Die Creol taal

250 years of Negerhollands texts

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I Negerhollands: an introduction

[p. 1]

1 Negerhollands¹

Negerhollands is a creole language which emerged in the Virgin Islands around 1700 from the contact between varieties of Dutch and other (African and European) languages. It is now extinct, but it has been preserved in a remarkable collection of manuscripts, from the 18th century onwards.

The following illustration represents a late 18th-century manuscript (no. 3.2.2 in Stein 1986b). It is a piece of commentary from an introduction to a Negerhollands creole translation of the Evangelienharmonie, a compilation of the four gospels. The translation was undertaken by Moravian missionary Johann Böhner of the Moravian Brethren, also known as the Herrnhut missionaries, or in German die Evangelische Brüdergemeine. The commentary was written around 1780 in a language he called Creole (Cariolsch, Criolisch or Creolisch), and which has been known as Negerhollands since van den Bergh (1840). In this text, which is addressed to the Moravian slave community of the Virgin Islands and precedes the translation, the writer explains his purpose.²

1. An example of the first page of ms. 3.2.2 (± 1780)

Die	ben	noe	al	sommig	Jaar	geleeden,	dat ons
DET	BE	now	already	some	year	ago,	that 1PL

[Het is nu al enkele (sommige) jaren geleden, dat wij]

1 This introduction has been written conjointly by Hans den Besten, Pieter Muysken, Cefas van Rossem, Peter Stein and Hein van der Voort. We gratefully acknowledge the contributions of Frank Nelson, Robin Sabino and Gilbert Sprauve. Pieter Muysken edited this text.

2 Below, a transliteration, a morphemic gloss, a line by line Dutch translation to provide a contrast, and a free translation are given. For a list of the abbreviations used in this book, see the section after the table of contents.

[p. 2]

a	ka	Leveer	jender	een	Creol	Psalm -Boeki,	dat
PST	PRF	supply	2PL	a	creole	hymn -book,	that

[jullie een creools psalmboek hebben geleverd, dat]

jender	a	sal	kan	help	vor	sing	wanneer	ons
2PL	PST	FUT	can	help	FOR	sing	when	1PL

[jullie zal kunnen helpen zingen, wanneer wij]

hab	ons	versammling -en,	sooveel	as	van	jender
have	1PL	meeting -PL,	so.many	as	of	2PL

[onze bijeenkomsten hebben, zoveel als van jullie]

ka	leer	vor	lees,	en	vor	mak	gebruk	van	die
PRF	learn	FOR	read,	and	FOR	make	use	of	it

[hebben leren lezen, en om er gebruik van te maken]

ookal,	wanneer	jender	sett	nabin	jender	Hoes
also,	when	2PL	sit	NA.inside	2PL	house

[ook, wanneer jullie in jullie huis zitten]

sonder,	[-sonder]	vor	wees	na	Werk,	vor	kom	be
without	[-without]	FOR	BE	NA	work,	FOR	come	-

[zonder aan het werk te zijn, om bekend te raken]

kent	met	die	Psalm -en	(of	Liederen)
known	with	DET	hymn -PL	(or	song -PL)

[met de psalmen (of liederen)]

‘It has now already been several years since we provided you with a creole hymnal, that you could help sing when we hold our meetings, as so many of you have learned to read, and to make use of it also, when you are at home not being at work, to become familiar with the hymns (or songs).’

At first glance one is struck by the strong resemblance of the Negerhollands in this text to (older) Dutch. Still, a number of differences come to the fore, e.g. in the word order and the verbal system, which makes use of tense, mood and aspect particles instead of verb inflection. In the glosses we have sometimes used an abbreviation, such as DET ‘determiner’ or 1PL ‘first person plural’ because the Negerhollands forms do not always correspond directly to either an English or a Dutch form. Negerhollands ons, for instance, corresponds to Dutch wij/ons/onze ‘we/us/our’, and Negerhollands die corresponds to ‘it/the/that/which/etc.’, in short, the general notion of determination.

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Consider now a fragment from text 59, line 12-14, of the recordings by anthropologist de Josselin de Jong in the early 20th century³:

Am	a	ko	a	hus.	Am	a	see	a	shi	shishi,
3SG	PST	come	NA	house	3SG	PST	say	NA	3POS	sister,

[Hij is thuis gekomen. Hij heeft aan zijn zuster gezegd:]

ju

kaa

trou

een

man,

am

mi

een

beefergi!

Nu

shi

shishi

a

see

2SG

PRF

marry

a

man,

3SG

BE

a

boar.pig

Now

3POS

sister

PST

say

[jij bent met een man getrouwd, hij is een varken. Nu zei zijn zuster]

nu

a

waa!

Di

jung

a

see

am:

jaa,

as

ju

nu

gloo

NEG

be

true.

DET

boy

PST

say

3SG

yes,

if

2SG

NEG

believe

[het is niet waar. De jongen zei haar: ja, als je me niet gelooft]

mi	sa	wis	ju	wapi	ju	kaa	trou	een
1SG	FUT	show	2SG	where	2SG	PRF	marry	a

[zal ik je laten zien waar je een varken getrouwd hebt]

‘He came home. He told his sister: you married a man, who is a pig. His sister said to him: it is not true. The boy said to her: yes, if you don't believe me I will show you where you have married a pig.’

Here the resemblance to Dutch is much more remote, at first glance. Still, it is the same language as the one in the earlier fragment: we notice the same tense and aspect particles a and ka, for instance. As this book is an attempt to document the various phases of Negerhollands and to make texts accessible for those interested, we will return to the differences between these texts, and offer explanations, below in 7.5.

Negerhollands (lit. ‘Negro-Hollandic’) is the original creole language, lexically closely related to Dutch, of the Virgin Islands (St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix). Whereas previously these islands were under Danish rule and were referred to as the Danish Antilles, since 1917 they are a United States colony officially called the US Virgin Islands. Negerhollands emerged as a separate language around 1700 and died out completely only a few years ago, having been gradually replaced by English in the course of the 19th century.

Because of the language contact due to the slave trade and plantation system, many creole languages have emerged in the Caribbean. These are characterized by lexicons of European origin: mostly French (e.g. Haitian) and English (e.g. Jamaican), but sometimes Portuguese or Dutch, as in the present case. It is somewhat ironical that in the colonies in the Caribbean that remained Dutch after the Napoleonic wars, the

3 The orthography which is used for the text of de Josselin de Jong is the somewhat normalized one by Ponelis (1988); cf. the section on abbreviations, orthography and notational conventions after the table of contents.

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creoles are not lexically related to Dutch. In Surinam the main Creole is Sranan, with an English lexicon, and in the Dutch Antilles Papiamentu, with a Portuguese and Spanish lexicon. Creoles with a Dutch lexicon emerged in (formerly British) Guyana -once a group of Dutch colonies - on the Berbice and Essequibo rivers (Berbice Dutch Creole and Skepi Dutch, respectively) and in the Virgin Islands.

From the text cited at the beginning, it becomes clear that the necessity to treat Negerhollands as a separate language in its own right was felt at least as early as 1780.⁴ Because of missionary activity, it became necessary to study this language seriously. Consequently, its creole nature was noticed, and it was discussed by Moravian Mission historian Oldendorp (1777 [1987:251]), who describes the situation quite graphically:

By the term Creole language I mean the language that is spoken by the Negroes on St. Thomas and St. John and to a certain extent by those on St. Croix. The domain of this language extends not further than these islands. It is not the only Creole language because every European language which is spoken in a corrupted manner in the West Indies is called Creole. So it is that Creole English is spoken by the Negroes of English masters who have come to St. Croix with them from other English islands.
The Creole language about which I speak here originated in St. Thomas where Dutchmen, Danes, Brandenburgers (most of whom spoke Low German), and Frenchmen lived among one another at the beginning of the Danish settlement. The Negroes learned the language of the masters.

Oldendorp denies, however, that Negerhollands is to be considered a separate language:

Thus, the elements of the Creole language have been drawn primarily from Dutch and Low German. The difference between the Creole and the latter two languages is in the mutilation and misplacement of words and generally in their foreshortening, which occurs primarily in the peculiar kind of alteration and adaptation of nouns and verbs. These characteristics do not seem quite far-reaching enough to cause the Creole to be considered a separate language. Since, however, it is now already so well-established to speak of the Creole as a separate language, it can do no harm to allow the use of that term in this context.

It is quite clear, in retrospect, that Negerhollands did become a separate language and is structurally quite different from Dutch. Before we come back to this matter, we will

4 Actually, the printing of the first booklet in Negerhollands indicates that the independent status of Negerhollands was already acknowledged by the Moravians by 1765 (see section II, 2.2.1). The manuscript evidence goes back even further, namely to 1736.

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introduce the islands, their people and their history, insofar as they concern our linguistic purpose.