Palenquero is a Spanish-based creole language spoken in Colombia

Colombia

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

. Palenquero is the only Spanish-based creole in Latin America. The ethnic group which speaks this Creole consists only of 3,000 people, . Palenquero is spoken in Colombia

Colombia

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

, in the village of San Basilio de Palenque

San Basilio de Palenque

San Basilio de Palenque or Palenque de San Basilio is a Palenque village and corregimiento in the Municipality of Mahates, Bolivar in northern Colombia. In 2005 the village was declared Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO...

 which is southeast of Cartagena

Cartagena, Colombia

Cartagena de Indias , is a large Caribbean beach resort city on the northern coast of Colombia in the Caribbean Coast Region and capital of Bolívar Department...

, and in some neighborhoods of Barranquilla

Barranquilla

Barranquilla is an industrial port city and municipality located in northern Colombia, near the Caribbean Sea. The capital of the Atlántico Department, it is the largest industrial city and port in the Colombian Caribbean region with a population of 1,148,506 as of 2005, which makes it Colombia's...

.

The village was formed by escaped slaves (Maroon

Maroon (people)

Maroons were runaway slaves in the West Indies, Central America, South America, and North America, who formed independent settlements together...

s) and sometimes Native Americans

Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...

. Since many slaves had not been subjected to a lot of contact with people of European descent, the palenqueros spoke Creole languages constructed from the Spanish language and their own African ones.

Spanish speakers are usually unable to understand Palenquero. Ten percent of the population under 25 years of age speaks Palenquero, . It is more commonly spoken by the elderly. There are some influences from Kongo

Kongo language

The Kongo language, or Kikongo, is the Bantu language spoken by the Bakongo and Bandundu people living in the tropical forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo and Angola. It is a tonal language and formed the base for Kituba, a Bantu creole and lingua franca...

, which is spoken in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Palenquero words like "ngombe", which means cattle, are found in several Bantu languages

Bantu languages

The Bantu languages constitute a traditional sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages. There are about 250 Bantu languages by the criterion of mutual intelligibility, though the distinction between language and dialect is often unclear, and Ethnologue counts 535 languages...

.