The difficulty is that in many cases it is impossible to determine from which (Afro-)Ibero-Romance source a given Papiamentu word is derived, because several different sources are often possible. For example, the Papiamentu verb paga ‘pay, switch off’ could be derived from Portuguese and Spanish pagar ‘pay’ and apagar ‘switch off’, or from Cape Verdean, Guinea Bissau Kriyol, Santome, Angolar, or Principense paga, which means both ‘pay’ and ‘switch off’, as in Papiamentu.

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