Although the focus of the article is not on Virgin Islands Dutch Creole, I think it quite nice to see which discoveries were made in related Dutch Creole texts in the Caribbean. The following article (in Dutch) was published on the website Neerlandistiek.nl October 24, 2023. During the following day, Peter Bakker and Bart Jacobs have send several comments of which at least one should be included to complete the texts!

Een donders comike taal. Six sentences Berbice Dutch Creole from 1803 (updated version)

24 oktober 2023 door Cefas van Rossem 

Only recently archive researcher Mark Ponte send me a link to a scanned letter from the Dutch National Archives. He assumed I probably already knew these sentenses. However: not so!

The letter was written on March 7, 1803, from Rio Berbice (in nowadays Guyana) by the Dutchman G.H. van Langen. In the letter it comes clear that he is from the Dutch town of Dordrecht. The addressee is his aunt Elisabeth de Loos, also from Dordrecht. The letter consists of three pages in which Van Langen writes about his ups and downs in the colony, about sending a monkey to his uncle in the Netherlands, and he also asks whether his aunt prefers a blue or a red parrot to be sent to her. My attentention was drawn to the following comment on the second page of the letter:

het is hier een donderse comike taal. de duivel magt dat volk verstaan. ik zal u van onderen in mijn brief een paar Reegeltjes Criools schrijven, dan zult UEd eens zien hoe een verdomde Taal het is, nog veel slimmer als hebreeuws of joods

Free translation: Here is a very comical language. The devil may understand that people. I will write some lines of Creole at the end of this letter. Then you will see what a damn language it is, even more difficult than Hebrew or Jewish.’

I really enjoy this kind of metalinguistic comments. Apparently the language sounds funny to him, but he also thinks the language is more difficult than Hebrew or Jewish.

In this quote we also see the oldest find of the word ‘Creole’ when it comes to Berbice Dutch Creole. In the oldest source of this language, a glossary in a travel report from 1794, Peter Constantijn Groen talks about ‘Berbician words’. It was published by Ian Robertson in 1994.

As promised, Van Langen presents some, six, sentences in the last paragraph of the letter, accompanied by the Dutch translations. With the help of three word lists (Kouwenberg 1994, Robertson 1989 and Robertson 1994) I was able to decipher the sentences and compare them to the translations by Van Langen himself.

1.

Van Langen, Creole: Een Pijve Daatje

Van Langen, Dutch: Een hartelijk groete (lit. ‘a heartly greeting’, ‘kind regards’)

Kouwenberg: en pi+fu daki

gloss: a      give+for     day

(Pi daki = lit. ‘give day’ ‘good day’, Kouwenberg 1994:580)

2.

Van Langen, Creole: Voor ikke en mooien jerma

Van Langen, Dutch: gij zijt een mooijen mijd (lit. ‘you are a beautiful girl’)

Kouwenberg: fu eke en moi jerma

gloss: for me a beautiful woman

3

Van Langen, Creole: Kom ja ja set a mooij

Van Langen, Dutch: kom Lieffie hoe h*…* gij het (lit. ‘Come, sweetie, how do you *have* it’)

Kouwenberg: kumu ? sete moi

gloss: come  maid stay beautiful/good

4

Van Langen, Creole: Ikke zalle joe pioe m*o*sse bottje

Van Langen, Dutch: Ik zal u veel geld geeven (lit. ‘I will give you a lot of money’)

Kouwenberg: eke sa ju pi+ju musu boki

Gloss: I will you give+you much money

5

Van Langen, Creole: Joe soeke mooijen Couta

Van Langen, Dutch: wil je mooijen C*i…* (lit. ‘You want beautiful c*…*’)

Kouwenberg: Ju suku moi kuta

Gloss: you search beautiful beads/bead necklace

(6)

Van Langen, Creole: Pirke m[ij]<+ie> een Glas minjie

Van Langen, Dutch: Geef mij een Glas waater z*…* (lit. ‘Give me a glass of water z*…*.’)

Kouwenberg: Pi+eke mi en glasi minggi

Gloss: give+I me a glass water             

The common words jerma ‘woman’ and minjie ‘water’ can be seen as a shiboleth to know this text is in Berbice Dutch Creole. These, but also some of the other words are unmistakenly derived from Easter Ijo, a language spoken in Nigeria’s Kalabari region in the delta of the Niger river. These words are not found in any other Caribbean language. Many, if not all, Caribbean Creole languages emerged from contact between European and African languages, however none of them shows so many words which originate from only one African language (Smith, Robertson, Williamson 1987).

Remarkable in sentence 5 is the word Couta, which appears as kuta ‘bead, bead necklace’ in Kouwenberg (1994: 633). It is also from Eastern Ijo. The use of it in this text immediately reminded me of the oldest text in Skepi Dutch Creole (Van der Wal 2013):

en sok kum kloeke dagka van noom die sitte bi warme lantta

‘And when the big day comes for the uncle who lives in the warm land’

En als um kom weeran bi Bikkelante

‘and when he comes again in the Netherlands (the big country?)’

Hom sel brengk van die 4 blabba moye goeto

‘he will bring for the four children beautiful goods’

Immediately afther this Skepi sentence in the letter in question, the writer provides the following metalinguistic comment:

is dit geen moye taal? Dog als UEd’ er niet uyt kan komen d’Heer Schalkwyk die hier in ’t land geweest is, zal zulks wel vertolken.

‘Isn’t this a beautiful language? However when you cannot understand it, mister Schalkwijk, who has been in the country, will translate it well.’

This Skepi sentence is therefore not an isolated ‘joke’, but a fragment of a language that could be spoken by at least one person in The Netherlands. Just like Berbice Dutch Creole was spoken alongside the Berbice and the Wiruni, Skepi (>Isekepi, Essequibo) was known in settlements along the Essequibo. I can hardly imagine that more family members of planters did not receive letters with similar language fragments.

The word goeto ‘good’ appears in the nineteenth-century description of the Skepi Dutch Creole by the English missionary Youd (1837, Jacobs & Parkvall 2020). But, could this perhaps also mean couta, kuta ‘string of beads’? The origin of the word blabba ‘child’ has not yet been found. However, according to Youd, kente is the word for ‘child’. Some colleagues thought of babbelaar ‘chatterbox’ as the origin, which I think is quite possible. In the Youd material by Jacobs and Parkvall (2020) I did find cabba ‘good friend’ and labba ‘agouti’, Sranan ‘kon’koni’, a rodent that is also referred to as rabbit in Surinamese Dutch. Could blabba be a related pet name?

In the available word lists of Berbice Dutch Creole I did not find the translation of ja ja (sentence 3) and at first I thought that it might mean ‘here’ (dja>En here), much like in English-related languages such as Sranan. The word in Kouwenberg (1994) which comes closest to ja ja with the meaning ‘sweetie’ is perhaps junggu ‘young’, or quite possibly jana ‘intimate contact’. Bart Jacobs emailed a very nice opportunity. In Papiamentu, yaya means ‘maid, housekeeper’. I think he is right and that he also establishes a link between the Creole languages in Guyana and those in the Leeward Antilles, just as there is a link between Virgin Islands Dutch Creole and Papiamentu.

Other recent findings

It is a great time for new discoveries of texts written in Creole languages related to Dutch. In 2020, Bart Jacobs (University of Krakow) and Mikael Parkvall (University of Stockholm) published a sensational list of words and phrases of the Skepi Dutch Creole. After publication on Neerlandistiek.nl (Sensationele nieuwe bron van het Skepi Dutch (ivdnt.org)) This discovery even made it to a Dutch newspaper and radio. A few months ago  they published another article with newly found Skepi Dutch Creole material, again in  Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages  (Jacobs & Parkvall 2023).

Kristoffer Friis Boegh, Peter Bakker (both Aarhus University), Rasmus Christensen (University of Copenhagen) and I (Meertens Institute, Amsterdam) have just published seven eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Virgin Islands Dutch Creole texts. Most of them were found by Rasmus in newspapers from the former Danish Antilles (Boegh et al. 2023). One of the published texts deserves extra attention: the runaway ad by Bodo Hansteen (1817). It is a call to bring a fled enslaved person back to Hansteen.

We find these advertisements in all kinds of Caribbean newspapers at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century. A quick look in Dutch-language newspapers yields similar Surinamese advertisements and Roland de Bonth already referred to it in his treatment of the Dutch word Absenteer (De Bonth 2021). Enrique Corneiro (2018) published an enormous amount of ‘runaway slave adds’ that appeared in the newspapers in the Danish Antilles (now US Virgin Islands). Some of them indicate that the escapee speaks ‘Dutch Creole’, but the advertisements are generally in English. Hansteen’s Creole advertisement does not appear in this book.
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What particularly interests me about Hansteen’s advertisement is that it was written in Dutch Creole in an English-language newspaper. English emerged in the northern Caribbean, especially after independence of the United States, replacing Dutch and Virgin Islands Dutch Creole as the main spoken languages in the Danish Antilles. For example, Hansteen’s text shows that it is still useful to use Virgin Islands Dutch Creole in an advertisement. However, which audience did he have in mind? Are freed people or enslaved ones who can read Creole his audience, the target group to capture escapees? Does he prefer to use Creole because he himself does not have a good command of English?

We can indicate the period of origin of Creole languages more or less precisely and the languages related to Dutch in the Caribbean can only have emerged after language contact in the seventeenth century between Dutch-speaking planters and enslaved people. Texts in and about these languages from this period not only present us insight into the process of emergence of the language, but also in how its use developed. Online databases such as those of the Dutch National Archives or the Danish State Archives can bring us close to the first stages of Creole languages by recognizing the snippets of Creole in the pieces, as Mark Ponte has done now in the case of Berbice Dutch Creole.

Sources

• Langen, D.H. van. 1803, 7 maart. Letter to Elisabeth de Loos. Rio Berbice. 3 p. https://t.co/5RbKL19Xmg
• Boegh, Kristoffer Friis, Peter Bakker, Cefas van Rossem & Rasmus Christensen. 2023. “Seven newly discovered 18th and 19th century Virgin Islands Dutch Creole Texts”, in: Faraclas, N., R. Severing, E. Echteld, S. Delgado & W. Rutgers (eds) Caribbean Convivialities and Caribbean Sciences: Inclusive Approaches tot he Study of the Languages, Literatures and Cultures of the Dutch Caribbean and Beyond. Willemstad: University of Curaçao. 93-116.
• Bonth, Roland de. 2021, 8 september. ‘absenteren, niet alle tot slaaf gemaakten legden zich neer bij hun miserabele situatie. Sommigen kozen ervoor te absenteren. In: (absenteren – Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal (ivdnt.org)).
• Corneiro. Enrique. 2018. Runaway Virgins, Danish West Indian slave ads, 1770-1848. Richmond: Triple E Enterprise. 112 p.
• Jacobs, Bart, & Mikael Parkvall. 2020. ‘Skepi Dutch Creole, The Youd Papers’. In: Journal for Pidgin and Creole Languages, 35, 1, 360-380.
• Jacobs. Bart & Mikael Parkvall. 2023. ‘Skepi Creole Dutch, The Rodschied Papers’. In: Journal for Pidgin and Creole Languages. Published online, 13 Juli 2023.
• Kouwenberg, Silvia. 1994. A Grammar of Berbice Dutch Creole. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
• Robertson, Ian E. 1989. 1989. ‘A comparative wordlist of Berbice Dutch, Skepi Dutch and Negerhollands’. In: Tijdschrift voor Neder­landse Taal- en Letter­kunde 105. p. 3-21
• Robertson, Ian E. 1994. ‘Berbiciaanse woorde’. In: T. Veenstra (ed), Amsterdam Creole Studies XI, 67-74.
• Smith, Norval S.H., Ian E. Robertson & Kay Williamson. 1987. ‘The Ijo element in Berbice Dutch’. In: Language in Society 16, 49-90.
• Wal, Marijke van der. 2013, 17 december. ‘Brief van de maand december 2013’. In: https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/binaries/content/assets/geesteswetenschappen/onderzoeksprojecten/brieven-als-buit/brief-van-de-maand-december-2013.pdf