Suriname & Surinamese Dutch

A multilingual country and its Dutch

• In Suriname, Dutch is the official language and the language of government and education, but most people are multilingual. Sranantongo (Sranan) is the lingua franca; other languages include Sarnami (Surinamese Hindustani), Surinamese Javanese, Maroon languages such as Saramaccan and Aukan, Chinese and Indigenous languages.
• Surinamese Dutch (het Surinaams-Nederlands) is a full variety of Dutch with its own vocabulary and pronunciation, not “imperfect” Dutch. Suriname has been an associate member of the Taalunie since 2004.
• Through the Surinamese community in the Netherlands, many words became everyday Dutch: roti, pom, bakkeljauw, kousenband; Sranan greetings like Fa waka? (How's it going?) are widely recognised.
• Loanwords usually take de, and after a vowel the plural gets -'s: de roti → twee roti's, de pinda → pinda's.
• Keti Koti (“the chains are broken” in Sranan), on 1 July, commemorates and celebrates the abolition of slavery in Suriname and the Dutch Caribbean in 1863. In Suriname, most of the formerly enslaved only became truly free in 1873, after ten years of compulsory labour under state supervision (staatstoezicht).