Suriname Culture & Language

Dutch is Suriname's official and prevailing language in government, business, media and school, spoken natively by an estimated 60 per cent, the only independent state outside Europe where that is so; Sranan Tongo, the English-based creole that grew among the enslaved after 1651, is the first or second language of 519,600 people and the lingua franca of the street; English is widely understood, and Sarnami Hindustani, Javanese, the Maroon languages and Chinese are spoken at home. No ethnic group is a majority: Asian Surinamese about 43 per cent, led by the Hindustanis at 27.4; Afro-Surinamese about 37.4, split between Creoles and the six Maroon nations at 21.7; Javanese 13 to 15, two-thirds of them Sunni Muslim. The Muslim and Hindu populations are proportionally among the largest in the Americas, and in Paramaribo's Keizerstraat the Neveh Shalom synagogue, on a lot bought in 1716 and built by 1723, stands beside the Lahore Ahmadiyya mosque of a community founded in 1929.

The civic calendar carries everyone's feasts: Holi-Phagwa, Keti Koti on 1 July for the abolition of 1863, Indian Arrival Day, Javanese Arrival Day, Indigenous People's Day, the Day of the Maroons, Chinese Arrival Day, Independence Day on 25 November, Diwali, both Eids and Christmas. The music is kaseko, whose name is thought to come from the French casser le corps, and baithak gana from the Hindustani villages; the food is the country's pride -- roti from India, pom, the oven dish of pomtajer root that is the most popular festive plate, Javanese warungs at Blauwgrond, Chinese kitchens, Creole and Maroon cooking -- and football is the most popular sport, ahead of basketball and volleyball.

The capital's architecture is the culture's other face: the wooden Dutch colonial inner city inscribed as World Heritage in 2002, the wooden cathedral of Saint Peter and Paul, Fort Zeelandia with the Surinamese Museum, the presidential palace with the Garden of Palms behind it, the Arya Diwaker Hindu temple, and Kwakoe, the memorial to the abolition of slavery.

Dutch is official and everyone's school language, so a Dutch speaker is at home; what the street speaks is Sranan Tongo -- fa waka for how goes it, mi de for I'm fine, grantangi for thank you -- and English is widely understood in Paramaribo and the lodges. Hindustani, Javanese and the Maroon languages are heard in their own districts, and a few words of Sranan open every door.