OSO. Tijdschrift voor Surinaamse Taalkunde, Letterkunde en Geschiedenis. Jaargang 3

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An early source for English in Surinam
Norval Smith

In the Dutch spoken in Surinam there are, as is fairly well-known, a number of lexical items of ultimate English origin. Some of these are patently modern loans, others however represent an older layer of borrowing.

To this second category belong, for example, the following items in the dictionary of Surinam Dutch (Van Donselaar 1976):

Surinam Dutch	English
baboen	baboon
bastiaan	overseer
blaka	black
braf	broth
djogo	jug
jas/yaws	yaws

Van Donselaar gives as the etymology of most of such items a Sranan word, itself derived from English.

Surinam Dutch	Sranan	English
baboen	babún	baboon
bastiaan	basjá	overseer
blaka	bláka	black
braf	bráfu	broth
djogo	djógo	jug
jas/yaws	jási	yaws

Small as this example is, we can see that these words fall into different categories. We have, for instance, cases where the Sranan word is taken over into Surinam Dutch apparently virtually unchanged, eg. blaka, djogo. Other cases are subject to various kinds of modification. Examples of such items are bastiaan, braf, and yaws/jas.

Ignoring the case of bastiaan, in which folk-etymology appears to have played a major role, we find a second type where in the process of adaptation the epithetic vowel typical of most consonant-final words appears to have been dropped. This would then be the case with braf, and jas/yaws.

What we wish to do in this short note is the following. We will challenge the assumption made by Van Donselaar (1976) that in most cases of the second type of adaptation referred to above a Sranan item provides the direct source of the Surinam Dutch word. We will suggest the alternative explanation that in fact in the majority of these cases the word concerned

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has been borrowed directly into Surinam Dutch from the English that was the principal European language spoken in Surinam, both during the period of the English colony (1651-1667), and afterwards as long as the English remained the majority of the European population (till between 1671 and 1675) (see Voorhoeve 1983). We will further point out that in some cases such items are capable of providing information relevant to the study of the English-derived portion of the Sranan lexicon.

One very early source providing information on English items in Surinam Dutch is Van Berkel (1695). Adriaan van Berkel describes a stay in Surinam from June 1680 till June 1689. In his description of this country he quotes a number of English words referring to various plants, animals, and other natural phenomena. These words were apparently current in the Dutch employed in Surinam at the time. Most have obvious Dutch equivalents, which are in fact used to explain them. The following items are clearly of direct English origin.

Surinam Dutch c. 1680	English
jawes	yaws
swampen	swamps
tortoises	id.
potatoes	id.
speckle-wood	id.
muskyta	mosquito

The first two of these occur in Van Donselaar (1976) as jas/yaws and zwamp. In the first case Van Donselaar gives as the source Sranan /jási/, and in the second both Sranan /swámpu/ and English swamp are given. It appears, however, from Van Berkel that both items have been current in Surinam Dutch for three hundred years. As English was the majority European language till less than ten years before Van Berkel's arrival in Surinam it seems unnecessary and unlikely that Sranan should form an intermediate point in the chain of transfer of these words from English to Dutch. We assume then that they were directly borrowed from English into Dutch in Surinam. These particular items have in fact found their way into the Dutch of Holland, but this is irrelevant to our purpose here. We suggest further that all English items in Surinam Dutch lacking epithetic vowels be regarded as potential candidates for loans made directly into Dutch from English.

The last two items - speckle-wood and muskyta - are of considerable interest as far as the nature of the English spoken in Surinam in the seventeenth century is concerned. The first is represented in presentday Sranan in the form /spikri-údu/. There is no question but that this must go back to speckle-wood which as we can see was used in Surinam. The quality of the first vowel is not what we would expect however. The normal development of / ɛ / in Sranan is to /e/. This deviation has two possible explanations. Either the model for this item in Sranan, or at least one of the available models, was [spi kəl] with the common Southern English raising of [ɛ] to [i], or we have here the result of a crossing with Dutch spikkel. In fact the first is quite likely the correct explanation as we have evidence suggesting a parallel pronunciation for other words, eg. Sranan /iniwan/ and /íbri/ for English anyone and every.

The second form - muskyta - is even more enlightening, providing us as it does with direct information on the pronunciation of English in Surinam. This form would seem to indicate a pronunciation [mə ski:tɒ] rather than the standard [məski:to:] or [mɒski:to:]. Now this same pronunciation has clearly functioned as the model for Sranan /maskíta/. In other words, we find in a very early source a spelling representing the same form as provided the

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model for the Sranan word.

What ought we to conclude from all this? We think that we have demonstrated that early Dutch sources from Surinam can contain information relevant to the history of Sranan. We suggest that many of the items of English origin they contain are not in fact borrowed via the intermediary of Sranan, but directly from English, and that as such they can provide us with valuable information on the variety of English spoken in Surinam in the seventeenth century, additional to that provided by the items of English origin in Sranan itself.

References

Van Berkel, A., 1695. Amerikaansche Voyagien. Amsterdam.

Van Donselaar, J., 1976. Woordenboek van het Surinaams-Nederlands. Instituut Algemene Taalwetenschap, Utrecht.

Voorhoeve, J., 1983. De oorsprong van het Surinaams. In: E. Charry, G. Koefoed, and P. Muysken (eds.), De Talen van Suriname. Coutinho, Muiderberg.