Category Archives: Historical corpora

Di hou creol – Podcast over Virgin Islands Dutch Creole, Aflevering 2

In de tweede aflevering van deze podcast behandel ik drie onderwerpen. Ik begin met de brief van Arendt Heinderijcksz. Deze is verzonden vanaf St. Eustatius in 1672, maar kwam nooit aan. In deze brief staat de oudste Nederlandse aanwijzing voor de kolonisatie van St. Thomas. In het tweede deel laat ik twee teksten horen die te maken hebben met slavernij. De eerste is de enige uit de achttiende eeuw. Dit afscheidslied van een tot slaaf gemaakte is opgetekend door een bediende van plantage La Grande Princesse op St. Croix en is gepubliceerd in 1788. De tweede is vastgelegd door De Josselin de Jong in 1923. In het derde gedeelte van de podcast noem ik enkele websites waarmee historisch onderzoek met betrekking tot het Virgin Islands Dutch Creole en/of de geschiedenis van de Deense Antillen gedaan kan worden.

Veel luisterplezier! Opmerkingen, tips, vragen? Stel ze via deze website. Alvast hartelijk bedankt. Luisteren? Dat kan via Spotify, Apple podcast, Google podcast , maar ook via deze link.

Genoemde bronnen:

  1. De brief van Arendt Heinderijcksz normaal gesproken hier te vinden. Zie brief 2008. De transcriptie volgt hier:

‘J Juel
A(nn)o 1672
Eersame ser Dichteten Groot Gunstiger
heer saluijt vl gelijft te weeten als dat
jck met mijn folck noch clock e(nde) gesondt ben
veerhoppende het selfde met mijn Groot
Gunstinger heer voors gelijft mijn heer te
weeten als daet jck hier ben den 9/19 Desemb(er)
ben geardiuert e(nde) legh hier e(nde) verwaght
ferro met smerten voors heb jck voorstaen
als daet ferro noch jn Nouember heft tot
Copenhagen gewest e(nde) hier js hoopen folck die
naer ferro voorlangen om mede te folgen nar
sint tomes voors weet jck mijn Groot Gunsti
ger heer niet mer te schriuen daen Godt befollen
e(nde) de groetnise aen al de Edel heerren de
Edel Coppanni
VL d(ienst)w(illige) D(ienaer)
Arendt Heinderijcksz.
Acttum den 26/5
feberuarij jnt jagt
De Gauden Cron
op de Ree vaen staecio.’

De werken van Westergaard (genoemd in relatie tot Heinderijcksz) en Knox (met de lijst van eerste kolonisten) staan in de linkerkolom van deze website.

2.1 De teksten waarin slavernij een belangrijke rol spelen zijn de volgende. Van het fragment van een rebellenlied (Schmidt 1788) staat een afbeelding in het boek Die Creol Taal. De link hiernaar staat in de rechterkolom van deze website. De tekst luidt als volgt:

Adjo my Mester Neeger, e — Samja

Da lob my lo lob, e – Samja

My nöy kan hau di uit mer &c

Di Blanco no frey, e – Samja

Adjo my Syssie, &c

Van Dag du Mandag &c

Adjo my Mama &c

Da lob my &c

Adjo my beer Maade …

Adjo m gud Friende &c

Adjo my Tata

Di Land no Frey &c

Adjo my Viefe &c

Lef frey met my Mama &c

Dünk op my altyt &c

My nu sae ferjet jou e – – Samja

2.2 De tekst die De Josselin de Jong heeft opgetekend tijdens zijn veldwerk in 1923 over de manumissie van de hond luidt als volgt. Hartelijk dank, Peter Bakker, voor jouw foto van deze tekst!

3. De genoemde websites zijn de volgende:

Letters as Loot

Gekaapte Brieven

Slave Voyages

Virgin Islands Families

Rigsarkivet The Danish Westindies – Sources of history

Virgin Islands Dutch Creole Texts to Meertens Institute, Amsterdam

At the end of the 1980s these photocopies of microfilms were send from Herrnhut (Germany) to the Department of General Linguistics of the University of Amsterdam to be digitalized. After the publication of Die Creol Taal (1996) the texts were provisionally archived in Amsterdam. When the Ph.D. projects of Robbert van Sluijs and Cefas van Rossem started, all texts were stored in the Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

Since these texts need to be available for further study, I am very happy to announce that these are from now on archived in the Meertens Institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam!

The originals are of course in Herrnhut, well archived in the beautiful Unitätsarchiv.

Die Geskiednis 1833 available as scan

In a letter from 1773 we find the first clue that Johann Böhner had at least started to translate Samuel Lieberkühn’s Gospel Harmony (1768) into Virgin Islands Dutch Creole. In the following years he made at least two versions before 1780 (manuscripts 321 and 322). During a conference in 1784 it was decided that J.C. Auerbach should make another version for a better connection to the audience of (enslaved) inhabitants of the Danish Antilles. We think the unfinished manuscript 3231 is from his hand. A final manuscript version, from before 1795, is also incorporated in our corpus.

In 1833  Die Geskiednis van ons Heere en Heiland Jesus Christus, soo as die vier Evangelist sender ka skriev die op  is published in New York, financed by the American Tract Society. 2000 copies were distributed among 9400 Christianized slaves (Anon. 1836), so of lots of people it must have thought they had the skill to read Creole. Still it was the last printed Virgin Islands Dutch Creole text of the Moravian Brethren.

The content of the manuscripts is available in the digital Clarin-Nehol Corpus. On the Scanned Publications page, you will find the scanned version of this 1833 Virgin Islands Dutch Creole Gospel Harmony.

 

Dutch as a koine?

Aarhus Danish Atlantic 160116 Dutch as a Koine

On January 16, 2016, I presented this paper in Aarhus at the symposium The Danish Atlantic (Aarhus University). Next to papers in the field of history, anthropology, archives and museums, five had a linguistic subject. Robbert van Sluijs (Radboud University) about West-African grammatical influence on VIDC, Peter Bakker (Aarhus University) about Danish linguistic elements in West-African and Dutch Creole languages, Kristoffer Boegh (Aarhus University) about the differences between Dutch Creole lects and other Creole languages and Peter Stein (several universities, Emeritus) about Oldendorps reports on the life of enslaved people.

The Dutch language was the largest lexifier of VIDC, and to be be more precize: the influence of Western Flemish and Zeelandic dialects is obvious. However, we do not know exactly how these elements entered into the vernacular of the Danish Antilles. I already presented on this subject in Brussels (2012), which was published in Revue Belge, but in this presentation I focus on the exact variant of Dutch and not only on demographic information.

Further reading? This will be a part of my dissertation. Please feel free to send me an email about this subject.

Cefas van Rossem

 

Audience Design and eighteenth century Virgin Islands Dutch Creole

Audience Design and eighteenth century VIDC [dct]

On February 6, 2016, I presented a paper during the so-called Grote Taaldag/Taalkunde-in-Nederland-dag of the Algemene Vereniging voor Taalkunde, Utrecht University, The Netherlands. In this presentation I focused on the use of Bell’s Audience Design model to study the authenticity of eighteenth century Virgin Islands Dutch Creole. Of course it will eventually be a part of my dissertation.

Please feel free to send me feedback!

Cefas van Rossem

Gospel Harmony 1833 digitally available

The Creole  version of Lieberkühn’s Gospel Harmony is digitally available here. It was financed by The American Tract Society and was  printed in New York in 1833. The edition of 2000 copies was distributed among the Christianized slaves of the Moravian Brethren on the Danish Antilles. If all copies were distributed, one out of every four to five  above mentioned slaves owned a copy.

The first version was translated by Johann Böhner in or just before 1780 (coded 321). A second version, which had an interesting preface (322), was made only a short period after the first one. The third version (3231) was translated around 1790, probably by Johann Auerbach. About five years later a fourth version was made (3232). Just like 3231, this text is not complete. All manuscript versions can be consulted in the Clarin-NEHOL database.

The manuscripts are obviously written in the same tradition, but differ slightly. Manuscript 3231 seems influenced by the English translation of Lieberkühn’s Gospel Harmony. This can be due to the fact that English became the most important language in the Danish Antilles at that moment.

Manuscript 3232 and the printed version hardly differ. However, since 3232 is not complete, it cannot be the version which was used by the printer.

 

New manuscripts in Corpus Negerhollands Texts

In 1995 Frans Hinskens published “Some of the documents concerning Negerhollands in the Archives of the Moravian Brethren in Bethlehem Pennsylvania. A first impression” in Amsterdam Creole Studies. In the fieldnotes of his visit to the Moravian Archives, which are included in our Corpus Negerhollands Texts, he mentions at least two interesting booklets.

In the new digital entrance to these archives, these works could easily be found and through the help of archivist Thomas McCullough we obtained photocopies of them yesterday.

The first booklet is the earliest Negerhollands Hymnal known: Isles, Samy & Georg Weber. Criol Leedekin Boekje voor gebriek Van de Neger broer gemeente Na St Thomas St Crux Overzet üt de Hoog deutse taal door Broer Samy Isles en George Weber, en een deel mee Assistantie Broer Johañes Van de Jaar 1749 tot Jaar 1753″. small format, 87 pp. >EN: Creole hymnal. >In Moravian Archives, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in box: “Ms. Translations into Danish (Creolan). 1.) Hymn book for the Negroes of St. Thomas & St. Croix (Transl. by Sam Isles & Georg Weber, (1747-1753)”. (see our Bibliography above).

The translators are mentioned in Oldendorp’s history and we suspect the Johannes who is mentioned on the title page to be Johann Böhner, who translated several large texts into Negerhollands around 1780.

Isles&Weber 1753

The second booklet is Geskiednis na die Martel=Week en tee na die Hemelvaart van ons Heere en Heiland Jesus Christus. 132 pp. >EN: History of the Passion week to the Ascension. >In Moravian Archives, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in box: “Ms. Translations into Danish (Creolan). 2.) The Passion Week-Ascension”.

Martelweerk

The manuscript is not dated, but since the handwriting looks like the one of Johann Auerbach, it cannot be ca 1753, as mentioned in the Moravian Archive, but must be somewhere between 1766 and 1792.

Delpher.nl

Only a few weeks ago Delpher.nl was brought under my attention. It is a new search engine which searches all books, newspapers (from the seventeenth century on) and magazines stored in the Royal Dutch Library.

A link can be found in the Recent Publications header. Click on ‘Delpher’ to see an example.

logo-kb