English / Papiamento Dictionary ~ ingles / papiamento dikshonario

Words R Us English / Papiamento Dictionary

Papiamentu, Dutch and English are the official languages of Curaçao; Papiamentu and Dutch are official in Bonaire, and in Aruba the official languages are Papiamento and Dutch. The primary differences across the three islands is that many word end in O in Aruba and in U in Curaçao and Bonaire. There are some other differences in spellings as Aruba spelling follows the etymology of the word and Curaçao and Bonaire generally follow a phonetic spelling.

Papiamentu is a moving target. It varies from island to island, neighborhood to neighborhood, generation to generation. Linguists have various opinions about the history, phonology and grammar. Native speakers often disagree about the details.

Although the number of speakers numbers only about 300,000, there are several newspapers published in the language and there has been recent work to standardize the spellings.

This dictionary contains 7,500 terms in English and Papiamento. We also publish companion volumes paired with Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese translations.