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Papia is the Papiamentu verb for 'to speak' and
-mentu
is the suffix that forms a noun, meaning approximately
'the way of doing something'.
Papiamentu translated would then be something
like 'the way of speaking'.
The verbs papia or papea are also found in other Creole
languages such as the Cape Verdean creole,
Guiné-Bissau creole
and Saramaccan. It is probably derived from the Portuguese verb
papear 'to chatter', which in turn probably goes back to the
French verb papier 'to stammer' or simply 'to speak'.
Connections have been made between the French papier and
the Egyptian/Arabic papiros, e.g. 'to read from papyrus'.
Papiamento is another way to spell Papiamentu.
Sometimes the noun forming morpheme
-mentu is spelled
-mento like it is done in Spanish and Portuguese.
In the Papiamentu of Bonaire the equivalent to the noun forming suffix
-mentu/o is -men
(this is one similarity between
Provençal and Bonairen Papiamentu).
Thus, the Bonairen name for Papiamentu is Papiamen.
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