The history and future of Patuá in Paria

Abstract

In Venezuela,1 Patua or Venezuelan French Creole (VFC) is spoken in the Paria Peninsula bordering Trinidad, once a French Creole-speaking territory, although never governed by the French. Venezuela and Trinidad share a maritime boundary in the Gulf of Paria, and are only seven miles or eleven kilometers apart at the nearest point. The area has been a point of exchange between the two areas since pre-Columbian times with speakers of Amerindian, European (Spanish, French, and English) and Caribbean Creole (French-lexified and English-lexified) languages going back and forth. This paper will focus on the French Creole language of Paria, although French Creole is also spoken in El Callao in Estado Bolivar, home to migrants from Trinidad, St. Lucia, and Haiti. VFC is mainly spoken in Guiria in Estado Sucre (in which the Paria Peninsula is located). The French voyager, Dauxion-Lavaysse, writing in the early nineteenth century, notes that Guiria and Guinima were “deux villages etablis par des Francais et des Espagnols, qui ont emigre de la Trinidad pour se