Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Philadelphia Story in the Spanish Caribbean

1987; Duke University Press; Volume: 62; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/455406

1527-2133

Shana Poplack, David Sankoff,

Philippine History and Culture

THOUGH ESSENTIALLY MONOLINGUAL and Spanish-speaking, the Dominican Republic contains enclaves of native English speakers whose roots there go back to the early 1820s.1 The historical record shows that several regions of the country were settled by some 6,000 American ex-slaves or their descendants who immigrated there through arrangements between the Haitian rulers of Santo Domingo and American church and philanthropic agencies (Commission of Inquiry 1871; Hoetink 1962; Rodriguez Demorizi 1973; Puig Ortiz 1978). Typhus soon decimated many of these settlements, but a number still exist. In this article we describe research among residents of one such community in the peninsula of Samanai, which is largely separated from the rest of the country by a gulf of the same name. In 1981 and 1982 we tape-recorded conversations with nineteen people ranging in age from 71 to 103, who referred to themselves as Americans and spoke fluent English, some to the apparent total exclusion of Spanish, even in the third and fourth generations. Nearly all cited Philadelphia, New York, or New Jersey as the place of origin of their ancestors. Though there is ample documentation of sailings from these northern ports to Haiti, many of the passengers likely originated from various other parts of the United States as well.