Aruba Culture & Language

Papiamento is Aruba's language: a Portuguese- and Spanish-based creole, spoken on Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao, that also carries words from Caquetío, Dutch, West African languages and English, official alongside Dutch since the Status Aparte years and predominant in every setting but the courtroom, where Dutch alone serves. English and Spanish are widely spoken and growing with tourism and immigration; Portuguese, Chinese, French and German follow by community size. About 75 per cent of the island is Roman Catholic, with Protestant, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and African-diaspora minorities.

The festive calendar is the culture's public face: Carnival, which grew out of San Nicolas's parade for the Allied victory of 1945; Dera Gai, the burying of the rooster, on Dia di San Juan, the feast of John the Baptist on 24 June, shared with Curaçao and Bonaire; and Dande, the New Year serenade whose name means to revel. The cuisine is Caribbean-Dutch with a Venezuelan accent, and the island's national symbol is the divi-divi, the watapana tree bent south-west by the trade wind.

The political culture is the pride of Status Aparte: an island of 108,880 that took itself out of the Netherlands Antilles in 1986 under Betico Croes and has run its own affairs, in its own language, since.

Papiamento is what you hear -- bon dia, danki, ayo -- and it is close enough to Spanish and Portuguese that speakers of either catch much of it; Dutch is the language of law and signs, English and Spanish are spoken everywhere in the tourist trade, and a bon dia at the bus stop is returned with pleasure.