Category Archives: Announcements and reviews

‘Na die Begin Godt a maak Hemel en Aerde’, Van Maris in Weekendavisen

Posted on September 5, 2018 | 1 comment

During the months following my promotion (on December 20 2017, some websites paid attention to my research. An article was published by Mathilde Jansen on Nemo Kennislink, a very informative website for Dutch speaking pupils (here), my introduction which I presented just before my Ph.D. defence was published on Caribisch Uitzicht, the website of Werkgroep Caribische Letteren by Michiel van Kempen (here) and I was interviewed by Berthold van Maris of NRC, an important Dutch newspaper.

My colleagues from Aarhus University, Peter Bakker and Kristoffer Friis Boegh surprised me with the Danish translation of Van Maris’s article, which was published in the Danish newspaper Weekendavisen on August 10. (here). Thank you!

 

 

1 Comment

Posted in Announcements and reviews, On the Internet

Article Van Maris about research Van Rossem in NRC

Posted on August 6, 2018 | 2 comments

Dutch journalist Berthold van Maris was interested enough in my research to write an article about in the Dutch newspaper NRC in june 2018. Thank you very much!

A digital version can be found here.

2 Comments

Posted in Announcements and reviews

Dissertation Van Rossem available!

Posted on December 20, 2017 | 2 comments

0001999_the-virgin-islands-dutch-creole-textual-heritage-philological-perspectives-on-authenticity-and-audie_328

 

https://www.lotpublications.nl/the-virgin-islands-dutch-creole-textual-heritage-philological-perspectives-on-authenticity-and-audience-design

2 Comments

Posted in Announcements and reviews, On the Internet

Sebastian Dyhr’s 2001 thesis on Magens and his grammar digitally available

Posted on October 8, 2017 | 7 comments

In 2001 Sebastian Adorján Dyhr wrote his M.A. thesis ‘Grammatik over det creolske sprog’ af Joachim Melchior Magens I en lingvistisk og historisk kontekst (Aarhus Univeritet, supervisor: Peter Bakker). This thesis is an extensive description of this first published Creole Grammar and its author. I am very grateful to Dyhr for giving permission to make it available on my website.

Not only his description of the grammar is of interest. Dyhr discovered the original ‘Magens’ letter which was published by Schuchardt and commented on by Hesseling in Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde (1914). This letter is the only example of Virgin Islands Dutch Creole from the end of the nineteenth century, a period in which this language was thought to have been extinct. This appendix is however only available on request.

The thesis can be found on the Scanned publications page

7 Comments

Posted in Announcements and reviews, Magens

Peter Bakker (Aarhus University) compares all Caribbean varieties of Dutch Creole!

Posted on June 17, 2017 | Leave a comment

Only recently John Benjamins published

This great book in which the phylogenetic approach of relations between Creole languages is extensively explores is (thank you so much, editors and publisher!)  available as open source text: http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/books/9789027265739

At first sight, Peter Bakker’s contribution is most interesting for the study of Dutch Creoles., so I haven’t checked al other chapters yet….

Already in 1989 Ian Robertson compared three Caribbean Dutch Creoles and published an interesting Swadesh wordlist comparison in Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Letterkunde. In 2014 Peter Bakker published his comparison of Skepi Dutch, Berbice Dutch and Virgin Islands Dutch Creole in Journal of Germanic Linguistics in which he included new material and used a different approach. However, in his new 2017 contribution, chapter 10, Bakker uses the phylogenetic possibilities to connect the relations and linguistic distances between the Caribbean Dutch Creoles. Step by step we are able to follow his search for linguistic and historical relations between these three, extinct, languages.

Bakker, Peter. 2017. ‘Chapter 10. Dutch Creoles compared with their lexifier’, in: Peter Bakker, Finn Borchsenius, Carsten Levisen, Eeva Sippola (eds), Creole Studies – Phylogenetic Approaches. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, p. 276-305.

 

Leave a comment

Posted in Announcements and reviews

Doctoral dissertation Robbert van Sluijs

Posted on May 7, 2017 | 1 comment

Next Thursday, May 11th 2017, my colleague Robbert van Sluijs will defend his doctoral dissertation Variation and change in Virgin Islands Dutch Creole, Tense, Modality and Aspect.

WP_20170507_14_43_21_Pro

In seven extensive chapters, Van Sluijs focuses on the Virgin Islands Dutch Creole TMA-system, for instance the use of a, le/lo and ka, especially in sources which are available in the Clarin-NEHOL-corpus.

The interesting book from this creolist of Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands, is published by the Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics, LOT 453. An OpenSource-version will be available in near future.

1 Comment

Posted in Announcements and reviews, Linguistics, Uncategorized

Frans Kellendonk and Virgin Islands Dutch Creole

Posted on May 7, 2017 | Leave a comment

The famous Dutch author Frans Kellendonk (1951-1990) was in the process of writing a new novel in the nineteen eightees. The story was inspired by the  probably racist murder of Kerwin Duinmeijer (1983) and the play Leeuwendalers (1647) by the Dutch author Joost van den Vondel (1587-1679), and remained unfinished.

Kellendonk wanted to use a Creole language in his novel and during his visit of Curacao in 1987 he got to know Virgin Islands Dutch Creole. He copied Hesseling (1905) and De Josselin de Jong (1924), but also several pages from Magens (1818). These photo copies and a manuscript in which some words and small sentences are noted by Kellendonk, are stored in the so called Archief Frans Kellendonk in the Library of the Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde in the University Library of Leyden.

My article about these notes is published in Nieuw Letterkundig Magazijn, XXXV, 1, mei, 2017, pp. 30-36.

In the same volume Jan Noordegraaf published an article about D.C. Hesseling and his work on Papiamentu: ‘D.C. Hesseling en de West, van classicus tot creolist’. In: Nieuw Letterkundig Magazijn, XXXV, 1, mei, 2017, pp. 25-29.

 

Leave a comment

Posted in Announcements and reviews, Manuscripts

Great news: The Danish West Indies – Sources of History (Rigsarkivet)

Posted on March 1, 2017 | 1 comment

Today, March 1st 2017, the Danish National Archives openend the website for online acces to all its sources related to the Danish Antilles/Virgin Islands. More than one kilometer of sources is available.

A link to the website can be found here.

A direct link to search all records can be found here.

A first glance showed transcriptions and facsimilae. However, help is needed to transcribe as many texts as possible! Visit this link: Crowdsourcing.

1 Comment

Posted in Announcements and reviews, Danish sources

New publication Philipp Krämer: Combien de néerlandais?

Posted on October 14, 2016 | Leave a comment

Recently I received a new publication by Philipp Krämer (Freie Universität Berlin):

‘Combien de néerlandais? Histoire linguistique et histoire de la linguistique dans les Îles Vierges Danoises’,  in: Histoire Épistémology Langage 38/1 (2016), p. 103-120. It is digitally available at: Combien de Néerlandais?

Krämer’s English abstract and keywords are the following:

“Abstract

For centuries, the Dutch-based Creole language of the Danish Virgin Islands was documented not by the Dutch but mainly by German missionaries and Danish colonialists. This article sheds light on the role of the Dutch language in this complex colonial universe. Historical sources from the 18th and 19th century will show which sociolinguistic role Dutch played in the society of the islands and which (meta-)linguistic knowledge of Dutch the authors of these sources (C.G.A. Oldendorp, J.M. Magens, and E. Pontoppidan) had. Some reflections on the discursive and epistemological foundations of the sources and the significance they attribute to the Dutch language will conclude the article in order to show that the linguistic compexities of this archipelago are diferent from most other Creole-speaking areas.

Keywords

Colonialism, Christian mission, Creole languages, cariole (“Negerhollands”), Dutch, universalism, racialism, Danish Virgin Islands”

 

 

 

 

Leave a comment

Posted in Announcements and reviews

Tagged , ,

Berbice Dutch Creole in collection Meertens Institute

Posted on September 2, 2016 | 5 comments

In the West Indies only three Dutch related Creole languages existed. In Guyana two languages existed. Of Skepi Dutch, which was spoken on the borders of the Essequibo river, we only know a few sentences and a Swadesh list full of words. The first known sentence of this language, from 1780, was found only a few years ago by Marijke van der Wal in one of the letters which were studied in her Letters as Loot project. Robertson (1989) shows a resemblance in vocabulary of Virgin Islands Dutch Creole and Skepi Dutch, which may point to a similar Dutch/Zeelandic superstrate.

Berbice Dutch is a unique Creole language from which the African influence can be traced to one language which is spoken in Nigeria. There is far more to tell about this language and interested ones should at least consult Silvia Kouwenberg’s dissertation and the work of Ian Robertson on the discovery of the language in the 1970s.

The Dutch Meertens Institute (which is one of the institutes of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences) is, among Dutch folklore and onomastics, specialized in Dutch dialectology in the broadest sense. In its last newsletter it presents their conservation of Silvia Kouwenberg’s material of Berbice Dutch, which is safe for the future because of the Data Seal of Approval.

More information, in Dutch, can be found here.

 

 

5 Comments

Posted in Announcements and reviews

Tagged ,