In the Unitätsarchiv in Herrnhut, Germany, an interesting manuscript of an early grammar of Virgin Islands Dutch Creole is archived. It was never published, but large parts of are probably borrowed from the language description by Oldendorp (1770) and Magens’s Grammar (1770). On the other hand this text also contains original observations which are illustrated by examples from missionary texts from the end of the eighteenth century.
D.C. Hesseling, the author, was aware of the existence of the above mentioned manuscript. For his work Het Negerhollands der Deense Antillen (1905) he ordered a copy. Several letters between Hesseling and the head of the archive in Herrnhut, Glitsch, about making this copy, are still stored in the library of Leyden University.
Hesseling mentions this grammar quite often in his 1905 work, but the copy could not be traced among the manuscripts in Leyden University. Luckily, Hein van der Voort and I found it among printed works.
The original manuscript (about which an early post was written) is hard to read because of the state of the material and the so-called German Kurrent Schrift, which differs a lot from Roman font. Hesseling’s 1903 copy was not only easier to read for me, but also for the outstanding transcription program Transkribus. From October 2023 and this moment, Transkribus composed the first draft (and believe me, a human interface was quite necessary) and was corrected by me.
I already started adding foot notes and other comments to this translations and I am looking forward to publishing the entire text in near future!
An example from p.94-95:
Bei der Ueberset-
zung mancher Stellen der heiligen Schrift und geistlichen
Liedern zeigt es sich noch bisweilen, daß Worte dazu fehlen.
Will man in solchen Fällen Worte aus der holländischen
oder deutschen Sprache nehmen und sie nach der Aehnlichkeit
der Creolischen Art einrichten oder verwandeln, so ist doch
große Behutsamkeit und eine gute Wissenschaft der hol-
ländischen Sprache nötig: damit man nicht nach der Aehn-
lichkeit andere Wörter welche mache, die deswegen im hol-
ländischen nicht immer heißen, was sie heißen sollen, son-
dern oft viel was anders bedeuten.
Grammatik der Creol-Sprache in West-Indien. 1903. 112 pp., small 4°, Herrnhut. {P}
>UBL 163 C 33 (formerly 559 H 28).
>Hesseling (1905) writes that he obtained a copy of the original manuscript from 1802 with the same title from mr. A. Glitsch in Herrnhut. This manuscript/copy (from the beginning of this century) cannot not be found in the Hesseling archive in the library of the Leyden University nor in the manuscript collection, but in the collection of printed works. On the inside cover is written that it is a gift from 1941 by Hesseling’s widow A. H. Hesseling-Salverda de Grave. The back of the cover bears the title `Het Negerhollands der Deense Antillen’.
die creol taal 