Cápa

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Cápa
Cápo, Cábo, Kabo, Kabosje, isiKapa, Cape [of Good Hope] Creole
isiKápa
Pronunciation[isi.kʰɐ́pɐ]
Created byJukethatbox
Date2023
Native speakers14,000,000 (2023)
Cape Creole
  • Cápa
Dialects
  • Cape dialect
  • Durban(KwaZulu-Natal) dialect
  • Emonti(East London) dialect
SourcesAfrikaans, Portuguese, Zulu, Xhosa, English
Official status
Official language in
Cape State
Recognised minority
language in
Lesotho, Orange, Eswatini
Regulated byMinisteri isiKápa
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Cápa, also known as Cápo, Cábo, Kabo, Kabosje, isiKapa and/or Cape [of Good Hope] Creole, is an Afrikaans-Portuguese-English-Zulu-Xhosa creole language spoken in the area between the Orange River and the south African coast, commonly known as the Cape of Good Hope(cabo da boa esperança in Portuguese).

Some more modern Portuguese loanwords derive from Brazilian Portuguese rather than European Portuguese, although in some cases both variations can be used, e.g. BP xícara and EP chávena, both meaning "cup", become shíxher(Cápa: [ʃík‖ʼɛɾ]), "cup" and sháfna(Cápa: [ʃɐ́ɸnɐ]), "glass(container)".

Phonology

Orthography

Cápa uses the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, with tone, stress and length(of a sound) marked by diacritics. These diacritics are mostly based on the Portuguese alphabet, with ⟨á⟩ and ⟨à⟩ indicating rising and falling tone respectively, and ⟨â⟩ indicating high tone, ⟨ǎ⟩ indicating low tone and ⟨ā⟩ indicating a lengthened allophone.

Diacritics
Length ā · ē · ī · ō · ū
High â · ê · î · ô · û
Low ǎ · ě · ǐ · ǒ · ǔ
Rising á · é · í · ó · ú
Falling à · è · ì · ò · ù

Consonants

Vowels

Prosody

Stress

Stress in Cápa is generally paroxytonic, where primary stress is placed on the penultimate syllable of a word.

Examples

Tone

Cápa, like its contemporary languages of Zulu and Xhosa, is a tonal language, with four tones- high, low, rising and falling.

High Low Falling Rising
˥ ˩ ˥˩ ˩˥

Phonotactics

Morphophonology

Morphology

Syntax

Constituent order

Like in English, Xhosa and Zulu, Cápa uses an SVO(subject-verb-object) constituent order structure.

Noun phrase

Verb phrase

Sentence phrase

Dependent clauses

Example texts

Other resources