minimal on Annobón, although the
Spanish presence was considerably greater during the early part of the colonial
period than the Guinean government's presence today, and judging by the
linguistic proficiency of Annobón Islanders in Spanish, the efforts of
teachers/missionaries were largely successful, not surprising given an island
whose geographical extension (les than 2O km2) and its reduced
population (not much over 15OO during the colonial period, and all concentrated
into a single village during most of the year), made education a manageable
task.
Beginning in the late 19th century, there are
several indirect examples of the use of Spanish in Equatorial Guinea and other
West African territories. The Spanish
explorer Manuel Iradier described a voyage along the West African coast, from
the Senegambia to Spanish Guinea; he gives several examples of Spanish spoken by
Africans (cf. Lipski 1991):
Mí
no sabe, señol (Iradier 1887: 55)
[Senegambia]
Mi
marcha esta noche a uaka (Iradier 1887:
219) [Río Muni]
Mi
piensa que esa cosa es como culebra grande (Iradier 1887: 229) [Corisco]
Ferrer
Piera (1900: 105-8) reproduces the
speech of a Bubi man from Fernando Poo:
El bosque rompe la ropa, y
bubí anda mejor desnudo y descalzo ...
Yo gusta más ir vestido,
quitar botas para no caer y andar mejor ...
Bubís estar en el bosque
More
recently, Fleitas Alonso (1989) gives several stylized literary examples of
Guinean Spanish:
Massa, parece que está
"palabra" grande en Gobierno ... parece que gobernador tiene
"palabra" grande con España ... pregunta en Cámara. Todas gente lo sabe.
Señora tiene niño y no puede
marchar ahora. Mañana después de la forma, marchará a Bata porque massa Ramírez
ya no está en la compañía.
Tiramos en poblado ... si
quieres vamos a poblado ...
Ese sitio no está bien. Están más serpientes.
Soler
(1957) provides other literary examples:
¿En el río siempre?
---No; río, poco. En mar, massa.
---Siempre en cayuco.
---Sí, massa. Veces no; no hay
cayuco, hay tumba; no tiene tumba, tiene chapeo ...
---¿Tú no duermes nunca?
---Claro. Morenos duermen ... ahora yo duerme cuando
tú no estabas.
Moreno piensa que massa blanco quiere cosas.
None of the above examples can be taken
uncritically, coming as they do from European writers with a jaundiced view of
Africans' linguistic abilities in Spanish.
However, the correspondence between these purported quotes and contemporary
non-fluent Guinean Spanish reveals that most of the authors did not overly
exaggerate the speech they observed.
Studies
of the Spanish of Equatorial Guinea
Scholarship on Equatorial Guinean Spanish was slow
in coming, and most early linguistic and anthropological research on Spanish
Guinea concentrated on African languages and cultures. It was not until the 1950's that scholars
first began to regard Guinean Spanish, both as spoken by expatriate Spaniards
and particularly as acquired by Africans, as an object of study. The investigation of Spanish in Equatorial
Guinea begins with the ground-breaking work of Carlos González Echegaray (1951,
1959). This researcher, who worked in
the library of the Instituto de Estudios Africanos in Madrid, offered the first
scientific observations on Spanish language usage in Africa. The majority of his remarks focus on the
speech of the small expatriate Spanish colony in Spanish Guinea, but he does
offer brief comments on Spanish as learned by natives of Africa. González Echegaray (1951) offers a brief
overview of the linguistic profile of Spanish Guinea in the middle of the 20th
century. He explicitly acknowledges the
force of Pidgin English in this officially Spanish-speaking colony: `esta jerga tan extendida por toda la costa
occidental de Africa y ... constituye el esperanto de los negros, es en nuestra
colonia el mayor enemigo de la expansión del castellano, porque suple las
funciones de lengua intertribal que debiera llenar éste.' The author then gives a short list of
foreign borrowings into Guinean Spanish (as spoken primarily by
Spaniards): chapear `remove weeds,' Pidgin English words (contrimán < country man), and words derived from indigenous
languages (encué `large
basket'). Significantly, González
Echegaray offers preliminary observations on Spanish as spoken by Africans in
Spanish Guinea: `la progresiva
hispanización ... precisamente por sus características de rapidez e intensidad,
no ha permitido la formación de un dialecto criollo, ya que tales productos
suelen provenir de una larga convivencia y fermentación del idioma colonizador
y del nativo' (p. 106). He suggests
that `... el castellano, puesto en boca de los negros, constituye una especial
modalidad muy interesante y digna de estudio, especialmente en lo que afecta a
la fonética y a la sintaxis' (p. 106), although leaving detailed analysis for
later publications.
In another early article, Orueta Salanova (1953)
argues against the use of non-Spanish spellings for native African names and
lexical items. González Echegaray
(1959) gives the first synthesis of the linguistic situation in Equatorial
Guinea. The author offers a
wide-ranging account of the principal indigenous languages, together with an
annotated bibliography. As for Spanish
as spoken in Spanish Guinea, he states (p. 57) that `aquí se ha extendido el
castellano, sin haber hecho desaparecer a las lenguas vernáculas y sin que se
haya producido corrupción o adulteración fundamental en éstas o en aquél. Pero como siempre sucede en estos casos, ha
experimentado la lengua española una serie de transformaciones y adiciones
superficiales, de las más diversas procedencias.' He also gives a list of words of foreign origin which were used
at that time in the Spanish spoken in the territory.
The next set of observations were offered by
Castillo Barril (1964, 1969), referring exclusively to Spanish as spoken by
Africans in Equatorial Guinea. The
first work is extremely brief, and does not mention the feature of Guinean
Spanish which most immediately strikes the outside observer: the strikingly `African' segmental and
suprasegmental phonetic characteristics superimposed on European Spanish
patterns. Instead, Castillo Barril
acknowledges that Spanish is a second language for nearly all the indigenous
population, and comments on the difficulty of implanting the Spanish language
among peoples who already use a variety of native languages for daily
communication. Like his predecessors,
Castillo Barril also vociferates against the widespread use of Pidgin English,
particularly on the island of Fernando Poo:
`se recurría a todos los medios al alcance ... para estimular a los
niños a expresarse en castellano, como el llamado "símbolo", especie
de sambenito que se llevaba colgado del cuello por quien se sorprendía hablando
un idioma nativo o el pichin-inglish (p. 8).' At another point he refers to Pidgin English
as `pernicioso influjo del que vive el país', habla de `la carencia de lógica
en su sintaxis realmente disparatada y la pobreza de su léxico (1964: 52), while speculating on the possible
influences of indigenous languages on Guinean Spanish. Castillo Barril recognizes that each Guinean
ethnic group potentially contributes distinct characteristics to Spanish spoken
as a second language.
In a longer study, Castillo Barril (1969) offers an
overview of the principal indigenous languages of Equatorial Guinea, including
Annobón creole, with special emphasis on phonological differences with respect
to Spanish. He then describes the
features of Spanish as spoken by each ethnic group. Bubi interference is implicated in the aspirated pronunciation of
/s/, the reduction of /r/ and the absence of the trill /rr/, the realization of
/d/ as [r] and the occasional realization of /k/ as [x]. Annobonese creole-influenced Spanish,
according to Castillo Barril, does not exhibit taps or trills, replacing both
elements with /l/, the only liquid consonant in fa d'ambú. Like most other
Equatorial Guinean dialects, Annobonese Spanish speakers are yeístas (lacking the palatal lateral /l/), tend to accent final
syllables, and employ heavy nasalization throughout. Fang speakers reduce Spanish diphthongs (bueno > bono) and also
nasalize Spanish oral segments, tendencies which Castillo Barril ascribes to
the status of Spanish as a recently acquired language among the Fang. The playeros
(Combe/Ndowé and other groups inhabiting the coast of Río Muni) tend to
pronounce /k/ as [x], while Pidgin English speakers employ a `scandalous'
code-switching.3 Castillo
Barril (1969: 58) summarizes the
features of Equatorial Guinean Spanish:
`el tono de voz elevado, el timbre nasal, cierta debilitación de las
consonantes de articulación dura, el seseo, una entonación ligeramente melosa
con el ritmo entrecortado y una variedad de tonos silábicos.' Young Guinean speakers have a small lexical
repertoire, confuse grammatical gender, misplace or omit articles, incorrectly
use reflexive verbs, and use circumlocuations translated directly from their
native languages. As for the extent to
which Spanish is used in Equatorial Guinea, the author admits (p. 57) that
`nuestros niños hablan la lengua materna o el pichin-inglis en el hogar y en la
calle, y sólo se expresan en castellano durante las pocas horas que permanecen
en las aulas escolares.' He also gives
examples of the early literary and cultural texts written by Guinean
authors. Finally, Castillo Barril
mentions the language of Spanish expatriates; those living on isolated
plantations gradually adopt the linguistic peculiarities of their African
laborers, in particular morphosyntactic simplification, and freely use local
African vocabulary items.
Following these early forays, nearly thirty years
were to pass before Equatorial Guinean Spanish again received scholarly
attention. This was largely due to the
decolonization process and the post-colonial xenophobia, which placed
Equatorial Guinea off limits for foreign visitors for many years. In the early 1980's Germán de Granda,
Antonio Quilis, and I, each working independently, carried out fieldwork in
Equatorial Guinea, and began to publish linguistic analyses of Guinean
Spanish.
After serving in the Spanish diplomatic corps in
Equatorial Guinea, Germán de Granda (1984a) brought together the first
comprehensive set of observations on language usage in this country. Granda was already an established scholar in
the field of Afro-Hispanic language contacts and creole formation, having
carried out research on Colombian Palenquero, Afro-Antillean bozal Spanish, Afro-Colombian Chocó
Spanish, and Golden Age habla de negros. In the above-mentioned article, Granda gives
an overview of the linguistic situation in Equatorial Guinea, the domains of
usage of the principal African and European creole languages. Granda does not give linguistic details of
Guinean Spanish, since the purpose of the article is to situate Spanish among
the other languages in use in Equatorial Guinea.
Granda (1984b) describes the phonetic pecularities
of Spanish as spoken by speakers of Fang, the principal language of Río Muni,
widely used in Bioko and in all military and government domains. Granda attributes the resistance of
syllable-final /s/ and the infrequent neutralization of syllable-final /l/ and
/r/ in Fang-influenced Spanish to the prominence of word-final consonants in
Fang, unlike in many other Bantu languages.
Also attributed directly to the Fang substrate is the neutralization of
/r/-/rr/ and the pronunciation of intervocalic /d/ as [r].
Granda (1985d) describes the arrival of American
Spanish expressions from Cuba to Fernando Poo during the 19th century, largely
through the exile of Cuban revolutionaries on Fernando Poo in the 1860's (cf.
Balmaseda 1869, Gutiérrez 1983). Granda
(1985e) describes Spanish, Portuguese, and Pidgin English borrowings in Bubi
and Ndowé, while Granda (1986-87, 1988b, 1991c) gives a panoramic description
of Spanish in sub-Saharan Africa, centering on Equatorial Guinea. The author reviews commercial and linguistic
contacts between Spain and Africa from the end of the 15th century until the
20th century. Included is a historical
sketch of the presence of Spanish in Equatorial Guinea and a list of the
principal features of Guinean Spanish.
Granda (1994c) describes Spanish, English, German, and French borrowings
into Fang, while Granda (1984c, 1994b) contain bibliographical summaries of the
principal linguistic studies of Equatorial Guinean Spanish.
Granda (1991b) describes a phenomenon common in
Guinean Spanish and also in Angolan Portuguese spoken as a second
language: the use of the preposition en with verbs of motion (voy en
Bata). This same construction is mentioned by Vicario (1988: 210) as `una expresión típicamente
guineana.' After describing similar
constructions in other contact varieties of Spanish (e.g. in Paraguay) as well
as in earlier periods of Peninsular Spanish, Granda concludes that the
combination of an archaic Spanish construction and the fortuitous existence of
homologous combinations in the principal languages of Equatorial Guinea and
Angola lies behind the innovative combinations in Afro-Iberian speech.
The Spanish of Equatorial Guinea tends to employ
overt subject pronouns with a higher frequency than in most other Spanish
dialects, even those in areas where massive loss of word-final consonants
results in an elevated use of overt subject pronouns (e.g. the Caribbean, the
Canary Islands, and Andalusia). Granda
(1991d) considers possible links between Equatorial Guinean Spanish and creole
and vestigial dialects of Spanish before rejecting these possibilities as the
source of subject pronoun usage in Guinean Spanish. Granda is of the opinion that the obligatory use of subject
clitics in Bantu languages has been an important factor not only in Equatorial
Guinean Spanish but also in Caribbean Spanish dialects.
Lipski (1984) represents one of the earliest comprehensive
descriptions of Equatorial Guinean Spanish, based on fieldwork among the
principal ethnic groups of the country.
Working independently of Granda but appearing at approximately the same
time, Lipski (1984) describes the morphosyntactic features which characterize
the second-language varieties of Spanish used in Equatorial Guinea. These include the variability of the tú-usted
distinction and the frequent combination of usted
with verb forms corresponding to tú;
the gravitation towards the third person singular as invariant verbal paradigm,
and the interchange and elimination of common prepositions. In the phonetic realm Guinean Spanish is
noteworthy for the tenacious resistance of syllable- and word-final consonants
to neutralization and effacement, in striking contrast to traditional accounts
of the habla de negros, to say nothing
of theories of an African basis for vernacular Caribbean Spanish. These results were quite unexpected, given
the massive reduction of syllable-final consonants in nearly all varieties of
Spanish in which African influence has been postulated. In Equatorial Guinea word-final /s/
sometimes is elided (although the rates of deletion are considerably lower than
in Caribbean and `Afro-Hispanic' dialects), but virtually never passes through
the intermediate stage of aspiration.
Lipski (1984) was perhaps the first observer to suggest that loss of /s/
in Equatorial Guinean Spanish is a morphological phenomena rather than stemming
from a phonetic motivation, as occurs in most other Spanish dialects. The principal native speaker models during
the colonial period came from the Madrid area and from Valencia (the majority
of the large cacao planters were Valencian).
Although some of the Valencians were also speakers of Valencian/Catalan,
they spoke Spanish with Guineans and with other Spaniards while in the
colony. In both dialect clusters
syllable- and word-final consonants are quite resistant to effacement, in
comparison with the dialects of southern and southwestern Spain. This yielded a dialect obviously grounded in
Castilian/Levantine Spanish, with an overlay of African segmental and
suprasegmental traits which do not obscure the Peninsular origins of Guinean
Spanish.
Additional general details of Equatorial Guinean
Spanish are given in Lipski (1985b), while Lipski (1986a, 1986b, 1986c, 1987,
1988) broadens the comparative phonological analysis of final consonants, in
Equatorial Guinea and in other Spanish dialects. These observations are synthesized in the monographs Lipski (1985a,
1990), with the latter work concentrated on the speech of Malabo, the national
capital. Both books contain
transcriptions of representative samples of Guinean Spanish, together with an
evaluation of the importance of this dialect for theories of Afro-Hispanic
dialect genesis.
Antonio Quilis is another prominent scholar who has
published extensively on Spanish in Equatorial Guinea. Quilis (1983) surveys attitudes of young
Equatorial Guineans towards the Spanish language. The surveys were administered in high schools and university
extension courses, and covered the main ethnic groups of the country. In general the informants indicate that they
use Pidgin English and their native African languages most frequently in daily
communication, although a surprising third of the respondents said that it was
`easier' for them to speak Spanish than their native languages. At the same time, nearly all informants
stated that it was important for Guineans to learn Spanish, and more than 88%
were of the opinion that Spanish should be the language of schools. These conclusions are less than surprising
given the school environment in which the surveys were carried out. The presence of a Spanish-speaking
`catedrático' conducting the research must also not be overlooked as a possible
factor influencing the tenor of the responses.
Quilis (1988) updates the data on language attitudes
in Equatorial Guinea. The same strata
of secondary and university students provided informants for the survey. The results suggest a noteworthy increase in
the use of Spanish for intraethnic communication within the 5-year span
separating the two studies. For example
use of Spanish to parents tripled from the 1983 figures, while the exclusive
use of the native language was reduced by half. The use of Spanish with informants' children rose by more than
100% from the 1983 levels; the same was true with use of Spanish among
siblings. Almost 75% of the secondary
students used Spanish with their friends, and 75% also responded that Spanish
was frequently spoken in Equatorial Guinea.
From these data Quilis concludes that Spanish usage is on the increase,
at least among those receiving secondary and post-secondary education. Quilis (1989a) summarizes the results of
these studies.
Quilis (1989b) describes the vocabulary related to
coffee growing in Equatorial Guinea.
The words are not peculiar to Africans' Spanish, and are also used by
Europeans resident in the country.
Quilis (1992) dedicates a chapter of his Español en cuatro mundos to Spanish in Africa, both in North Africa
and particularly in Equatorial Guinea.
Following a historical overview of Spanish in Guinea, Quilis presents
data which expand on the observations of Quilis (1983) with respect to the use
of Spanish, Pidgin English and native Guinean languages. He also presents detailed phonetic data on
Equatorial Guinean Spanish, going beyond earlier descriptions. Quilis describes vocalic instability,
hiatus-breaking consonants (río > riyo), non-hiatus pronunciation of maestro, teatro; the lack of voiced fricatives, the neutralization of /r/
and /rr/, sporadic elimination of word-final /s/ without passing through an
intermediate stage of aspiration, the instability of the opposition /s/-/q/, and the use of tonal
patterns significantly different from those found in other varieties of
Spanish. In the morphosyntactic
dimension, Quilis describes the variability of number-gender agreement,
confusion and elimination of definite articles and pronouns, confusion of
verbal tense and mood, neutralization and elimination of prepositions, and
unusual circumlocutions.
Quilis (1995) gives basic data on Guinean
Spanish. Casado-Fresnillo (1995)
summarizes the principal features of Guinean Spanish. In addition to the facts presented by Quilis (1992),
Casado-Fresnillo comments on the frequent combination of the pronoun usted with verb endings corresponding to
tú (usted mandas), the high
frequency of overt subject pronouns, and modifications of the verbal system.
Quilis and Casado-Fresnillo (1992) offer another
preliminary phonetic description of Equatorial Guinean Spanish, based on
samples collected in Río Muni and Bioko.
Mentioned are the variable distinction /s/-/q/, sporadic elimination of
syllable-final consonants, vocalic instability, and variable realization of
/r/, /rr/, /x/, and /y/. Quilis and
Casado-Fresnillo (1995) represents the most complete synchronic description of
Equatorial Guinean Spanish yet to appear.
The book is accompanied by a compact disc containing recorded examples
of Guinean Spanish, recorded in situ.
After an introduction detailing the history of Spanish in Equatorial
Guinea, domains of usage and language attitudes, the book offers a chapter on
phonetics and phonology that expands on the work of Quilis and Casado-Fresnillo
(1992). The chapter contains
spectrograms of the major consonantal and vocalic articulations, as well as a
valuable description of the use of tones in Equatorial Guinean Spanish, most
probably influenced by the presence of lexical tones in the indigenous languages.4
An extensive chapter on morphosyntactic
characteristics gives data on word and sentence formation. Although no quantitative data are presented,
the presentation reflects the considerable syntactic variability which
characterizes Guinean Spanish in comparison to monolingual varieties. A chapter entitled `Peculiaridades del
enunciado' describes idiosyncratic circumlocutions, including responses to
questions, exclamations, repetition, and phatic expressions. The book also contains a section on lexical
peculiarities as well as a glossary of Equatorial Guinean Spanish. An appendix contains an anthology of written
and oral texts exemplifying the full gamut of Spanish langauge usage.
Nearly thirty years after González Echegaray (1959)
commented on the lexicon of Spanish as used in Equatorial Guinea, Nsue Otong
(1986) updated these entries in a brief article. Granados (1986) reviews the history of Spanish in Equatorial
Guinea and West Africa, from the 15th century to the present. After describing the primary features of
Golden Age habla de negro, Granados
describes the historical events that resulted in the establishment of Spanish
in Guinea. Although he gives no details
on contemporary Equatorial Guinean Spanish, he comments on the language of the
prize-winning novel Ekomo by María
Nsué. Granados does not give a literary
analysis, but rather comments on what he views as typical `errors' of
Equatorial Guinean Spanish, some of which appear in the novel. Mentioned are occasional lapses of
agreement, non-etymological use of prepositions, neutralization of /r/-/rr/,
and instability of verbal tense and mood.
Without giving specific examples, Granados counts the number of
deviations from standard Spanish, although he admits that Marís Nsué `se mueve
dentro de una norma correcta, ... la habilidad de María Nsué ha conseguido
superar la mayor parte de las desviaciones lingüísticas de sus compatriotas'
(p. 137). The author concludes,
somewhat pessimistically: `Al ser una
lengua artificial ... el español guineano está ligeramente fosilizado, los
errores se encuentran muy dispersos y las variantes fonéticas, léxicas y
gramaticales son muy amplias ... en pocas palabras, el español guineano corre
peligro de ver reducida su área a Malabo y Bata' (p. 135). Granados' comments are circumscribed within
the notion of `incorrect' usage rather than the potential formation of a
uniquely Guinean dialect of Spanish.
The
advent of Spanish-language literature in Equatorial Guinea
Given the second-language status of Spanish in Equatorial
Guinea, literary works written in Spanish by Guinean authors were slow to
appear. This is somewhat surprising
giving the high educational level in Spanish, as compared with the use of
European languages in neighboring African nations, but the small size and
political troubles of Equatorial Guinea were important factors in determining
the paucity of literary output.
Publication of any sort was extremely limited in Spanish Guinea and
virtually disappeared in the first postcolonial government of Equatorial
Guinea. The Claretian mission published
the journal Guinea Española, which orignally published
creative writing by expatriate Spaniards, and later expanded its scope to
include traditional stories written by Guinean authors. González Echegaray (1965), in an article
published in this periodical, offers an early appraisal of literature by
Guinean authors. Ngom (1993)
convincingly suggests that giving voice to Africans was not the primary motive
of La Guinea Española, but
rather giving the Christianizing and Europeanizing missionaries powerful
cultural tools with which to undermine ethnic solidarity. Under the best of circumstances only the
occasional newspaper (e.g. Poto Poto) appeared in small numbers, usually
published in neighboring countries or in Spain. In 1982 the Centro Cultural Hispano-Guineano was founded in
Malabo, including a library and eventually a publishing enterprise. The founding of the journal Africa 2000 by the Centro Cultural
Hispano-Guineano provided one organ by which writers and scholars could publish
short essays, stories, and poems, but this journal had very limited circulation
outside of the small circles of Guinean writers who frequented the Centro in
Malabo, and an even smaller group of Spanish intellectuals with ties to the
Hispano-Guinean cultural connection.
With the exception of the above-mentioned fragments
in newspapers and journals, original literature by Guinean authors--especially
in book form--was all but nonexistent prior to the end of the murderous Macías
regime in 1979, eleven years after independence. Ngom (1993) provides an excellent overview of literary production
in Equatorial Guinea, while Ngom (1996a) contains interviews with most of the
protagonists. Other important literary
studies include Ngom (1994, 1995a, 1995b, 1995c, 1996b, 1997). Widely regarded as the first authentic
Guinean novel is Evita Leoncio's Cuando
los combes luchaban, published in 1953 by the Consejo Superior de
Investigaciones Científicas Instituto de Estudios Africanos, the same entity
that published numerous historical and ethnographic monographs on Equatorial
Guinea. A little-known self-published
work written by a Fernandino author, Daniel Mathama Jones' Una lanza por el Boabí appeared in 1962. In 1984 Donato Ndongo Bidyogo (1984) anthologized the relatively
scant Equatorial Guinean literary production as of that date. Dunzo (1986) briefly described the first two
Equatorial Guinean novels.
In 1985 the Universidad Nacional de Educación a
Distancia (UNED) of Madrid, which had set up an extension campus in Equatorial
Guinea, published in 1985 the first Guinean novel written by a woman, Ekomo by María Nsue Angüe. Vicente Granados of the UNED wrote a
prologue, parts of which were later republished as Granados (1986),
simultaneously praising the novel and commenting on the artificiality of
Guinean Spanish. Regardless of
linguistic features, this novel is truly African, based on Fang culture and
folklore but written in Spanish as befits a writer with international
credentials. The novel is not written
in `Guinean Spanish,' but is composed in literary Spanish devoid of obvious
regional features except for Fang names and a few terms for Guinean flora and
fauna. The characters' dialogues are set
in unremarkable Spanish, presumably because they would be fluently conversing
in Fang, their native language.
Also appearing in 1985 is Juan Balboa Boneke's El reencuentro: el retorno del exiliado, a poignant testimony of the
`generación perdida' of Guinean intellectuales forced into exile during what
should have been the peak of their creative energies. In 1987 Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo published the novel Las tinieblas de tu memoria negra, thus
solidifying the slow but inexorable progress of the Equatorial Guinean
novel. An anthology of stories (Centro
Cultural Hispano-Guineano 1987) was published in the same year. In recent years, the literary output of
Guinean authors has increased dramatically.
Guinean literary figures, perhaps more so than the
remainder of the population, manifest considerable ambivalence towards the
Spanish language as a medium of cultural expression, as well as towards the
writings of non-African authors--of fiction and non-fiction--whose works are
set in or contain information about Equatorial Guinea. A representative sample of comments
illustrates these feelings. Ngom
(1996a) posed the question to numerous Guinean authors: `¿Qué supone para Vd. producir una
literatura en una lengua extranjera o "lengua de préstamo"? ¿Se considera usted un "ladrón de
lenguas" como decía Jacques Rabemananjara (Madagascar) en 1959,
refiriéndose a los escritores africanos?'
Leoncio Evita, author of the first Guinean novel, responded that
`Cualquier idioma aprendido queda en propiedad de uno y puede expresarse en
dicha lengua, mientras que sepa hablarla bien' (Ngom 1996a: 36).
Similarly, for Julián Bibang Oyee `... Creo que cualquier lengua sirve
para vehicular, expresar lo que queremos o somos. Nada me asegura ahora mismo que lo hubiera hecho mejor en la
lengua de mi madre que en la del colono; tal vez no lo hiciera jamás ...' (Ngom
1996a: 51). Marcelo Ensema Nsang responded, not without some bitterness, that
`... emplear una lengua occidental, más conocida y extendida, es emplear un
altavoz de amplias resonancias. Con
ello se extiende más el mensaje que un escritor colonizado lanza al mundo. Eso favorece la integración de lo negro-africano
en el concierto de las letras y cultura universales' (Ngom 1996a: 43).
Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo replied that `... Antes de la llegada de los colonizadores
españoles, no teníamos una organización estatal, ni una lengua común, ni una
entidad supratribal propia ... Pienso indistintamente en Fang y en Español, lo
cual significa que mi espíritu se identifica por igual en ambos idiomas, y mi
creación literaria está imbuída por igual en ambas culturas. Otro planteamiento significaría renunciar a
parte importante de nuestro ser y ... a nuestra identidad como país
independiente y soberano, puesto que lo que no diferencia de nuestros vecinos
... es nuestra impronta hispánica ... renunciar a las lenguas nacionales
africanas con el pretexto de que fueron "importadas" es una falacia y
una proposición de regreso a la tribu, con todo lo que ello significa,
renunciando al progreso' (Ngom 1996a:
87-8). The poet Juan Balboa
Boneke believes that ` ... la lengua, sea autóctona como extranjera, es un
elemento fundamental de comunicación, mi concepción de las cosas es universalista,
execro el nacionalismo trasnochado y excluyente. Por lo tanto, con la lengua castellana no me considero un ladrón
de lenguas, la defiendo por ser un elemento de unión y de integración' (Ngom
1996a: 98). Antimo Esono Ndongo would have preferred to write in his native
Fang, but admits that `una lengua como el Español, de amplia potencialidad en
el mundo ... le brinda al escritor una posibilidad enorme de
universalizarse. En todo caso, es la
máxima de las ventajas desgraciadamente' (Ngom 1996a: 134). Juan Tomás Avila
Laurel reminds his readers that ``... nosotros, los africanos, no somos ladrones
de lenguas sino víctimas de la imposición de los europeos' (Ngom 1996a: 155).
Similarly ambivalent are the responses regarding the
work of authors such as Iñigo de Arazadi, José María Vilá and Carlos González
Echegaray: `¿Las considera como parte
integrante de la literatura guineana o de la literatura colonial?' Leoncio Evita believes that these writers
`... merecen un abierto elogio por el esfuerzo que tuvieron que realizar para
captar el sentido de las ideas de sus relatores ... sus obras prevalecen y
forman parte integrante de la literatura guineana' (Ngom 1996a: 35).
Marcelo Ensema Nsang believes that these works belong to the colonial
period (indicating that he does not imply a pejorative connotation),
constituting works "about" Equatorial Guinea which should inspire
native Guinean writers to produce works "from" the country. Julián Bibang Oyee and Juan Balboa Boneke
also classify these works as `colonial,' in a neutral sense (Ngom 1996a: 50, 97).
Raquel Ilombe adopts a similar viewpoint, although expressing great
admiration for the work of Carlos González Echegaray, who in her view went
beyond the usual colonialist perspective to probe deeply into Guinean languages
and culture (Ngom 1996a: 63-4). Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo affirms that these
authors were not Guinean writers, but has very positive views on their
contributions: `Fueron los maestros o
los modelos a imitar por los primeros escritores guineanos. En un mundo como el colonial, en el que la
razón de vivir era la producción y la explotación de los recursos económicos,
esos autores españoles representaban un elemento de frescor en las relaciones
con los nativos, como una fuente en el desierto. Todo ello, claro está, desde su superestructura ideológica. Pero es justo reconocerles el mérito de
haber despertado la voación literaria en unos cuantos guineanos y de haber
escrito una serie de obras que nos ayudan a comprender mejor el hecho colonial
español en Guinea Ecuatorial ...' (Ngom 1996a:
83). Ciriaco Bokesa Napo
considers the works of the above-mentioned Spanish writers to be colonial
literature, `aunque su forma de trato les sitúa en un plano de
"puentes" hacia el horizonte de la literatura estrictamente guineana'
(Ngom 1996a: 105). Francisco Zamora Segorbe is less flattering
when he characterizes González Echegaray and Aranzadi as `recopilidores,' while
noting that Vilá `escribía para lectores de la metrópoli peninsular ávidos de
aventuras en tierras exóticas' (Ngom 1996a:
111). María Nsue believes that
these works are `parte de la literatura española ambientada en Guinea' (Ngom
1996a: 117). Antimo Esono Ndongo speaks of a `literatura producida por
españoles residentes en Guinea, españoles que, en muchas ocasiones, no conocen
el entorno e incluso otros que viviendo en España tratan de crear una
literatura así ficticia, aunque pensada en los tiemas guineos,' although
exempting the above-mentioned authors from this description (Ngom 1996a: 132).
Jerónimo Rope Bomabá believes that these works `pueden encajarse
perfectamente en el contexto literario guineano por restricción y, por
extensión, a la hispánica. No encuadran
ni en la literatura colonial ni neocolonial' (Ngom 1996a: 146).
Unlike European authors, many of whom attempted to
imitate the Spanish as employed by natives of Equatorial Guinea, Guinean
authors almost never offer examples of Guinean Spanish, either in their
narratives or in dialog, with the exception of regional lexical items. There are several evident reasons for this
discrepancy. First, `Guinean' Spanish as
found in the works of Spanish writers is an unflattering second-language
variety, which ranges from a rough pidgin to a close approximation to
Peninsular Spanish, but with clear second-language features reflecting the
incomplete learning of Spanish. Guinean
writers, virtually all of whom have lived and been educated in Spain and other
European countries, speak and write internationally prestigious registers of
Spanish, even if retaining some Guinean phonetic features. Having achieved this status, there is little
inclination to acknowledge the sometimes less than perfect attempts of their
fellow citizens to speak Spanish.
Considerable more legitimization of Guinean literature and society will
have to occur before Equatorial Guinean writers feel as comfortable in
depicting characters speaking `African' Spanish as, for example, Salman
Rushdie's use of `Indian' English (e.g. in the Satanic Verses), Michael Anthony's use of Trinidad English in The Games
were Coming, or the use of `Nigerian' English by such writers as Cyprian
Ekwensi (Jagua Nana) and Wole Soyinka. One
exception to this trend is Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo's novel Las tinieblas de tu memoria negra (1987), in which one character's
non-native overuse of the trill /rr/, seseo,
and occasional grammatical lapses in Spanish are portrayed mockingly:
"osiosidad es madrre
todos visios" (eso lo decía así, eu castellano) ... el que no
"trrabaja" no come (en su castellano) ... (71)
"a Dios rrogando y con
el maso dado" (en su castellano) (72)
"el trrabajo diggnificarr
al hombrre" (en su castellano) ya lo dijo nuestro Señor "comerrás el
pan con el sudorr de tu enffrente" (en su castellano) (73)
alabado sea Dios Padrre Dios
me envía los hios parra que los guíe porr el camino rrecto y El sabe porr qué
seguirrá siempre su santa voluntá ... (74)
... perro padrre no ve usté
que hase unos años también nos parresió que querria serr sacerrdote y luego se
le olvidó hasta rresarr, puede serr una ilusión pasajerra más, además su
comporrtamiento ... (139)
The main reason for the lack of `African' Spanish in
works by Equatorial Guinean authors is that the majority of their characters
are presumed to be speaking indigenous African languages, if not explicitly
presented as such. The occasional use
of Fang lexical items, e.g. in María Nsue's Ekomo,
or even of entire passages in Bubi in Juan Balboa Boneke's El reencuentro gives the flavor of speaking an African language,
while not rendering the text unintelligible to a reader who only understands
Spanish. This Afrocentric perspective
of using correct, even elegantly literary Spanish to depict characters' use of
African languages contrasts sharply with tendencies in Golden Age Portugal and
Spain, when it has been suggested (e.g. Russell 1973: 239) that literary habla de
negros may have been used to represent not bozal Spanish but dialogues carried out entirely in African languages. Lipski (1991b), studying translations into
English of Golden Age habla de negro,
also demonstrates the incongruous use of vernacular Black American English, an
ethnolinguistically marked but native variety of English, in translation of bozal Spanish, spoken non-natively and
with little internal consistency by African-born slaves in 16th and 17th
century Spain.
Occasionally, `African' Spanish may be used to
represent the one language widely held in contempt in Equatorial Guinea,
despite its omnipresent use in Malabo:
Pidgin English. Thus in Cuando los combes luchaban, Leoncio
Evita (1953: 43) uses a somewhat
reduced Spanish to indicate `inglés feo,' i.e. Pidgin English:
---Jefe está muy mal. Le traemos para curar--- Penda respondió en
un inglés feo ... ---Gente de Ndyebengo y jefe es Upolo ...'
Later
(p. 62), the author uses the Guinean adaptation pañole `sin acabar de pronunciar bien' for españoles.
Similarly, in Adjá-Adjá, Ncogo (1994: 12) mimics the attempts at speaking Spanish
by a presumed African from elsewhere (an `extranjero procedente de los países
vecinos'), trying to pass for an Equatorial Guinean:
"¡Tu identidad!" reclama Adjá-Adjá.
"¿Mi idangtitat? he, sí, aquí hay" ...
"¿Es usted ecuatoguineano?", pregunta
Adjá-Adjá.
"Sí, sí, ya ... nasionalisao", contesta el
otro.
At
another point (p. 43) a Moroccan cries out `¡tú ir, tú ir!'
Finally, given the relative recency of widespread
fluency in Spanish in Equatorial Guinea, it is probably the case that some
writers are not completely attuned to the different sociolects of Guinean
Spanish created by varying degrees of proficiency in Spanish and approximation
to monolingual usage. Whether or not
educated Guineans who speak Spanish fluently actually `hear' deviations from
native usage among their less fluent compatriots, the fact remains that within
Equatorial Guinea (the setting for nearly all narrative literature produced by
Guinean authors), African languages or Pidgin English, rather than Spanish, are
the preferred languages of communication.
Thus on a quantitative basis, outsiders who do not speak Fang, Bubi,
Pidgin English, etc. will hear proportionately much more `African' Spanish than
will native Equatorial Guineans.
The above-mentioned factors, combined with Guinean
writers' obvious pride in their accomplished use of Spanish and the desire to
shun the racist parodies of colonial times, result in a use of strikingly
non-`African' dialogue among the most `African' of Hispanophone writers, as
compared with their non-African counterparts.
This underscores the complex and as yet little understood matrix of
attitudes, expectations, and antecedents which underlie the use of written and
spoken Spanish by Equatorial Guinean intellectuals.
Future
research agenda
Despite the considerable research carried out on
Equatorial Guinean Spanish in the past fifteen years, there remain pressing
issues which call for further research.
Most of the work--including the studies by Quilis, Casado-Fresnillo, and
Granados, have situated Guinean Spanish within the framework of comparative
Spanish dialectology, all the while underscoring features which stem from the
second-language status of Spanish in Equatorial Guinea. The work of Lipski and some of the studies
by Granda, while also providing descriptive data, has taken Guinean Spanish as
an ethnolinguistic test tube environment, in which Spanish in contact with
Bantu languages can be observed in a contemporary setting, and the results
compared with reconstructed Afro-Hispanic language of centuries past. These lines of research are gradually
converging, particularly with the publication of the above-mentioned detailed
descriptions of Equatorial Guinean Spanish, placing this formerly unknown
variety of Spanish in a very favorable bibliographical position with respect to
other contemporary Spanish dialects.
The greatest challenge which must be met in order to conduct the full
panorama of research programs on the languages of Equatorial Guinea is the
encouragement of linguists, from abroad and most particularly from within the
country, to study the linguistic situation of the country. The most urgent task is the preparation of
Guinean linguists, since outgroup scholars' observations are never sufficient
to characterize the full spectrum of linguistic usage. The current program of establishing a
national university may ultimately yield a new generation of Guinean linguistic
researchers, although for obvious reasons the nation's development priorities
dictate that other areas of study emerge before linguistics becomes a part of
the curriculum. The Universidad
Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) is in a position to offer some
training, and the availability of scholarships for Guinean students to pursue
university studies in Spain, Latin America, and the United States offers
another set of opportunities. Most
importantly, Equatorial Guinean students must appreciate the importance of studying
all the national languages, both those indigenous to Africa and those arriving
from Europe, for the total linguistic profile of the country is formed through
the complex symbiotic interaction of several languages.
At the same time foreign scholars must be encouraged
to include Equatorial Guinea in their fieldwork and comparative analysis. Information about the country has
traditionally been difficult to obtain, and travel to Equatorial Guinea, while
improving, has always been difficult.
However, it is ignorance of the rich research possiblities--ignorance
even of the existence of the country itself--rather than possible hardships,
which have deterred able fieldworkers and scholars from undertaking studies on
Equatorial Guinean Spanish. Events such
as this one are beginning to turn the tide, and the next few years should
witness an increased interest in Equatorial Guinean language and
literature. In the spirit of nudging
along events a little faster, a few promising areas may be enumerated.
One area just now being explored is the complex
matrix of code-switching occuring in almost all dimensions of Equatorial
Guinean life. The most common
configuration involves Spanish in contact with one of the indigenous languages,
but especially in Malabo code-switching involving Pidgin English is extremely
common. Speakers from Annobón include fa d'ambú in their repertoire. The social and political dimensions of
code-switching in Equatorial Guinea are qualitatively different from those
defining other African societies in which code-switching has been studied (e.g.
Myers-Scotton 1993, 1995), making the study of Guinean language switching a
desirable research item.
The contact between Spanish and an important subset
of Bantu languages in Equatorial Guinea warrants further study, since a
detailed examination of the linguistic results of this contact will further
refine theories of the influence of African languages on Caribbean Spanish and
other Afro-Hispanic and Afro-Brazilian enclaves throughout Latin America. In particular, it is crucial to scrutinize
the Guinean Spanish verb system, searching for differences with respect to
universal Spanish norms but also for possible innovations produced through
adstratal contact with languages radically different from the Romance family in
signalling verbal distinctions. Among
possible points of interest are:
(1)
innovative use of direct object clitics, especially the use of
pleonastic lo in earlier
Afro-Hispanic texts as a possible grammaticalization of Bantu-induced subject
clitics (cf. Lipski 1998a).
(2) The
possible grammaticalization of adverbial elements as preverbal
tense/mood/aspect particles (Lipski 1998a).
(3)
Manifestations of double negation in Afro-Hispanic language (cf.
Schwegler 1996, Lipski 1996). KiKongo
double negation has been implicated, e.g. in Spanish double negation in the
Colombian Chocó and the Dominican Republic, as well as in vernacular Brazilian
Portuguese. Bubi, spoken on Fernando
Poo and an important substratum language in the Spanish of Equatorial Guinea,
typically inserts a single particle (chi,
ta, etc.) between the subject clitic
and the verb (Abad 1928: 67; Juanola
1890: 56; Bolekia Boleká 1991: 132-4).
A similar process is used in Combe/Ndowé, another important language of
Equatorial Guinea, spoken along the coast of Río Muni (Fernández 1951: 37f.).
Bujeba, another coastal language of Río Muni, employs a form of double
negation, inserting the particle àà
between the subject clitic and the verb, and affixing -le to the end of
the verb (González Echegaray 1960:
142f.). Fang, the most widely
spoken language of Equatorial Guinea, combines a particle à inserted after the subject clitic and a particle ke or ki (sometimes omitted) following the verb (Ndongo Esono 1956: 60f.; Nze Abuy 1975: 69f.).
Despite the prominence of Fang in Equatorial Guinea, being the language
of the ruling class and widely spoken as a second language by most of the
population, there has been no study of double or postposed negation in the
Spanish of Equatorial Guinea, regardless of the level of fluency or the
presence of other interference from native languages.
(4) The use
of overt subject pronouns in Guinean Spanish (a topic already broached by
Casado-Fresnillo 1995, Quilis and Casado-Fresnillo 1995, Granda 1991d, Lipski
1996).
(5) The
adaptation of extra-Bantu phonotactic structures in Equatorial Guinean Spanish
as the result of violations of ranked phonological constraints, e.g. within the
framework of Optimality Theory (Lipski 1995a, 1998b).
(6) Use of
non-inverted questions of the sort ¿Qué
tú quieres? as well as in situ questions, where the WH-word has
not been fronted (¿El vive dónde? ¿Juan
quiere qué?). In vernacular Angolan
Portuguese the existence of in situ
questions has been attributed to the Kimbundu substrate (Lipski 1995b; also cf.
Endruschat 1990, Gärtner 1983, Marques 1983, Perl 1989; cf. Rossi 1993 for
vernacular Brazilian Portuguese). It is
necessary to examine interrogative constructions in Equatorial Guinean Spanish,
including questions requiring a simple affirmative or negative answer, since
many Bantu languages, among them the principal indigenous languages of
Equatorial Guinea, use particles or other syntactic elements to signal bipolar
interrogation.
(7) The
evoluation of personal pronoun usage in Guinean Spanish. Early observations (Casado-Fresnillo 1992;
Lipski 1984, 1985a, 1985b; Quilis y Casado-Fresnillo 1995; Quilis 1992)
reported the apparent confusion of tú
and usted verb forms, especially the
combination of usted plus verb forms
corresponding to the second person singular tú. Found less frequently is the combination of ustedes plus second person plural (vosotros) verb form, as well as vosotros + third person plural
verb. Originally this usage stemmed
from imperfect acquisition of Spanish, since native Guinean languages do not
express the same pronominal distinction.
As Equatorial Guinean Spanish expands and stabilizes, it is possible to
search for signs of the emergence of a new hybrid verbal-pronominal system (cf.
Silva-Brummel 1984 for Angolan Portuguese, Gonçalves 1983 for Mozambican
Portuguese).
(8) The
signalling of nominal and adjectival pluralization. Many observers have noted that plural /-s/ in Equatorial Guinean
Spanish routinely disappears in the absence of signs of phonetic erosion. In Bantu languages pluralization is carried
out through a wide variety of nominal prefixes, determined by noun class. No Bantu language realizes pluralization
through suffixes, and word-final /-s/ with any function is vanishingly rare
among Bantu languages. Equatorial
Guinean Spanish needs to be examined with the most refined variational
techniques, to determine the true nature of variable /s/-deletion.
(9) No Bantu
language exhibits prenominal definite articles such as occur in Ibero-Romance
languages; typically occurring are monovocalic clitics i, u, o, e,
placed before the plural morpheme, as well as other prenominal clitics. Moreover, `definite articles' in Bantu
languages are closer to emphatic demonstratives (such as found in Latin) rather
than to the non-deictic definite articles found in Romance languages. As a consequence, speakers of Bantu
languages tend to eliminate definite articles in Spanish and Portuguese (Lipski
1995a, Endruschat 1990). This matter
requires further study.
Conclusions
The Spanish dialects of Equatorial Guinea constitute
a fascinating and little-known facet of the Spanish-speaking world. Spanish has triumphed against internal and
external adversity in Equatorial Guinea, and has emerged as a strong national
language closely tied to concepts of nationhood and self-identity. Despite the not inconsiderable amount of
scholarship devoted to Equatorial Guinean Spanish, this area remains open to
much future scholarship, particularly studies seeking to integrate Guinean
Spanish into a more comprehensive synchronic and diachronic pan-Hispanic and
pan-African perspective. Most
importantly, the time has arrived for scholars from Equatorial Guinea and other
African countries to apply their unique expertise to the study of African
Spanish. This is the dimension which
has been lacking in linguistic studies of African Spanish and Portuguese, and
underscores the need for a symbiosis of African and extra-African approaches to
African linguistics. I hope that the
overview presented here highlights both the urgency and the desirability of
such African-based research.
Notes
1 For a composite of colonial and modern history of Spanish Guinea
and Equatorial Guinea, see Arambilet (19O3); Arija (1930); Artom Pasqualini
(1968); Badgley (1978); Baguena Corella (1950); Banciella y Barcena (1940);
Barrena (1965); Barrera y Luyando (1921); Beltrán y Rózpide (1901); Berman
(1961); Cabana (1995); Castro and Ndongo (1998); Castro-Antolín (1992); Coello
(1850); Cronjé (1976); D'Almonte (1902); Diez Vilas (1994); Fegley (1989);
Fernández (1976); Folch y Torres (1911); Gallo y Maturana (1909); García
Domínguez (1976); Granados (1912); Guinea López (1947); Hahs (1980); Kobel
(1976); Instituto de Estudios Africanos (1949, 1950); Labra (1896); Liniger‑Goumaz
(1979, 1989, 1990, 1996); López Perea (1906); López Vicario (1988); López
Vilches (1901); Lucas de Barres (1918); Martín del Molino (1993); Martínez
García (1968); Martínez y Sanz (1856); Miranda (1940); Moreno Moreno (1952);
Muguerza y Saenz (1907); Muñoz y Gaviria (1871, 1899); Navarro (1859); Navarro
y Canizares (1881); Ndongo Bidgoyo (1977); Nerín (1998); Nosti Nava (1969);
Ocha'a Mve Bengobesama (1985); Pélissier (1964a, 1964b); Planelles Monfort
(1901); Pujadas (1969); Río Joan (1915); Ríos (1959); Rodríguez Barrera (1931);
Saavedra y Magdalena (191O); Salanova Orueta (1951); Sorela (1884); Sundiata
(1976, 1990, 1996); Terán (1962); Unzueta y Yuste (1944, 1947); Valdés
Cavanillas (1928); Valdés Infante (1898); Vincent (1901); Zamora Loboch (1962).
2 Descendants of Sno Tomé and Príncipe were present on the
island of Fernando Poo at least since the beginning of the 19th
century, and probably before, since the mountain tops of Fernando Poo can be
seen from Príncipe on a clear day. At
the time of the founding of Port Clarence, in 1827, a considerable population
of "angolanos" as the Bubis referred to them were living in the
southern part of Fernando Poo, around Ureka, and some moved to Clarence (Martín
del Molino 1993: 35). Since the Portuguese-derived creoles of
Príncipe and Sno Tomé had been formed by this time, it is
conceivable that there was some influence of this Afro-Iberian creole on the
emerging Equatorial Guinean Spanish.
3 Some
examples are:
Rait na a jos gat novio `right now I just have a boyfriend'
dem kam go na velorio `they went to the funeral wake'
a no gat cigarillo `I don't have any cigarettes'
kongasa se i gat siknis diabetis `rumor has it that he has diabetes'
una bin chapea di yad? (Zarco
1938: 46) `Have you (pl.) cut the grass?'
4 One common
strategy, observed among contemporary Africans who speak Spanish and to a
certain extent Portuguese is the more or less systematic assignment of a
different tone to each syllable, often at odds with the simple equation tonic
stress = high tone and atonic syllables = low tone. These tones rarely become lexicalized, so that a given
polysyllabic word as pronounced by a single speaker may emerge with different
tonal melodies on each occasion. What
results is a more or less udulating melody of high and low tones, at times
punctuated by mid tones and rising/falling contour tones. Such a pronunciation is radically different
from the more usual intonational patterns in native varieties of Spanish, where
the pitch register varies smoothly and gradually across large expanses of
syllables, and where a syllable-by-syllable tonal change rarely or never
occurs. To the European ear, a
syllable-based tonal alternation as produced by ay African learner of Spanish
causes a sing-song cadence, and may blur the intonational differences between
statements and questions. In the
absence of a perceptible stress accent, syllable-level tonal shifts may
obliterate such minimal pairs as trabajo/trabajó. There exists no established framework for describing spoken
Spanish in terms of syllable-based lexical tones, but in the following examples
I have analyzed Equatorial Guinean Spanish in terms of a three-tone system
similar to that found in Yoruba, in which acute accents indicate high tone,
grave accents low tone, circumflex accents rise+fall, and no diacritic
indicates mid tone. Based on my
experience with Yoruba and some Bantu languages, I transcribed the following
Spanish sentences as though they belonged to an African language with lexical
tones. It should be noted that not all
Guineans produce such musically undulating speech, but the examples below are
quite representative of the Africanized Spanish found throughout the country,
and cutting across various ethnic groups.
{tape #9, s. A; Fang woman
in Malabo, has also lived in Spain}
el què tiéne dìnéro nò hábla
...
yo pènsába qu'èstá arríba
...
víno èl amígo dè su màrído
nó hablà cònmígo
comò estóy ahí me pòngo mì
pijáma ì andándo
Tiéne còlor à asi.
Mientràs él està aquí èn
casa, que nó mèta esòs líos àqui.
{tape #15, s. A; Bubi man in
early 20's, from Barrio B, near Malabo)
Háy àlgunos què, cuandó
èstán èn casa, comò són bubi, hàbláran èl bubi sólàmèntè.
Cuàndó uno yá està en là
ensàñánzà media cogè là ìdiomà que quierè.
Me faltà un sólò publò què
no hé ido.
Los que están en el bósque sònn
sàlvájes.
en ésà parte ès pelìgrósò
bàñarsè.
{Tape #15, s. B; Bubi man,
late 20's, from Baney}
Puéde dùrár sùs seséntà
años.
el árbol nò tienè mànéra dè
desàrròllárse.
Tènian tòdà clasè de àbónos.
Si, háy compràdóres.
{Tape 8-*, side A., young
Bubi man from Bapupu}
Buscàn ùnòs cuántos que
puèdàn ir à asi destájò.
Dèspués de ùn áñó, do áño,
nótas que se pròdújo bàstánte.
Nó tengò tiémpo.
{tape 8-*, side B. Fang man,
librarian in Malabo}
Nó cìrcúla.
Hay prògrámás en éspàñol y è
lenguàs nàtívas tambièn.
{tape 5, s. A, Combe man
from Bata}
Plàyéro somòs tódos
nòsotròs.
Si háy dòs fáng què
éntiendèn cómbe se puéde hàblar èl cómbe, ¿no?
àquí hay múcho plàyéros.
{Tape 5, side B; Bujeba
woman, maid in Bata}
Parà vèndér i parà cònsumò
própio.
Si, tódos.
Nòsótros pàgámos ménos.
Tiénen elècciónes.
{Tape 6, side A; Bubi woman
from Barrio B, in Malabo}
en éste pàís lo vénden àsí.
Se séca en ùn secàdéro
Lò vénden pàra tènér dinéro.
Háy dè múcha cláse.
Se vóta.
{tape #16, side B. Young Combe man, has studied in Spain, interviewed
in library in Malabo}
Hay trámpas que sè pónèn
hóyos.
Mónos sè cázan tàmbien.
Làs músicàs súyas.
èn Báta sí hàbià múchos.
exíste jéfe dè puéblo.
Pasándo à càyúco.
{Tape #13, side A. Older Combe man, works in Bata}
Còn escòpétà.
Con trámpas.
Yó pàgue cíncò mil pèsétas.
Ló que úno dèséa.
Hàblámos en la èscuéla.
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