Atlas of the Languages of Suriname

To the outside world, Suriname is known as a rather extraordinary country in South America in that it is a Dutch-speaking state on an otherwise almost totally Hispanic-speaking continent. Those who look closer, however, soon discover that Suriname's uniqueness lies somewhat less in its apparently misplaced "Dutchness" and more in the fact that Suriname is home to almost twenty different languages, no mean feat considering that the population numbers less than half a million inhabitants. Hardly any inhabitant of Suriname is monolingual, yet not everyone is multilingual in the same languages, nor to the same extent.

The aim of this book is twofold: first to introduce the reader to the linguistic complexity that abounds in Suriname, and second to afford the reader insight into the genesis, evolution, and salient linguistic features of the languages and language-families that are represented there.

The book is designed to meet the needs of readers with little or no linguistic training who wish to acquaint themselves with the nature and use of the languages of Suriname In particular this book is for the Surinamese themselves, but it will also be of great value to all students of the Caribbean, linguists, historians, and the like. With these readers in mind and in order to keep the text as comprehensible as possible, technical terminology is reduced to a minimum, and the volume includes a glossary of those technical terms that are used. The book includes a range of language maps that trace the languages of Suriname through the last five centuries.

Eithne B. Carlin carries out research in the cluster Languages and Cultures of Native America within the Department of Comparative Linguistics, Leiden University

Jacques Arends is a lecturer in the Department of Linguistics at Amsterdam University.