Saamáka
Saramaccan Creole
Queens VillageHighly multilingual Suriname, with its layered colonial history, is reflected at least in part in the languages spoken by Surinamese New Yorkers, who live largely in eastern Queens in and around Jamaica and celebrate the annual Sranan Dey event every August in Roy Wilkins Park. The two main community lingua francas appear to be be the distinctive Surinamese Dutch and Sranan Tongo, the English-based creole (with Dutch, Portuguese, and West African influences) spoken widely across different communities, but mother tongues spoken by at least some Surinamese New Yorkers include Sarnami (spoken by the Indo-Surinamese population) and the Maroon creole languages Aucan and Saamáka. There may well be others.
S
aramaccan Creole is a hybrid language spoken largely by the descendants of enslaved Africans living along the Suriname River, of whom at least a few have since come to the New York area. Though the majority of words are derived from English, there is a significant Portuguese-derived component as well as a large number of words from Niger-Congo languages of West Africa, including Fongbe and Kikongo. "A Grammar of Saramaccan Creole" by the linguists John McWhorter and Jeff Good drew partly on information supplied by Queens-based speakers.
Note that the language above may be used throughout the New York area — this is just one significant site.