Its main language influences are Central & West African (KiKongo, Fon and Ewe), Indigenous (Carib and Arawak), English, Portuguese and Dutch.
[4] Sranan was created in the 17th century by enslaved Africans from Central and West Africa that lived on plantations in Suriname during the Transatlantic Slave trade.
[5] The plantations enslaved Africans in Suriname lived on at the time, were owned by colonial settlers that were Portuguese speaking Jews from Europe and English speakers from Britain.
Their Ancestors at the Creole genesis were primarily Gbe and KiKongo speaking Africans that laid the foundation that Sranan was built and developed on while being in contact with Portuguese and English.
[7] Early 18th century (1720), there was a large import of Akan people (65%) from the region then called the Gold Coast, to plantations in Suriname.
[10][11][12][13] Afro-Surinamese people speak the purest forms of Sranan, especially during Winti rituals having Ancestral ties to the language going back to its creation in the 17th century.
The influence of the Cariban language, Carib - and Arawakanlanguage, Arawak can be found in Sranan's botanical, zoological, musical, culinary and Winti lexicon.
Remnants of Sranan's Portuguese-based period can still be traced in its lexical items of Portuguese origin and the Ancestral tradition of Odos.
Odos are the Ancestral cultural heritage of Afro-Surinamese people by way of proverbs, pieces of wisdoms, folk-lore and stories from their perspective.
Those oral stories, wisdoms and folk-lore told during slavery from their Ancestors' perspective were carried on post-slavery and are still a big part of Afro-Surinamese culture and identity.
A striking feature about the oral history of Afro-Surinamese people told through Odos and Winti songs, is that many African proverbs were retained that can be traced back to specific regions in Central and West Africa where they descent from.
Many British settlers left Suriname with a significant amount of enslaved Coastal Afro-Surinamese and Indigenous people they owned, and resettled in Jamaica.
Remarkably, linguists were able to trace Sranan's influence all the way to West Africa in Sierra Leone's English-based Creole Krio.
Suriname and Haiti not only have an identical composition of Gbe and KiKongo speakers at their Creole Genesis, but also both having been isolated from their European lexifiers.
In Suriname, this historical condition among Afro-Surinamese lead to Gbe, KiKongo and Akan having an adstratalAfrican influence on Sranan.
[26] A spectacular amount of Winti lexicon can be traced back to specific ethnicities and regions in Central and West Africa.
[31] Despite systemic oppression and stigmas, Sranan and Winti are connected and play a large part in Afro-Surinamese people's African identity and everyday life.
Role in society Historically, Sranan has been a very beloved language and the lingua franca among Afro-Surinamese people in Suriname for hundreds of years.
Its status was also documented on a few accounts, like in 1844 during slavery by Helmig van der Vegt: "Everyone who has visited the colony knows that no Creole (Afro-Surinamese) can be found who does not possess a strong love for his native language, even to the extent that he speaks it with a pride as if he were a Frenchman".
Lammens, a colonial official who was President of the Court of Civil Justice recounts: "Negro-English, which is a kind of general language spoken mainly with the slaves.
At first hearing it is pleasant; it seems that the way it is spoken, the manifold vowels added at the end of most words give it a singing tone or melody as a result of which it sounds somewhat like Italian.
"[33] In 1876, three years after the actual ending of Slavery in Suriname (1873), compulsory education was implemented and Dutch became the official language of instruction.
(1863 is widely rejected by the Surinamese community, because enslaved Coastal Afro-Surinamese people were forced to 10 extra years of slavery under state supervision to pay for their freedom).
[34] Sranantongo came under severe systemic oppression and anti-Black hostility because of the symbiotic relationship between Sranan and the African identity of Afro-Surinamese people.
From beatings at school, to opportunities being withheld by institutions to those that spoke Sranan left multiple generations of Afro-Surinamese parents that underwent it traumatised, putting a dent in the unified love they people had for the language.
[35] This process was to fulfill Suriname's strong desire to emancipate Sranan from the Dutch linguistic lense given their big differences.
[37] Sranan Tongo remains widely used by the Surinamese diaspora populated in urban areas of The Netherlands where it's used in casual conversation and cultural settings.
[40] In 2021, Sranan Tongo appeared on the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time during Jeangu Macrooy's performance of "Birth of a New Age".
To end this situation, the Surinamese government commissioned a committee of linguists and writers to define a standard spelling, which was adopted and came into force in 1986.
[47] Other notable writers in Sranan Tongo are Eugène Drenthe, André Pakosie, Celestine Raalte, Michaël Slory, and Bea Vianen.