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Papiamento alphabet
The 26 letters, capital and small, with the accented forms lined up by mark: the acute for an unexpected stress (kantá), the grave for the open vowels (bèrdè, Kòrsou, bùs), the diaeresis on ü (hür) and the tilde on ñ (aña). Accented letters sort with their plain letter.
Quotation marks
Papiamento quotes with the curly marks used in English and Dutch; questions and exclamations use a plain ? and !, never ¿ or ¡.
Currency
ƒ for the Aruban florin and the old Netherlands Antillean guilder (Curaçao's Caribbean guilder since 2025 is written Cg, with no character of its own); $ and ¢ for the US dollar on Bonaire.
Where it's spoken
Largest first by CLDR speaker estimates: Curaçao, Aruba, and Bonaire in the Caribbean Netherlands (most phones draw 🇧🇶 as the Dutch tricolour).
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The Papiamento alphabet from A to Z
Papiamento is the common English name, but the orthography differs by island: Aruba uses Papiamento, while Curaçao and Bonaire use Papiamentu with accented letters. The dictionary lists bèrdè with words beginning with be; it lists words beginning with ñ separately after those beginning with n. The language is a Creole of the ABC islands off Venezuela, built mostly on Portuguese and Spanish words, with many Dutch ones and traces of West African languages and Arawak; its name comes from papia, to speak.
In Curaçao and Bonaire the spelling follows the sound, so k and s do the work that c, q and z do in Spanish, and c, q and x turn up mostly in names and borrowed words: kas (house), kuminda (food), sinku (five). A few sounds are written with two letters: sh in dushi (sweet, darling) and masha (very), ch in chuchubi (the island mockingbird), and dj in djaluna (Monday).
Grave accents and ü: è ò ù ü
The grave accent is the mark that makes written Papiamentu look like itself. It changes the vowel rather than the stress: è is the open e of English "bed", as in bèrdè (green) and pèrdè (to lose); ò is the open o, as in Kòrsou, the Papiamentu name of Curaçao; and ù is a short central vowel, as in bùs (bus) and brùg (bridge). Plain e, o and u keep their closed sounds, so leaving the accent off makes a different vowel.
ü is a rounded front vowel, the sound of German ü or French u, mostly in words that came from Dutch, such as hür (to rent, hire).
Stress accents á é í ó ú and the letter ñ
Most Papiamentu words are stressed in a predictable place, and the acute accent marks the ones that break the rule. It does real grammatical work in verbs: kanta (to sing) is stressed on the first syllable, while the participle kantá (sung) is stressed on the last, and the same pattern gives kumpra and kumprá (buy, bought). The acute is the same mark Spanish uses, so á é í ó ú can be typed the same way.
ñ is the ny sound of Spanish, as in aña (year) and the new-year wish Felis Aña Nobo. Papiamentu does not use the Spanish inverted marks ¿ and ¡: questions and exclamations end with a plain ? and ! (Kon ta bai?), and quotations take the curly “ ” and ‘ ’ used in English and Dutch.
Papiamentu or Papiamento: two spellings
The language has two standard spellings, and even its name differs between them. Curaçao and Bonaire write Papiamentu in the phonological spelling described above, which generally follows pronunciation and uses grave accents to distinguish vowel sounds. Aruba writes Papiamento in an etymological spelling that keeps closer to the Spanish and Portuguese look of words: Aruba's cas and cuminda are Curaçao's kas and kuminda.
Speakers from the three islands understand each other easily; the differences are in spelling, some vocabulary and the accent of speech. This page uses Papiamento as the common English name and gives examples in the Curaçao spelling, which is why the grave accents è ò ù appear in them.
How to type Papiamento letters on a keyboard and phone
On Windows, the US-International layout covers every Papiamento letter: press then the vowel for è ò ù, ' then the vowel for á é í ó ú, " then u for ü, and then n for ñ. On any layout you can hold Alt and type on the number pad: Alt0232 è, Alt0242 ò, Alt0249 ù, Alt0252 ü, Alt0241 ñ, Alt0225 á, Alt0233 é, Alt0237 í, Alt0243 ó, Alt0250 ú; the capitals are Alt0200 È, Alt0210 Ò, Alt0217 Ù, Alt0220 Ü and Alt0209 Ñ.
On a Mac, press Option then the vowel for the grave accent, OptionE then the vowel for the acute, OptionU then u for ü and OptionN then n for ñ. On iPhone and Android, hold e, o, u or n and slide to the accented letter. In HTML the entities are è ò ù ü ñ and á, or copy the letters straight from the grid on this page.
Where Papiamento is spoken
CLDR territory estimates list 120,000 Papiamento speakers in Curaçao , 76,000 in Aruba and 16,000 in the Caribbean Netherlands , or 212,000 across those territories combined. A large community also lives in the Netherlands. Papiamento became an official language of Aruba in 2003 and of the Netherlands Antilles, including Curaçao and Bonaire, in 2007; it is the language of home, radio, newspapers and parliament debates on the islands, alongside Dutch, English and Spanish.
Money on the islands is written three ways. Aruba uses the Aruban florin, written ƒ or Afl.; Curaçao used the Netherlands Antillean guilder, whose symbol was NAf (ISO code ANG); the Caribbean guilder (Cg, ISO code XCG) became legal tender on 31 March 2025, while NAf cash payments remained accepted through 30 June 2025; Bonaire has paid in US dollars, and , since 2011. On Windows Alt0131 types ƒ, on a Mac OptionF. See the Curaçao, Aruba and Caribbean Netherlands collections for each island's flag and emoji, and the Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch collections for the languages Papiamento borrows from.
How to use them
5 situationsคลิกเพื่อคัดลอกPapiamento Alphabet & Letters combos
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- Curaçao and Bonaire write the language's name Papiamentu, Aruba writes Papiamento: the two spellings differ even in the word for the language itself.
- In Papiamentu Curaçao is Kòrsou, and the grave accent on its ò is one of the marks that sets Curaçao's spelling apart from Spanish.
- Papiamentu uses pitch as well as stress to tell some words apart, as in mata (to kill) and mata (plant), and its spelling does not mark that tone.
- The oldest known text in Papiamentu is a letter written on Curaçao in 1775.
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7What is the Papiamento alphabet?
In the Curaçao and Bonaire Papiamentu spelling, the Latin letters A to Z are used with è, ò, ù and ü; ñ is also used, and á, é, í, ó and ú mark stress. Vowel accents sort with their plain vowels; ñ is listed separately after n.
What letters with accents does Papiamento use?
In the Curaçao and Bonaire Papiamentu spelling, è and ò mark open-mid vowels (as in bèrdè and Kòrsou), ù is the close-mid front rounded vowel /ø/ (as in bùs), ü is the close front rounded vowel /y/ (as in hür), ñ represents a nasal glide (as in aña), and á é í ó ú mark unexpected stress (as in kantá). Capitals: È Ò Ù Ü Ñ Á É Í Ó Ú.
Is it Papiamento or Papiamentu?
Both. Aruba writes Papiamento in its etymological spelling; Curaçao and Bonaire write Papiamentu in their phonological spelling. English uses either name.
Is there a Papiamento keyboard?
You do not need a special one. On a phone, hold e, o, u or n and slide to è, ò, ù, ü or ñ. On Windows, use the US-International layout ( then a vowel for the grave accent); on a Mac, Option+ then the vowel.
How to type è on my keyboard?
On Windows hold Alt and type 0232 on the number pad (È is 0200), or press then e on the US-International layout. On a Mac press Option+, then e. On a phone, hold e and pick è.
Does Papiamento use ¿ and ¡?
No. Despite its Spanish roots, Papiamento ends questions and exclamations with a plain ? and ! and does not open them with ¿ or ¡: Kon ta bai?
Where is Papiamento spoken?
On the ABC islands of the Caribbean: Curaçao, Aruba and Bonaire, and in island communities in the Netherlands. CLDR territory estimates list 120,000 speakers in Curaçao, 76,000 in Aruba and 16,000 in the Caribbean Netherlands (BQ).
