סרמקנית

Saramaccan is a maroon creole of Suriname spoken on the upper Suriname River by descendants of West African enslaved populations who escaped Dutch plantations in the 17th-18th centuries (the Saramaca treaty of 1762 secured their independence). Its mixed English/Portuguese lexicon is unusual among Atlantic creoles and reflects the Portuguese-colonized Caribbean origin of some enslaved laborers; both English and Portuguese contributions appear in basic vocabulary (e.g., "wáta" water from English, but "lúna" moon from Portuguese, "fáya" fire from Portuguese fogo). Saramaccan has gained academic prominence as a model for studying the role of substrate languages in creole genesis (Akan-Gbe substrate is highly influential, with Akan-derived tone, kinship terms, and sentence-final particles).