Columbé

Columbé
Columban Creole, Columban Poccasin Pidgin, Columban Bemé
kriyal, kriyel
Flag of Saint Columban, where Columbé is native.
Pronunciation	[kɾijal] [kɾijɛl]
Created by	Jukethatbox
Date	2025
Setting	Adventures in the Poccasins
Native to	Saint Columban
Ethnicity	Columban people
Native speakers	25,500 (2025)
Language family	Poccasin English Bemé Columbé
Writing system	Latin

Columbé is the dialect of Bemé spoken by the Columban people of the island of Saint Columban, a British overseas territory located in the Malorabin Islands of the Poccasin Archipelago. It is widely spoken as a first language on Columban, and is the official vernacular language of the island, with around 25,500 native speakers; approximately 98.8% of the population of Columban.

Although the linguistic status of Columbé is debated, linguist consensus dictates that Columbé is a dialect of the more widely spoken Bemé, brought to the island by enslaved Poccasins who were brought to the island by British colonists aiming to drive out the previous Portuguese colonial administration.

Classification

Although most linguists agree today that Columbé is a dialect of Bemé, this status has been the subject of much controversy; early Columbé linguists often argued that Columbé was a distinct English creole that developed from British colonialism, in a similar way as most creole languages(including standard Bemé). However, studies of mutual intelligibility with Bemé in the 70s and 80s showed that Bemé and Columbé speakers were able to almost completely understand each other, with a mutual intelligibility percentage of around 97%. Although this didn't conclusively prove a dialectal relation(languages such as Swedish and Norwegian also have high mutual intelligibility but are still considered distinct languages), it did catalyse later theories of dialectal relationships, which began to emerge around 1989 as the first theories of Bemé's origin and spread began to emerge.

The first theory that asserted Columbé as a dialect of Bemé was published in 1993, in a paper that analysed Bemé as a dialect continuum in the framework of tak and kriyal varieties; Columbé was included as a kriyal variety. Although the assertion of Columbé as a kriyal variety is considered invalid today(Columbé is generally considered to not contain a creole continuum unlike standard Bemé), it did bring the dialect theory into the mainstream, which by the turn of the century finally dominated the general linguistic consensus. Thus, linguistically, Columbé is considered non-continuum dialect of Bemé.

However, this consensus is not as represented in Columban administration and culture; both Bemé and Columbé speakers, despite understanding each other, still mostly consider both dialects distinct languages.

History

There are two main theories on how Columbé developed as a dialect of Bemé so far from the centre of development of Bemé in Cassim Po; the migration and divergence theory(MDT) and the independent development and convergence theory(IDC). The IDC theory states that Columbé originally developed as a separate creole language, then over time converged through contact with Bemé into a dialect of Bemé. This theory is generally disregarded as unlikely in the general consensus, with the MDT theory considered more likely and also supported by archaeological evidence.

Pink Map War

Bemé developed into an English creole language in Cassim Po around the 1850s, and has remarkably stayed relatively stable since; in the mean time, Bemé spread in use away from its home city due to the British centralisation of power in the archipelago in Cassim Po, which is how Bemé spread in use as a lingua franca throughout most of the archipelago. However, the island of St Columban, previously settled by Seru and Bemang peoples, remained outside this influence due to its administration under the Portuguese colonial empire as São Jorge e Paulo(lit. "Saint George and Paul") since 1775.

The Pink Map, or Mapa cor-de-rosa in Portuguese

However, in 1890, the British government sent an ultimatum to the Portuguese to withdraw from the areas between Angola and Mozambique, which Portugal had claimed in hopes of completing the Pink Map project, as Britain wanted to control the area in hopes of completing their own Cape to Cairo Railway. The Portuguese refused the ultimatum, and so began the Pink Map War, which saw Portugal militarily humiliated by the British and more importantly, had São Jorge e Paulo occupied by the British. With the 1891 Treaty of London, Portugal was forced to pay a hefty sum of money, and cede the Pink Map areas and São Jorge e Paulo to the British.

Thus, São Jorge e Paulo fell under British control, and a swift process of "DePortugalisation" was implemented; signs in Portuguese were replaced by signs in English, all former Portuguese colonial administrators were imprisoned or deported to Portugal or Goa, and the island itself was renamed to its English name Saint George, Saint Paul, Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Columban of Luxeuil, or Saint Columban for short.

Bemé migration

Around 1895, the British administrator of Saint Columban began to also incentivise migration from Cassim Po and elsewhere in the Poccasins to further diminish what was left of Portuguese influence on the island. Thus, many Bemé speakers, both native from Cassim Po and non-native from elsewhere in the Poccasins, arrived in droves on Saint Columban. Despite many not speaking Bemé as native speakers, the use of Bemé was encouraged out of necessity due to the diversity of languages spoken by the Saint Columban migrants; eventually Columbé developed as a distinct dialect and became the first language of almost all inhabitants of the island.

Phonology

See also: Bemé § Phonology.
Columbé has several distinct phonological features that distinguish it from standard Bemé.

Among consonants, syllabic /l̩/ is usually palatalised to /ʎ̩/, so Beybl [bei̯bl̩] becomes [beːbʎ̩]. Voiced plosives /b, d, g/ are lenited to fricative [β, ð, ɣ] or approximant [β̞, ð̞, ɣ̞] intervocalically, though these allophones are typically only written as [β, ð, ɣ] or not at all. /ɲ/ may also be realised as /j̃/ in word-medial positions, so grinyeh would be pronounced [gɾij̃ɛ]. Standard approximant /ɹ/ is pronounced as tap /ɾ/, as is typical of most kriyal varieties in the south of the Poccasins (where Columban is located). /n/ may also palatalise to a /ɲ/ before an /i/, though not before /iː/, which is an allophone of /ei̯/. /kr, gr/, though very variable among Cassim Po dialects and adjacent dialects such as Bijun Creole, are remarkably invariable in Columbé; /kr/ and /gr/ are almost always pronounced [kɾ] and [gɾ] respectively, though the tap may be devoiced in /kr/ in some younger speakers, yielding instead [kɾ̥] and [gɾ] respectively.

Among short vowels, /u/ is often pronounced /ʌ/ and /ɛ/ is always pronounced /e/.

Grapheme(s)	a	e	eh	i	o	u
Standard Bemé	/a/	/e/	/ɛ/	/i/	/o/	/u/
Columbé	/a/	/e/		/i/	/o/	/ʌ/

Among vowels, Columbé is unique in that it is the only variety of Bemé that incorporates phonemic long vowels; these correspond to the standard Bemé diphthongs /ei̯ oi̯ ou̯/, and are usually written the same. However, these long vowels tend to have quite a lot of variation; the most common are shown here.

Grapheme	ey	oi	ow
Standard Bemé	/ei̯/	/oi̯/	/ou̯/
Columbé	/eː/	/oː/	/uː/
	/iː/	/ʌː/

/ou̯/ may also be realised as a short [u] in closed syllables; this leads to the pronunciation of words such as grown as [gɾun]. This is the only position where [ʌ, u] appear in contrastive distribution; elsewhere, they are in free variation.