The largest publications in Negerhollands date from the end of the eighteenth (Magens’s New Testament, 1781) and the beginning of the nineteenth century (New Testament of the Moravian Brethren, Barby: 1802, and their translation of Lieberkühn’s Gospel Harmony, New York: 1833). Of two, I already published the links to their digital versions. Hein van der Voort alerted me the 1802 New Testament is also available.
The online version can be visited here.
Posted in Moravian Archives, On the Internet
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
Today I found a scan of the 1774 PSALM-BŒK voor die NEGER-GEMEENTEN na S. THOMAS, S. CROIX en S. JEAN. Barby: 1774. 264 pp. here. This book of hymns, translated from German into Negerhollands by the Moravian Brethren, can be compared to the 1765 book of hymns which is available as HERRN65a in our Clarin-NEHOL database and the work from 1784
The scanned work was once owned by Johanna Dorothea Schmidt from Friedensberg, St. Croix. This is interesting to note because of Auerbach’s remark about the use of Creole in St. Croix:
Na St Croex die hab meer van die Negers, die sender kan verstaan English,l as na St Thomas en St Jan, maar doch, sender <¬English Praat> ka mingel ook altoeveel met die Creol- en Guinee-Taal. Da Neger-English die ben. (March 10, 1774)
“On St. Thomas there are more blacks who can understand English than in St. Thomas and St. John, but still their English speech is mixed very much with the Creole and Guinea languages. It is Negro-English.’ (Van Rossem & Van der Voort 1996: 9)
Also available on the Internet is Psalm-boek voor die tot die Evangelische broeder-Kerk behoorende neger-gemeenten na S. Croix, S. Thomas en S. Jan. Barby: 1784. 322, [46] pp. It can be found here. It is also translated into Creole by the Moravian Brethren and, as can be read in its preface, it can be compared to the above mentioned Psalm-Boek from 1774.
On June 11th 2015 the VIth meeting of the ACLC Research group “Revitalising older linguistic documentation” (ROLD) will be held at the University of Amsterdam. Participants are kindly asked to send the title of their presentation before April 1st 2015 to one of the organizers Otto Zwartjes ACLC, UvA: O.J.Zwartjes@uva.nl and Astrid Alexander, ACLC, UvA: A.Alexander-Bakkerus@uva.nl. (See: ROLD)
I hope to present my paper Numbers to indicate change of word order in Negerhollands manuscripts. In the eighteenth century Creole manuscripts of the Herrnhuter translators an interesting way of changing word order can be found about fifty times. See the example: 
The original sentence was
According to the number placed above the words, the word order should be changed into:
It is obvious which version was meant by the translator. Undoubtedly the subject of the sentence, should have been placed before the verb to change the original verb second order of Dutch and German into the SVO-order which is obligatory in most Atlantic Creoles, including Negerhollands. The paper, in which all fifty cases will be analysed, will be included in my PhD-research The Negerhollands Textual Heritage: Philological Perspectives on Authenticity and Audience Design.
Cefas van Rossem Languages in Contact, Radboud University Nijmegen
Posted in Announcements and reviews
Robbert van Sluijs talks on Belgian Radio 1 about West Flemish influence on Dutch Creole In Dutch. Please listen to it here!
This morning, an introductory article on Negerhollands by Robbert van Sluijs was published (in Dutch) on the Dutch website Stemmen van Afrika (Voices of Africa). It is a popular scientific website devoted to showing you the languages of Africa in words, images, and sound.
Here is a direct link to the article.
Please have a look even if you don’t understand Dutch for the pictures and the two sound files of the last speaker, Ms. Stevens (recordings by Robin Sabino).
Posted in Announcements and reviews, Linguistics
Alternative words: service or red herring, Philological approach of 18th century Negerhollands
You will find the powerpoint presentation of the paper I presented on the SCL/SPCL conference in Aruba, August 6th 2014, here: SCLSPCL_AlternativeWords_Service_or_Red_Herring
Posted in Meetings
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
October 17th and 18th the Dutch Department of the Charles University in Prague organized the 9th edition of it’s Praagse Perspectieven congress. One of he two days was dedicated to Exotic Dutch. Next to a general introduction by Guy Janssens, an interesting perspective on Petjoh by Aone van Engelenhoven and a complete overview of the Dutch based language of the Mennonites by Tjeerd de Graaf, Cefas van Rossem presented a paper about the use of changes and mistakes in eighteenth century Negerhollands texts.
The conference volume is in Dutch with an introduction and the abstracts in Czech.
Hrncirova, Z., E. Krol, J. Pekelder and A. Gielen (eds). 2014. Praagse Perspectieven, Handelingen van het colloquium van de sectie Nederlands van de Karelsuniversiteit in Praag, op donderdag 17 en vrijdag 18 oktober 2013. Praag: Universitaire pers.
Van Rossem, Cefas. 2014. ‘Van de fouten kun je leren. Aanpassingen in achttiende-eeuwse Negerhollandse teksten’, in: Hrncirova, Z. et al. (eds). pp. 21-44.
Posted in Announcements and reviews
Tagged eighteenth century, Manuscripts, Moravian Brethren, Van Rossem
In May 2011 I presented my paper Using a digital corpus for the study of the earliest stages of Negerhollands at Revitalizing Older Linguistic Documents, organized by Astrid Alexander-Bakkerus and Otto Zwartjes (University of Amsterdam). Today the article is published in Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung/Language Typology and Universals (Editor-in-Chief: Thomas Stolz, De Gruyter).
Abstract from degruyter.com:
“In this article I show three methods to use the Negerhollands computer corpus for a better understanding of the eighteenth century variety of Negerhollands. The first one is the study of metalinguistic comments which are taken up in several manuscripts. The second method is stemma/variety research between and within texts with the same content. The third method to study the do’s and doubts of the first translators in order to present the right variety of the language is the analysis of annotations, changes and erasures of the writers. This philological approach was common in Medieval studies, for instance, but is hardly used with respect to Creole languages.
Keywords: Virgin Islands; 18th century Negerhollands; Creole language; corpus based linguistic research; Gospel“
die creol taal 