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:
‘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:
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.
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.
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
Posted in Historical corpora, Meetings, Presentations
Tagged Audience Design, eighteenth century, word order
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.
Posted in Historical corpora, Manuscripts, On the Internet
Tagged Digitally available, gospel harmony
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.
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”.
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.
Posted in Historical corpora, Manuscripts, Moravian Archives
Tagged Bethlehem, Bethlehem PA, Frans Hinskens, Georg Weber, Manuscripts, Samuel Isles
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.
die creol taal 
Six newly found sentences in Berbice Dutch Creole!
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:
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):
Immediately afther this Skepi sentence in the letter in question, the writer provides the following metalinguistic comment:
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.
(Boegh et al. 2023)
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.
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
1 Comment
Posted in Dutch related contact languages, Historical corpora, Manuscripts, metalinguistic comments