Category Archives: Announcements and reviews

Last month three publications about, or related to, Virgin Islands Dutch Creole, appeared, at least in my mailbox. Alphabetically the first one is:

Kouwenberg, Silvia. 2016. ‘Review Article (…) Nineteenth-Century Creolist Work and Its Reflections on Language and Community’. In: Historiographia Linguistica 43: 1/2, p. 206-222. >On the occasion of Krämer, Philipp (ed.) (2014).

In the first place the following note of Kouwenberg is remarkable:

“Contemporary reference is simply to die creol taal (the creole language) or variants thereof; the term Negerhollands (literally: Negro Dutch) was coined by a Dutch linguist in 1840, and has been in use among students of the language ever since (Van Rossem & Van der Voort 1996: vii), despite some attempts to rechristen it (something like) Virgin Islands Dutch Creole. Given that its speakers did not refer to the language as Negerhollands, and taking into account the modern connotations of the term, it seems to me that that term is overdue for retirement.”

In our institute in Nijmegen we try to use Virgin Islands Dutch Creole as consequently as possible. Our German colleagues Krämer and Stein prefer to use the term Carriolsch, since it was the first name which was given to this language in written texts. In Troels Roland’s article a separate section (Sprogets navn, p.181-183) is dedicated to this subject.

This review of Philipp Krämers book about 19th century Creolistics is does not only refer to Virgin Islands Dutch Creole material, of course. Page 215 and 216 are about Pontoppidan’s contribution to the study of Virgin Islands Dutch Creole.

Roland, Troels Peter. 2016. ‘”Ju ben een Creol waer-waer”’. In: Kulturstudier 1 (Juli), pp. 159-187.

Troels Roland’s article is in Danish, but accompanied by an abstract in English which makes me very curious about the content of the entire article. Not only because of the interesting period 1750-1850 in which most written texts appeared and in which Dutch Creole was replaced by English Creole, but mainly because of the Danish perspective and the use of (Danish) sources which I did not see in references related to Dutch Creole before. The article is digitally available at http://tidsskriftetkulturstudier.dk/tidsskriftet/vol2016/1-juli/ju-ben-een-creol-waer-waer/

Of the third July article I received a pdf from Peter Stein. In this French text, which is richly illustrated, Stein presents an insight into the early years of Virgin Islands Dutch Creole

Stein, Peter. 2016. ‘La documentation ancienne du créole disparu des Îles Vierges Danouises’. In: Les Cahiers créoles du patrimoine de la Caraïbe/Pawol maké asi mès é labitid an Péyi Karayib 6: Les langues créoles / Palé Kréyol!, [Guadeloupe]: CANOPÉ. pp. 37–39.