Equatorial Guinea

The Republic of Equatorial Guinea, formerly the colony of Spanish Guinea and an independent nation since 1968, is the only African nation in which Spanish is the official language. Equatorial Guinea consists of the island of Bioko (formerly Fernando Poo), which contains the national capital, Malabo (formerly Santa Isabel), and the continental enclave of Rio Muni (with district capital Bata), between Gabon and Cameroon, as well as tiny Annobón Island, located to the south of São Tomé. Equatorial Guinea is home to a variety of languages. The indigenous group on Bioko speaks Bubi. Nearly all residents of Malabo and other cities on Bioko also speak pidgin English, known locally as pichinglis or pichi. The principal ethnic group in Rio Muni is Fang; the Fang have also emigrated in large numbers to Bioko. Several smaller groups (Ndowé/Combe, Bujeba, Benga, Bapuko, etc.) are found along the coast of Rio Muni. Annobón Islanders speak Fa d'ambú, a Portuguese‑lexified creole. The indigenous Equatorial Guinean languages are lexical tone languages of the Bantu family. The linguistic interface (Spanish-Bantu languages) in Equatorial Guinea juxtaposes some of the same configurations as found in colonial Spanish America, although the sociolinguistic situation is quite different: Guineans were never enslaved, were never removed from their homelands or forced to abandon their native languages and speak only the colonial language. The study of Equatorial Guinean Spanish provides a “reality check” in the reconstruction of earlier Afro-Hispanic language, while also offering the opportunity to study in situ contacts between typologically diverse morphosyntactic and phonological systems.

Representative publications:

Books:

• The Spanish of Equatorial Guinea. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1985.
• El español de Malabo: procesos fonéticos/fonológicos e implicaciones dialectológicas. Madrid/Malabo: Centro Cultural Hispano‑Guineano, 1990.

Articles:

• Equatorial Guinea Spanish non-continuant /d/: more than a generic L2 trait. In Rajiv Rao (ed.), Spanish phonetics and phonology in contact: studies from Africa, the Americas, and Spain. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, forthcoming.
• "Toned-up” Spanish: stress → pitch → tone(?) in Equatorial Guinea. Romance Linguistics 2013Selected papers from the 43rd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages ed.  Christina Tortora, Marcel den Dikken, Ignacio L. Montoya and Teresa O'Neill. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2016, pp. 233-255.
• ¿Existe un dialecto “ecuatoguineano” del español? Revista Iberoamericana No. 248-249 (2014), 865-882.
• El español de Guinea Ecuatorial en el contexto del español mundial. La situación actual del español en África, ed. Gloria Nistal Rosique and Guillermo Pié Jahn. Madrid: Casa de África/SIAL, 2008, pp. 79-117.
• The Spanish of Equatorial Guinea. Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, v. 8 (2004), 115-130.
• The Spanish of Equatorial Guinea: research on la hispanidads best-kept secret. Afro-Hispanic Review 19.1 (2000).
• Pidgin English usage in Equatorial Guinea (Fernando Poo). English World Wide 13 (1992), 33-57).
• Fonética y fonología del español guineano: implicaciones para la dialectología hispánica. Africa 2000, Año II, Epoca II, núm. 1.9-17.
• A new look at Afro-Hispanic phonology. Studies in Romance Linguistics, ed. O. Jaeggli, C. Silva-Corvalán. Dordrecht: Foris, 1986, pp. 121-35.
• Modern African Spanish phonetics: common features and historical antecedents. General Linguistics 26 (1986), 182-95.
• A test case of the Afro-Hispanic connection: final /s/ in Equatorial Guinea. Lingua 68 (1986), 357-70.
• Contactos hispano-africanos: el español guineano. Anuario de Letras 23 (1985), 99-130.
• The Spanish of Malabo, Equatorial Guinea and its significance for Afro-Hispanic studies. Hispanic Linguistics 1 (1984), 69-96.