Creole Linguistics and Virgin Islands Dutch Creole

Virgin Islands Dutch Creole emerged in the late seventeenth century, following the colonization and settlement of the Danish West Indies.

by Cefas Van Rossem

Virgin Islands Dutch Creole emerged in the late seventeenth century, following the colonization and settlement of the Danish West Indies. It was the primary language spoken in the Danish West Indies (now the US Virgin Islands) for two centuries, until English became predominant. The last known native speaker, Mrs. Alice Stevens, died in 1987.

All Creole languages emerged from the contact of two or more languages. In the case of Virgin Islands Dutch Creole, the majority of the lexicon derives from Dutch words, several of which can be traced back to southern Dutch dialects. Other words derive from European languages that entered the new language as loanwords in Dutch, probably via the Iberian-related Creole spoken in Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao: Papiamentu. Perhaps surprisingly, it is difficult to find Danish words in Virgin Islands Dutch Creole; words with an African origin are also uncommon in this lexicon.

The emergence and formation of a Creole language are ideally studied through primary sources that demonstrate the earliest examples of its usage. In the case of Virgin Islands Dutch Creole, the Moravian records located in Herrnhut, Germany, and Bethlehem, USA, offer the best evidence of its genesis and development. Damma’s 1739 letter to the Queen of Denmark, Sophia Magdalena (1700-1770), is one such text. Studying Damma’s letter alongside other early Dutch Creole texts offers insight into the development of Virgin Islands Dutch Creole, as well as Creole languages more broadly.

The History of Virgin Islands Dutch Creole

The history of Virgin Islands Dutch Creole can be traced to about 1672. At the time, the Dutch Republic was at war with England, France, and the bishoprics of Cologne and Münster. In the Caribbean, several Dutch-speaking settlers and their enslaved laborers of African origin moved to St. Thomas, which was under Danish rule. Most likely, Dutch enslavers conversed in a dialect of Dutch that was spoken in the provinces of West-Flanders and Zeeland, while enslaved people were forced to learn Dutch.

The first written references to the use of Virgin Island Dutch Creole are found in the Unitätsarchiv in Herrnhut (Germany). In 1736, the German Moravian missionary Friedrich Martin wrote in his diary that Johan Laurens Carstens, a Danish slave owner, suggested the New Testament should be translated into Dutch Creole, which he referred to as Carriolse. It was the first mention of a variant of the word Creole to refer to a language in the Caribbean. Eventually, Carriolse would also be called die Creol taal, Negerhollands and Virgin Islands Dutch Creole.

Enslaved and Free Black Authors

Some of the earliest written examples of Virgin Islands Dutch Creole were composed by people of African descent, rather than Europeans. This is remarkable because texts written by enslaved and free Africans in the eighteenth-century Caribbean are extremely rare. Moreover, it was uncommon to use vernacular in written texts, so these Creole texts offer insight into the everyday language spoken in St. Thomas.

The first known letter that displays the Dutch vernacular with Creole elements was composed in 1738 by an enslaved man named Pitrus who learned to write from Friedrich Martin, the Moravian missionary.

From 1738 on, letters were written by enslaved and free people of African descent who joined the Moravian church. These letters were in Dutch Creole or in Dutch, and they show reciprocal linguistic influence, meaning that the Creole language was influenced by Dutch elements, just as Creole elements were used in Dutch.

In the early 1980s, Peter Stein discovered about 150 of these letters, all composed between 1738 and 1768, in the archives of the Moravian Brethren in Herrnhut, Germany. Some writers were more prolific than others. For instance, there are thirteen letters written by Piter/Peter, while Mingo wrote eighteen (see Mingo). One especially prolific writer was the Afro-Moravian Cornelius, whose portrait is displayed in the Herrnhut Moravian archives. Several of Cornelius’s letters have been published in Die Creol Taal, an anthology of Virgin Islands Dutch Creole that appeared in 1996.

In addition to writing their own letters, enslaved members of the Moravian church may have helped Europeans translate documents into Dutch Creole. In 1739, the Moravian leader Count Nicolaus von Zinzendorf visited St. Thomas and just before he departed, he wrote a farewell address to the enslaved. Zinzendorf’s letter was probably translated into Virgin Islands Dutch Creole by Domingo Gesoe, Damma’s son and an enslaved member of the Moravian church.

Dutch speakers will surely recognize most of the vocabulary in Zinzendorf’s farewell address, but some elements are typically Creole-like. Consider, for instance, the first paragraph:

Mi a kom deze verr pad, vor kik yoe, en bin bly vor kik een begin, dat mi a wens over ses jaar di tit mi a stier die eerste van mi broeders voor leer yoe Li.

I have come this long way to see you and I am happy to see a beginning that I wished six years ago, the time I sent the first of my brothers to teach you. (Translation: Van Rossem & Van der Voort 1996: 63)

Unlike Dutch, Dutch Creole indicates past tense by using a so-called “tense particle,” in this case a, right before the finite verb. A kom means “came,” a wees “was,” a stier “sent.” The use of pronouns, although etymologically related to Dutch, is also dissimilar. Mi “first person singular” is in Dutch ik, yu “second person singular” is jij, or, like in earlier Dutch, gij. The use of yoe-li “second person plural” is relatively similar to Dutch “gij lieden, jullie.”

Damma’s letter to Queen Sophia Magdalena was composed in Virgin Islands Dutch Creole the same year as Zinzendorf’s farewell address. As the title of this version of her letter indicates, it was translated from a letter Dama composed originally in the Gbe language.

Damma’s Dutch Creole letter contains several typical Creole elements, which can also be recognized in other Creole languages. See for instance the use of the tense particle a which indicates past tense. Mi kik em means ‘I see him/her’; Mi a kik em means ‘I saw him/her’. Negation is represented by a particle no before the main verb. Mi no kik em means ‘I do not see him/her’. The word na is a widely used preposition for place and time, for which Dutch uses a number of prepositions.

Damma’s letter also displays a mix of Creole and Dutch elements, for instance among the pronouns mi (first person singular, Creole), gij (second person singular, Dutch), ons (first person plural, Creole) and sinder, sili, zilli (third person plural, Creole), si (third person plural, Dutch).

Some of the content words that Damma used are not common in Dutch. See for instance die tyd (‘when, then’, from Dutch die tijd ‘that time’), maron (‘run away’, complex etymology, probably from Spanish cimarron ‘runaway slave’), and lastan (‘to let’, from Dutch laat staan ‘let stand, let alone’).

Christian Missions and Dutch Creole

Most of the early documents written and published in Dutch Creole were religious in nature or published for evangelical purposes. In 1749/1753, three Moravian Brethren created an extensive manuscript of a Dutch Creole hymnbook.

Virgin Islands Dutch Creole is a relatively well-documented Creole language. In 1765, the first Dutch Creole hymnal was printed. The Danish Lutheran Mission, which arrived in the Danish West Indies after 1755, translated missionary texts beginning in 1770. Over the course of the eighteenth century, the Gospel Harmonies and the Old Testament were translated and printed in Dutch Creole, while several other manuscripts were translated, though they did not appear in print.

In 1770, Johan Melchior Magens, a Dane of the Danish Lutheran Mission who was born on St. Thomas, published the first printed grammar of a Creole language. C.G.A. Oldendorp, a Moravian historian who wrote an extensive history of the Moravian Mission based on his visit in the 1760s, included an insightful description of Virgin Islands Dutch, along with information about the African languages that were spoken by enslaved people on the island.

By the nineteenth century, several texts in Virgin Islands Dutch Creole were printed in Europe and were therefore also available outside of the Danish West Indies. In 1833, the last of these, a gospel harmony, was printed. Three thousand copies were distributed among the enslaved Moravian Brethren in the Danish West Indies.

Decline and Revitalization of Virgin Islands Dutch Creole

By the late nineteenth century, and especially after 1917, when the United States purchased the Virgin Islands from Denmark, the influence of English increased and Dutch Creole became less important as a vernacular. Still, Dutch Creole remained spoken among the Black population on the islands in the early twentieth century. For instance, in 1922-23, the Dutch anthropologist De Josselin de Jong recorded and eventually published more than a hundred stories from some of the last native speakers in Dutch Creole of St. Thomas and St. John.

By the mid-twentieth century, however, it was increasingly difficult to find Virgin Islanders who still used Dutch Creole.

During the 1960s, Virgin Islander Gilbert Sprauve, author and Professor Emeritus of Modern languages at the University of the US Virgin Islands, discovered that Virgin Islands Dutch Creole was still spoken. One of his contacts, Mrs. Alice Stevens, introduced him and his students to the language. Her use of Dutch Creole is well studied and was recorded by Robin Sabino of Auburn University. In 1987, Alice Stevens passed away, and there are no other known native speakers of Virgin Islands Dutch Creole.

By 2021, Virgin Islander Gylchris Sprauve had become interested in the history of Virgin Islands Dutch Creole and the work of his uncle, Gilbert Sprauve. It was his idea to try to revitalize Virgin Islands Dutch Creole. His first initiative was to sing the earliest translated hymns during a Christmas service, and to accompany the hymns by information about the language and its eighteenth-century history.

With the help of several scholars, and funded by Virgin Islands Museum Civic and Cultural Centre St. Thomas, Gylchris Sprauve is working on a book and a website to introduce Virgin Islands Dutch Creole to a wider audience in the US Virgin Islands. This will include not only historical texts, but also stories and dialogues. Some of these newly-created dialogues have been turned into animated films for a wide audience in the US Virgin Islands.

Masthead image: St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, 1922. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

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