Fá D'Ambô | A language spoken on the island of Ano Bom, Equatorial Guinea

Ano Bom is a small volcanic island in the Gulf of Guinea, south of São Tomé.

The exact date of the discovery is unknown; however, it is widely believed that the island was discovered on the 1^st January – hence, the name of Ano Bom [Good Year] - 1471, by the Portuguese navigators João de Santarém and Pedro Escobar. The two navigators were surveying the African coast at the service of Fernão Gomes, contracted by the Portuguese King. The island was uninhabited, as were all the other islands in the Gulf of Guinea discovered during the same period, except for Fernando Pó.

In 1503, the captaincy of Ano Bom was donated to a nobleman in the house of King Manuel I, Jorge de Melo (c. 1460 -1534) and his successors. The arrangements for the settlement of the island were probably made by Jorge de Melo in association with Baltazar de Almeida - a resident and slave-driver in the island of São Tomé – who sent some couples from São Tomé to Ano Bom. In 1507, there were only nine inhabitants on the island, and no church or clergyman.

In 1534, the island was included in the territory of the new diocese of São Tomé, created in the meantime, along with the islands of São Tomé, Santo Antão (Príncipe), Fernando Pó and Santa Helena, as well as the African mainland coast.

Cotton farming started in the period between the 1540s and the 1560s, as some Portuguese and African slaves came to the island to work. In 1565, the second donee, Álvaro da Cunha, sold his rights over the island to Luís de Almeida - a nobleman married to the notable Simoa Godinho, born in São Tomé. None of the donees ever resided on the island, and it was managed by a foreman.

The presence of European ships – not always peaceful – became permanent as of late 16^th century. The island, home to around two hundred people at the time, was occupied and looted by Dutch fleets in 1598, 1605 and between 1660 and 1664.

Religious attendance was always irregular, with no one in charge of celebrating the sacraments for long periods of time. In 1693, the Overseas Council emphasised the need to attend to the helplessness of that Christianity.

From the beginning of the 18^th century, the population, left to their own devices, was granted actual autonomy and created their own mechanisms of governance. The people of Ano Bom started electing a captain-general born on the island, whose role was taken over by a missionary whenever there was one.

The population, who had been attending religious events intermittently, stopped attending almost entirely. Between 1724 and 1753, the Italian Capuchins had a presence in Ano Bom, although absent for long periods of time. After this period, the locals relied on the help of the occasional Catholic priest travelling on a stopped over ship.

In 1744, the island was officially incorporated into the Crown's possessions, and there were no more donees or captain-generals. Initiatives to bring officials or clergymen from São Tomé to the island met with resistance from the local population, who had grown accustomed to independent governance.

In 1778, the Treaty of Santo Ildefonso established that the island would be handed to the Spanish Crown, along with Fernando Pó and part of the coast of Guinea, in exchange for territories near Brazil. This surrender was also met with great resistance from the people of Ano Bom, who made the Castilian frigates abandon the island. The island remained isolated.

In the mid 19^th century, the Spanish authorities set in motion a more effective settlement programme. In 1885, the first Claretian missionaries arrived in the island.

In 1968, the island of Ano Bom was included in the new Republic of Equatorial Guinea, of which it is now an integral part.

 

The African Creole languages of the islands in the Gulf of Guinea

The origin of the Creole language in Ano Bom can be traced back to the island of São Tomé, where the Creole society and the Creole languages on the islands of the Gulf of Guinea mainly originated.

São Tomé was the first island to be populated, long before the other islands of the archipelago. In the first decades of settlement, besides the Portuguese, Africans flocked to the island to work in the houses of the settlers and in the fields. Most of these first slaves came from the region of the former Kingdom of Benin - now Nigeria – where the language spoken was Edo, part of the Kwa language group. From 1520 onwards, the area where the slaves were captured moved from Benin to the Congo and then to Angola, where Bantu variants of Quicongo and Quimbundo were spoken.

São Tomé was the setting for the formation of the first mixed society where proto-Creole - a language with a Portuguese lexical base – originated, resulting from the continued contact between African labourers and the Portuguese language, during the settlement of the island. This relatively stabilised Creole, in turn, led to the four Creole languages in the islands: Santomense, Angolar, Principiense and fá d'Ambô.

 

The origin of the Creole language in Ano Bom

The first linguistic and cultural exchanges in Ano Bom took place between 1543 and 1565, when the first slaves were brought from São Tomé to be used as labour in farming. After a period on the island, and after having been consequently acculturated, these labourers were probably speakers of a stabilised form of proto-Creole.

The first phase of Creole in Ano Bom was marked by the use of Portuguese lexicon in everyday life, particularly in religious practice. In 1623, a Capuchin clergyman accidentally visited Ano Bom; for three days he baptised some 200 children, officiated 70 weddings and confessed tirelessly, which was made possible by the fact that everyone understood Portuguese (1).

The relative isolation of the community in Ano Bom originated and developed fa d' Ambô - literally the speak of Ano Bom -, a creole language with a predominantly Portuguese lexical base.

Along with fa d'Ambô, another variant developed, used in religious acts and popular devotion. The first slaves to arrive in Ano Bom were likely to have had previous contact with Christianity and were somehow familiarised with the prayers and hymns used in liturgical ceremonies. Religious attendance, although scarce and irregular, left some practices of worship and devotion on the island that have remained over the centuries. Deprived of clergy, the inhabitants had no alternative but to rebuild a local structure of worship, based on oral tradition and the objects or images left behind by the clergymen. A variant of 17^th century Portuguese was maintained by the people of Ano Bom in charge of religious practices, particularly by the influential sanguistãs (sacristans).

 

Fa d'Ambô, a Portuguese heritage

Fa d'Ambô was the only language in the Gulf of Guinea that continued to be spoken after 1778 in a region ruled by the Spanish. It is the main language of the island of Ano Bom, and around 90% of its lexicon is of Portuguese origin.

Scholars consider Fa d'Ambô the closest creole to santomense, with an 82% lexicon overlap. Portuguese is the base of the language, with incorporated terms from the Edo languages, Quicongo and Quimbundo (from the former kingdom of Benin).

It is currently spoken by practically the entire population of the island, as well as by the communities of locally born people in various regions of Equatorial Guinea, namely on the island of Bioko (Fernando Pó) and Malabo, in Cameroon and Gabon, with a total of approximately 6,500 speakers.

Fa d'Ambô is a language of great social importance, passed on to the new generations as a mother tongue, and is now stable and unlikely to become extinct.

Another variant of fa d'Ambô developed and is used as a liturgical language. It was inherited from ancient religious practices and is considered Portuguese language by the locals. This is a hybrid variant, with many elements from fa d'Ambô and from Portuguese and including a large number of Latin expressions. In fact, irregular or no religious attendance at all for centuries favoured the development of a language of their own in devotional practices. This was orally transmitted and shaped after Portuguese or Latin sacred texts, with prayers either recited or sung. These included Hail Mary, the Lord’s Prayer, the Miserere, the Confiteor and the Benedictus, among others, prayers once taught by the missionaries. This other language has been maintained throughout the centuries to the present day.

 

Fa d'Ambô – Research Studies

In spite of its vitality, there are still very few descriptive studies dedicated to this language.

Raimundo da Cunha Matos (1776-1839) was one of the first authors to identify fá d'Ambô. In his work, Corographia Histórica das ilhas de São Tomé, Príncipe, Ano Bom e Fernando Pó (c. 1818), reference is made to the kinship between the Creole languages of the islands.

The language was recorded for the first time by the remarkable scholar Hugo Schuchardt (1842-1927), in his research into Creole languages in Portuguese-speaking countries.

The first grammatical studies were carried out by Fathers Isildo Vila - Elementos de la Gramatica Ambu o de Annobon - and Natalio Barrena - Gramatica Anobonesa -, both Claretian missionaries in Ano Bom at the end of the 19^th century. They are both relevant publications, although with the limitations inherent to the Castilian language context.

In Portugal, Alain Kihm and Ernesto d'Andrade organised the first Conference on Creole Languages with a Portuguese lexical base at the University of Lisbon in June 1991. In 2001, the ACBLPE - Associação Crioulos de Base Lexical Portuguesa e Espanhola [Association of Creoles of Portuguese and Spanish Lexical Base] - was founded to promote research in this area.

Gramática Descriptiva del Fá d'Ambô by Armando Zamora Segorbe was published in 2010.

In 2012, a research mission headed by Isabel Oyana Ayorno was carried out, with fieldwork coordinated by Rosângela Morello, especially in Ano Bom. This was the basis for the book published in 2014 - Fa d'ambô: herança da Língua Portuguesa na Guiné Equatorial. [Fa d'ambô: The legacy of Portuguese language in Equatorial Guinea]

The vitality of Fa d'Ambô on the island of Ano Bom was one of the reasons for the Portuguese to be established as one of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea’s official languages and for the country to be included as a full right member in the CPLP – Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa [Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries] - in 2014.

Ano Bom's relationship with Portugal is also evident in the provincial flag, displaying the caravel and the Portuguese shields.

The Creole from Ano Bom is considered intangible heritage of Lusophony of inestimable value. Having been isolated for centuries, the island retains the original characteristics of the mother tongue, medieval traces included, as spoken by the first settlers.

 

1. CALDEIRA, Arlindo Manuel, Crenças religiosas e ritos mágicos na ilha de Ano Bom, Povos e Culturas, Lisboa, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, 2007 p.99.

 

REFERENCES

• HLIBOWICKA-WEGLARZ, Barbara, A origem dos crioulos de base lexical portuguesa no Golfo da Guiné, Universidade Maria Curie-Skłodowska de Lublin. Romanica Cracoviensia, 11/2011.
• SILVEIRA, Alfredo Christofoletti, AGOSTINHO, Ana Lívia dos Santos, BANDEIRA, Manuele, FREITAS, Shirley, ARAUJO, Gabriel Antunes De, Fa d’Ambô: língua crioula de Ano Bom, Cadernos de Estudos linguísticos, Campinas, Jul./Dez. 2013.
• ZAMORA SEGORBE, Armando, OLIVEIRA, Givan Muller de, MORELLO, Rosângela, MORELLO, Rosangela, FA D’AMBÔ - Herança da Língua Portuguesa na Guiné Equatorial, Instituto Internacional da Língua Portuguesa, Editora Garapuvu Florianópolis, 2014.