Say it in
Papiamento
English will get you through the whole week. These will get you further than that. The eight from the card in the taxi first, then 70 more, all with how to say them.
Start here
The capitals on the card are just the card. Written down, only names take a capital, so it is bon dia in the middle of a sentence.
The rest of the greetings
The eight above cover morning and afternoon. These finish the day.
Getting by
The ones that get you out of trouble.
Meeting people
In the taxi
Your driver speaks English. Say these anyway.
Food and drink
Words you will hear all week
You do not need to say these. You need to recognise them.
One to ten
Enough for a price, a table and a room number.
Where to use them
Start with the driver. You are already in the conversation.
Bon dia as you get in, danki as you get out. That is the whole thing, and it is enough. Nobody expects a visitor to speak Papiamento, which is exactly why trying it lands the way it does.
The rest of the island works the same way. The woman at the bakery, the man at the beach chairs, the front desk at seven in the morning: all of them will answer you in English and all of them will notice that you did not open in it.
So what is Papiamento?
Aruba’s own language, not a dialect of anything.
It is a creole, built over centuries out of Portuguese and Spanish with Dutch, African languages and some English folded in. That mix is why a Spanish speaker catches about half of it and then loses the thread completely.
It is an official language here, alongside Dutch, and it is what people actually speak to each other: at home, in the shop, on the radio. English and Spanish are added on top, which is how a small island ends up with most people holding four.
One thing that confuses visitors: Aruba writes it Papiamento, with an o. Curaçao and Bonaire write Papiamentu, with a u, and spell a number of words differently too. Neither is a mistake. You are in the o.
The word that is not on this page
Ask your driver for one. They will give you a better one than a list can.
Every driver has a favourite thing to teach a passenger, and it is usually not in any phrasebook. Ask what they would add. It is the shortest route from a taxi ride to a conversation, and it is why the card is in the car in the first place.