Berbice Creole Dutch

• Creole languages Dutch -based Berbice Dutch

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Crp ( other creoles )

Brc

Berbice Dutch ( Nederlands Ndl Berbice ) is a now extinct creole language that was spoken to about the middle of the 20th century in Guyana. The name is derived from Berbice, one of the existing 1627 to 1814 the Dutch colony on the northern coast of South America, in the east of present-day Guyana, on the border of present-day Suriname. Through the British -Dutch Treaty of 1814 fell on Berbice Britain. As a result, the English gradually supplanted the Dutch.

History of Research

The documentation of this language is due to the research by Silvia Kouwenberg that by painstaking search in the most remote areas of the tropical rain forest found only eleven people between 1986 and 1990 that this language could still remember. The oldest speakers were then Hennie Hartman (* 1895, † 1990) and Alberta Bell ( * 1903), youngest speaker was Hilda Adolph ( b. 1923 ), the language but not fully controlled. During her research Silvia Kouwenberg had to learn the language itself, because the only way the last people who still dominated this language, had to be moved to speak this dying language again. During her work important speakers who still knew many old tales and stories in this language died.

Importance

Berbice Dutch is unique in many ways and provides deep insights into the history of creoles that arose through the Atlantic slave trade. Berbice Dutch was the only Creole language, which contained so many words of a certain African language (Eastern Ijo, from the Niger Delta ) that one could determine the area of ​​origin of slaves in Africa and so return these people a part of their history and identity could.

Examples

This sentence shows how a complex sentence arises from roots of different origin, although, as an unstructured " chatter " from some recognizable Dutch-German word fragments appear to a person who does not speak the language ( een = a, kuli = coolie, Indian workers, man = man, was wa = ve = have the other ingredients come partly from other sources).

This sentence shows two noteworthy things: The personal pronoun of the first person in the singular ( eke = I ) does not go as with all other Atlantic creoles back to a root "mi ", " mo" or similar, which shows the independence of Berbice Dutch. In addition, it shows how a doubling can be used creatively. The doubling of a word often indicates an increase. Here is a word which itself arose from a doubling, namely ( drokodroko = deaf ) from ( droko = dry), doubled again to increase.