Papiamento is a creole language of the southern Caribbean, spoken on Aruba, Curacao and Bonaire, the Dutch Caribbean islands sometimes called the ABC islands. Its core vocabulary comes from Portuguese and Spanish, with heavy Dutch influence and traces of African languages, and linguists still debate whether its base is better described as Portuguese or Spanish. Roughly 300,000 people speak it, and unusually for a creole it holds official status, alongside Dutch, on Aruba and Curacao; it is used in schools, parliaments and newspapers. Spelling differs between the islands: Aruba writes Papiamento with an etymological spelling, while Curacao and Bonaire use the phonemic form Papiamentu. Migration has also brought sizeable communities of speakers to the Netherlands.
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