Ceylon Portuguese–Dutch Creole

Spoken in

• Indo-European Germanic West Germanic low Franconian Dutch

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Ceylon Dutch ( Nederlands - Ndl Ceylon ) is the English name for an extinct creolized daughter language of Dutch, which was spoken mainly between the 17th and 19th century to the then Ceylon. In this language is occasionally referenced in the older German literature.

History

Between 1658 and 1795 large parts of Ceylon were of the Dutch East India Company ( Verenigde Ndl Dutch East India Company ) dominates. Thus, numerous Dutch settled on the island. The Dutch language Ceylon apparently took to quickly completely separate trains that they removed from the European parent language.

1795 Ceylon was conquered by Britain and the existing VOC branches ( larger needles VOC Factorij ) replaced by English trading post. 1801, English became the official language of Ceylon. Many Dutch people, and with them numerous Ceylon Portuguese, took 1840 English as the main language in dealing. The Dutch and Portuguese were called Burgher community of the new English administration and " Burgher " was the new name for the Ceylon Dutch and Portuguese, which later Asian populations came.

But still a long time in Ceylon remained Dutch ( in its high linguistic and kreolisierter form) alive. For example, as a church language of the Reformed church in Colombo.

1897, the company Het Hollands Gezelschapp van Ceylon was founded by bilingual Dutch.

1907, the Dutch Burgher Union of Ceylon company was founded by now purely English Burghern. At this time, only six to eight people in Ceylon spoke the Dutch high-level language, the new Union replaced the old Dutch society.

Many Burghers of Ceylon left in the period that followed the island and settled in other parts of the British sphere of influence. So Ceylon Dutch was replaced in 1930 as a church language by English and between 1930 and 1950 has a large number of Burgher Ceylon leave.

In the 1980s, the number of Burghers in Ceylon was approximately 34,000 people.

Special

In the older German literature has often been claimed that the Ceylon Dutch have exhibited numerous similarities with the native to Africa Afrikaans. It has been suggested that the Ceylon Dutch have almost the same changes as the Afrikaans pass through ( for example, the form of reduction in the grammatical structure of language and numerous other simplifications ).

The Dutch Neogräzist and linguist Dirk Christiaan Hesseling 1905 could this (random) demonstrate similarities between Afrikaans and Dutch Ceylon in a study carried out by him also.

Later, it was also often pointed out that in 1925 a reformed pastor, Abraham Jacob de Klerk, had been brought from Cape Town to Colombo because of this there was his mother tongue can preach. But this claim can be made in the area of ​​the legends in today's opinion, because de Klerk most likely preached in English.