It Happened at Cormantin: Locating the Origin of the Atlantic English-Based Creoles

Comparative and sociohistorical facts suggest that Sranan arose among castle slaves on the Gold Coast in the 1630s. Jamaican Maroon Spirit Language is an offshoot of early Sranan, which allows the deduction that créole English had developed in Suriname by 1671. However, during the English hegemony there, 1651-1667, Suriname harbored only small plantations, where Whites worked closely with equal numbers of Blacks. Such conditions were unlikely to produce Sranan, and conditions in other English colonies were similar, disallowing them as possible sources of importation. Disproportionate lexical and structural influence from Lower Guinea Coast languages, and other evidence, suggests that the language actually took shape on the West African coast.