EXAMPLES OF NEGERHOLLANDS DUTCH CREOLE LITERATURE
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Literacy/aboutdialect.html

Die Creol Tall 250 years of Negerhollands Texts by Dr. Robin Sabino
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.

About Dr. Robin Sabino
Language and Literature of the African Diaspora: Equiano Negerhollands Virgin Islands English Creole
https://web.archive.org/web/19991009225418/http://www.auburn.edu/~sabinro/africand.htm

Danish West Indian Creole Language

Die Creol Tall
250 years of Negerhollands Texts

Excerpts

Pages 3-4

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.

--->Interesting side note<---
Dr. Robin Sabino lived in the Virgin Islands. When Dr. Sabino was in St. Thomas getting her Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania she did her thesis on this creole language, and was working with the last known living speaker, who died in 1980.

--->end<---

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 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 (formally 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.

The necessity to treat Negerhollands as a separate language in its own right was felt at least as early as 1780. Actually, the printing of the first booklet in Negerhollands indicates that the independent status of Negerhollands was already clearly acknowledged by the Moravians by 1765 ( see section II, 2.2.1 )The manuscript evidence goes back even further, namely to 1736. 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 9 1777 [1987:251]), who describes the situation quite graphically.

Pages 6-9

EARLY HISTORY AND DEMOGRAPHY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS

To use a traditional opening, in 1493 Columbus gave the Virgin Islands their present-day name and met some Amerindians on St. Croix . The St. Croix Tainos were subsequently decimated by genocide and epidemics ( see Sale .

From 1600 onward the islands were being populated by Europeans of various descent and slaves imported from Africa. The year 1653 marked the founding of the Danish West-Indian Company, and hence the (late) entry of Denmark into the European colonizing efforts.

In 1665 the first attempt was made by the Danish to settle on the island of St. Thomas , the most sought after of the three Virgin Islands because of its natural harbor, but it was without success. In 1671 the Danish West-Indian Company obtained a monopoly over St. Thomas , and in 1672 the Danish colonization proper of the island began, with 113 inhabitants. The Danes surely were not the first European settlers of the island, but we lack precise information on what happened before their arrival. The island seems to have been abandoned and uninhabited when the Danish settlers arrived.

The English had been raiding, among others, the Dutch Windward Antilles since 1666. Shortly afterwards a group of Dutch planter, who had fled from St. Eustatius to escape from the English (Goslinga 1971), settled on St. Thomas . According to Goodman 91985), they possibly brought a Dutch pidgin or creole with them, spoken by their slaves, although Sabino (1990) argues that the number of slaves brought along was probably very limited. It is also not unlikely that a pidgin or creole based on African, Dutch and other languages was used the European forts on the West African coast (see Tonkin 1971). There the slaves were held in confinement by Dutch and other slave traders for some time up to six months or longer, until enough were gathered to fill a slave ship for the Caribbean. There are reports of West Africans who had learnt English and Dutch (Ardener 1968). However, no data of a possible Dutch-influenced contact language in West Africa have been found yet. At the height of Dutch activity in West Africa, the lingua franca was an already extant Portuguese pidgin. It was only replaced by West African Pidgin English when the English became dominant.

Now consider for a moment the constitution of the European population of the Virgin Islands in what is taken to be the formative period of Negerhollands. In 16988, when the first official census was held, there were 422 slaves in St. Thomas , as noted above, and 317 whites, among which there were (see Arends & Muysken 1992, and for an inventory based on slightly different figures Stein & Beck forthcoming):

 66 Dutch households

32 English
20 Danish
8 French
3 German
3 Swedish
1 Holstein
1 Portuguese

These figures show that the slaves were faced with a potentially very heterogeneous primary 'target' language, dominated by Dutch (mainly in Zealandic and Flemish varieties). We can also expect English and Danish (lexical) influences, and those turn out to be there as well.  

On the basis of archival research, Sabino concludes in her dissertation (1990) that in 1692 already a fifth of the slave population consisted of children born in St. Thomas . This is a relatively fast development, especially when considering that in Surinam for instance there was only a large group of locally born slaves after one century of colonization.

We should also consider the homogeneity of the slave population of that time. Often they were abducted from various places far away from the West African coast. According to Feldbaek & Justesen (1980) the large majority of the slaves imported in the period between 1672 to 1739, the formative period of Negerhollands, consisted of Twi-speaking Akan. Nevertheless we do not find clear traces of this Akan influence. In fact, (1988) hypothesises that Ewe-speakers constituted the most important group in terms of African lexical substrate influence.

One might assume that Negerhollands would become a creole language diverging rather strongly from Dutch, judging by the relatively short period between colonization and the emergence of a locally born slave community. There was no time for a very gradual inculturation of the imported slaves to the colonial languages and cultures. We should point to the fact, however, that apparently the natality figure (the number of children being born) of the population was so high (which also transpires from Sabino's data) that a creole emerged which was quite close to Dutch. It must have been the locally born slaves who created Negerhollands, and they would have learned better Dutch than the newly arrived.

If we accept the theory of Goodman (1985) that Negerhollands perhaps emerged gradually in St. Eustatius before being taken to St. Thomas, then it is clear that internal migration (i.e. inside the Caribbean) played an important role in the genesis of Negerhollands. The sudden impulse of an established group of Negerhollands-speaking slaves at the beginning of the Virgin Islands colony could have been the decisive factory.

We saw above that in 1688 the slave population in St. Thomas outnumbered the white population. In 1725 their number had increased to 4490. In 1717 St. John came under Danish occupation, but by 1721 , 25 of 39 planters on St. John were Dutchmen, and only nine Danes (Hall 1992: 11). It was reported quite soon that the slaves on that island also spoke Negerhollands, which is perhaps an indication that the creole must have already existed early in the 18th century.

In 1733 St. Croix was bought by the Danes from the French, but by 1741 there were already five times as many English on the island as Danes (Hall 1992: 13). The Danes asked the Herrnhut missionaries to participate in the colonization of St. Croix, but they were unable to do so; the majority of the settlers in 1733 were Moravians, but many became ill and soon passed away due to the climate. Thus, Negerhollands came to be used much less here that on the other two Danish Antilles, and an English creole emerged. Nevertheless, there are a few Creole slave letters from that island (see II, 1.2.6).

Page 32

The central fact is that Negerhollands only really flourished between 1730 and 1830.In 1833 the last text was printed in Negerhollands by the Moravian Brethren, and in 1834 the last printed texts in Negerhollands appeared in the Danish tradition.

Page 33

Yet the death of a language can take a very long time. Negerhollands. On the Danish-Dutch Archaeological Expedition to the Antilles of 1922/23. the Dutch anthtopologist / linguist / archeologist J.P.B. de Josselin de Jong was able to collect fairy tales and fables in Negerhollands, which were published in 1926. Many of those stories feature the famous African-Caribbean practical joker and hero spider Anassi. The narrators and informants were all born between 1841 and 1863, and thus at least 60 years old at that time, which was a reason for de Josselin de Jong to speak of 'presently rapidly dying Negerhollands'.

2 E-books
The Virgin Islands Dutch Creole Folktale
A Brother Anansi and Brother Tekoma Story
Narrated by Dr. Robin Sabino
Collected by a Dutch anthropologist, J. P. B. de Josselin de Jong, who visited the Virgin Islands in 1923. Robin Sabino, a linguist at Auburn University , translated the story. Although she now lives in Alabama, she used to live in St. Thomas where she learned to speak Virgin Islands Dutch Creole from the very last speaker of the language. What a wonderful gift her teacher gave her! Anansi is a popular character in many regions of Africa and is known by many names. He is a trickster character, someone who tries to trick others but often finds himself the one being fooled.

* Thomas Stolz & Peter Stein, Language and history in the former Danish Antilles: Non-linguistic evidence for a description of the Negro-Dutch language. In: Amsterdam Creole Studies 9, pp. 103-122 (1986)

* Cefas van Rossem & Hein van der Voort, Die creol taal: 250 years of Negerhollands texts. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press (1996) (esp. pp. 6-9)

* Dissertation by Robin Sabino about the phonology of Negerhollands (Negro Dutch) (Don't know exact title). Should be available thru University Microfilms in Ann Arbor .

Akwamu Material by Dr. Robin Sabino (c)1998

The Earliest Collection of Language Spoken by Africans

We have very little detailed information about the languages spoken by the first Africans who were transported as to provide much needed labor in the struggling colony of St. Thomas in the Danish West Indies. Moreover, what little information we do have, is difficult to interpret since when these languages were documented, they were written down by Europeans who did not speak them natively. This means that African words and phrases were generally recorded imprecisely -- the Europeans used the spelling conventions and pronunciation rules of their own languages. Because their representations are flawed, we have to be careful how we interpret them.

One day,linguists who study the history of these languages may be able to help us understand how to read the records correctly. And even in their imperfect state, these renderings are of use since they can help us to understand the general structure of the African languages spoken in the early years of the St. Thomas colony. For example, if you look at the list below, you will notice that many of the Akwamu words end in a vowel. This explains why so many of the Negerhollands words also end in a vowel sound: this is what the Africans were used to. So, like all languages learners, they reshaped words in the languages they were trying to learn words to fit the patterns of their native languages.

The list of Akwamu words which follows is taken from a vocabulary collected by a Danish chaplain, Johann Mueller, while he was lived in West Africa (between 1611 and 1669). Joergen Petersen, a native speaker of Danish helped translate Mueller's list into English. Robin Sabino provided the Negerhollands translations based on texts collected by a Dutch scholar, J.P.B de Josselin de Jong in 1926, and her own field work in St. Thomas .

Transcription conventions:

The sequence oe in the Danish list represents an o overstruck with /.

In Negerhollands the NG represents the final sound in tongue, not the middle sounds in finger; S represents the first sound in English "shoe"; E represents the vowel sound in English "bet" /bEt/; * represents the vowel sound in English "cup" /k*p/; other Negerhollands vowels are pronounced like the vowels in Spanish.

(1) Sini is a plural morpheme.

(2) It's not clear whether there are two pronunciations of the same word or a single word.

(3) This is a borrowing from Portuguese, probably through a Portuguese pidgin.

(4) Languages which emerge in setting of cultural contact often broaden the meanings of words borrowed from their lexifiers.

AFRICAN ROOT LANGUAGES

LOOK AT WORD SIMILARITES BETWEEN VIRGIN ISLANDS CREOLE AND

�Fon, Yoruba, Tishiluba, Ibo, Twi

V.I. Creole and Fon

by Dr. Lezmore Evan Emanuel copyright 1972

V.I. Creole and Tishiluba

by Dr. Lezmore Evan Emanuel copyright 1972

Virgin Island Creole and Ibo

by Dr. Lezmore Evan Emanuel copyright 1972

Surviving Africanisms In Virgin Islands English Creole
of the V.I. generation that lived between the years of 1875 and 1950
by Dr. Lezmore Evan Emanuel 1927

"Surviving Africanisms In Virgin Islands English Creole"
by Dr. Lezmore Evan Emanuel 1927-
copyright 1972 All Rights Reserved
Howard University, Ph.D., 1970 pages 72 to 81

In the opinion of the author Dr. Emanuel is that the evidence shows that the African cultural roots of the Virgin Islands people are predominantly to be found in Akan Ashanti soil.

Dr. Emanuel sees the evidence of African influences upon the Creole spoken the Virgin Islands to be that out of the five African cultures involved, the linguistic patterns of the Twi- speaking Akan Ashanti who were from what is now Ghana, has affected the culture of the Virgin Islands most deeply.

There were two Creoles, one with a Dutch and other with an English vocabulary that developed. The present Virgin Islands speech is really an intermediate stage in the transition of the Dutch Creole to English Creole, and then to Standard English.

Dr. Emanuel goes on to say that New World Creole languages like that of Jamaica where large numbers of Ashanti slaves were brought by the British show important resemblances to Virgin Islands Creole. And non linguistic evidence, like the mathematical game called "ware", certain drum rhythms which Twi-speakers recognize and the practice of obeah all tend to support the linguistic material. It is also a matter of record that Christian V of Denmark secured two forts on the Gold Coast and ordered ships to visit them in order to purchase slaves for St. Thomas, Virgin Islands.

Slaves were imported over the greater part of three centuries in these islands, the initial bulk from the Gold Coast. Dr. Emanuel thinks that it is reasonable to assume that the older and more numerous Akan slaves, the most "reliable" were entrusted with the task of "seasoning" the newcomers, and it seems that the surviving Africanisms in the culture of the Virgin Islands people indicate an affinity to the Akan peoples of West Africa.

Some of the remarkable Africanisms that still persist in the VI are

• A sense of dignity and extreme sensitivity to ridicule. This trait seems to have been brought in from the Guinea Coast .
• Mocko-Jumby drum rhythm

�         Patterns of plaiting your female children's hair

�         Distinctive body movements used in doing the native dances

The words that are listed below have been taken from the speech and oral literature of the Virgin Islanders of the generation that lived between the years of 1875 and 1950 as found on pages 72 to 77.

Danish and Moravian missionaries spelled Negerhollands in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Taking a Hard Look At V.I. Public Education by Richard Hall, Ph.D.
There are two major deficiencies in our public educational system. First, most students are graduating with poor reading, writing, and mathematics skills.V.I. Online Newpaper January 2001
TAKING A HARD LOOK AT V.I. PUBLIC EDUCATION
Letter to the Editor
by Richard Hall, Ph.D.
http://www.onepaper.com/stcroixvi/?v=d&i=&s=Commentary%3AOp-ed&p=32034

There are two major deficiencies in our public educational system. First, most students are graduating with poor reading, writing, and mathematics skills. Second, the community lacks resources to adequately fund a strong school system.

The students suffer because our standards are too low. Former Education Commissioner Alton Davis once commented "When mediocrity becomes the standard of excellence, our community and our culture are lost." When a student graduates with honors from a high school they should not be taking three or four skills courses when they enroll at UVI.
Part of the problem stems from a decline in English usage within the classroom. After reviewing common grammatical and spelling errors in student papers, some of my colleagues at UVI suspect that students compose in Creole dialect and not in English. Students lack books and basic school supplies necessary to reinforce basic skills. Teachers need more support through workshops and training programs to polish techniques that encourage students to master English and mathematics. Clearly someone needs to be focused on school standards and the business of running our schools.

It takes far more than $6,000 per student per year to provide a decent education. Until recent austerity measures were implemented, our public school system was authorized to spend about $122.6 million per year. The Department of Education also has approximately $22 million in Federal grants allocated to specific educational programs. According to 1998 reports in the Daily News about 90 percent of the $122.6 million is spent on personnel (salary and benefits) and 45 percent of those funds are spent on non-teacher, non-classroom personnel working for the Department of Education. That means that only $67 million is actually spent in the classroom ($3300 per student) and we allocate $55 million for administrative support that amongst its many activities raises only $22 million in federal grants. If we target per student expenditures at $10,000 with no change in administrative overhead and pay our teachers the additional $16 million promised, we would need $198 million and still only be spending $7,000 per student. In the State of New York , 40 percent of the school budgets are Federal funds. In the Virgin Islands only 15 percent of our budget is federally subsidized. Clearly someone needs to be focused on getting and administering federal grants.

One solution is to have the superintendent of schools responsible to the Board of Education and to develop site based management of all public schools. We need to get our inefficient and non-responsive territorial government out of the day-to-day management of our schools. The school board, the superintendent, and site-based managed schools will be far more responsive to input from parents and the community than a large government agency that works for the governor. The Department of Education, as part of our government, is in a far better position to solicit and manage all federal grants as well as to provide regulatory oversight on all local school systems. There is no fixing the current system because political bases are entrenched.

Teachers and school administrators should not be government employees. Rather, like the faculty and administration of our University of the Virgin Islands , they should have quasi-government status with all the benefits and fewer of the encumbrances.

Richard Hall, Ph.D., is a biologist and teacher at the University of the Virgin Islands and has taught physiology, biology, and other courses in critical thinking at private and public colleges, universities and medical school.

Toward a Language History of The U.S. Virgin Islands Arnold R. Highfield University of the Virgin Islands March 19, 1992 http://faculty.uvi.edu/users/ahighfi/writings/Langhist.html

FOLLOWING VIRGIN ISLANDS SLAVES AND THEIR LANGUAGE TO MAINLAND USA

ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS:

ARE THERE DIALECT SPEAKERS IN THE US ? WHERE DO THEY LIVE TODAY?

Recommended Reading:
"Africans in Colonial Louisiana " The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century by Gwendolyn Midlo Hall ISBN 8071-1999-7

Kimberly S. Hanger. _Bounded Lives, Bounded Places: Free Black

Society in Colonial New Orleans , 1769-1803_. Durham , N. C., and

London : Duke University Press, 1997. xiii + 248 pp. ISBN 0-8223-1906-3 $49.95 (cloth); ISBN 0-8223-1898-9 $16.95 (paper).

Read About Dialect Speakers in the United States from the Experts in Linguistics

Dr. Rebecca Larche Moreton
Another perspective on Dialect and Standard English language speakers.

I am a linguist, working on a survival of French in southern coastal Mississippi ; I suspect that there is not just a colonial French in place there, but also a creole from the Caribbean.

This is a French dialect that pre-dates the Cajuns: it was planted in south Mississippi in 1699 when Bienville and D'Iberville first claimed the Gulf Coast area for Louis XIV of France (but those two, brothers, were Canadians, just working for Louis). They tried to get agricultural colonies started, but the soil was too poor and the water in the creeks was brackish, there were insects, diseases, and hurricanes,and very hot and humid weather during most of the year. The settlers were few and isolated and had to relie on ships from France for supplies the first few years. In the end, the King recalled his soldiers, and only a few families remained in this area. Most of the surviving original settlers moved either to Mobile or to the newly founded New Orleans . The people left in this small place are descendants of the original settlers, who intermarried with a small group of Choctaw Indians already living there, and later, probably in the late 1700's or early 1800's, speakers of some kind of creole came also: these were probably free blacks from French-speaking islands, possibly Martinique, although I have not checked the family names there yet. There was never any considerable amount of slavery in the region, simply because there were no real plantations and thus no need for large amounts of labor. Gwen Hall thinks the creole came from runaway slaves from Louisiana , but there is no proof of that.

Yes, the language I have found contains creoloid elements; all the remaining speakers are at least 75 years old, most are in their eighties, a couple are over 90; so far I have interview some dozen speakers, and there are not many more than that, I speculate that right now there may be as many as 50 people who speak Mississippi Gulf Coast French (I get to name it, as I found it!!) I will likely not find and get to talk to all of them before they die, but will try. No one had learned the language since about 1920-25, when these current speakers decided not to teach it to their own children; but they continued to use it among themselves and with older relatives. There is a great deal of variation in the way the individual speakers speak, a characteristic of the changes which take place in almost-dead languages. But such variation may be correlated with social differences in the people, such as age, sex, economic status, and , for this group, race, which is indicative of their origins: there are two groups of people in this one very small area, one group call themselves and their language French and they look European, the other group call themselves and their language Creole and they look African, French, and Choctaw, mixed, being very light-skinned and with rather straight hair. The traits of the language I am finding do not seem to divide themselves neatly between the two groups, rather there is what creolists call a "continuum" from the one to the other group.

The Roots of Dialect Speakers living in the US Mainland

Dr. Katherine Harris, Central Connecticut State University African Languages and Ebonics
The Ebonics discussion intersects another important issue besides geography. It is the ongoing research into the classification of African languages. Scholars have designed flow charts of the Niger-Congo Rivers region linking Kwa (a coastal area) and off shoot languages Akan, Gbe, Yoruba, Nupe, Igbo and another branch Benue-Congo and its linguistic offshoots Ibibio and Bantu.

Some linguists use such problematic terms as "Bantu," which has little meaning in the sense of identifying a specific language. Indeed "Bantu" might be derived from "Abantu," a Luganda expression which means "all these people." (26) This is spoken in Buganda , or present-day Uganda .

Researchers explore other linguistic breakdowns. For example, Tshi-Luba ( Congo) and Luba Kasai and Luba Katanga are attempts to classify speech of Baluba communities based on the Tshi, which is a river, the Kasai, which a basin, and the Katanga mineral p rovince of the present Congo Democratic Republic ( Zaire ). Scholars also challenge each other's spellings of terms. For example, one writes Tshi-Luba and another Chiluba to refer to the same regional speech pattern.

These attempts at classification can become quite entangled as scholars search simultaneously for similarities and differences in African language constructs. Yet evidence suggests the linkage of languages previously thought to be separate and distinct, noting that all African languages derive from four clusters, amongst which are Niger Congo and Nilo-Saharan. Linguists who drafted a Hausa grammar text acknowledged that the language is most dominant in Northern Nigeria and spoken in large parts of West A frica, but is "genetically related to such well-known languages as ancient hieroglyphic Egyptian, . . . but also of importance [in] "Amharic and Somali."

Derek Alton Wolcott
West Indian poet and playwright is the first black to receive the $1.2 million Nobel Prize for Literature 1992.

What languages did the first Africans in St. Thomas speak? Where did the Language in St. Thomas come from?

"Towards a Reconstruction of Virgin Islands English Creole Phonology"
Dr. Gil Sprauve's Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton Univ. 1974

St. Thomas was permanently settled by Denmark in 1672. Many of the settlers were people who had been in Danish prison because they had committed crimes or had been in debt. These people found life there very hard, and many of them died. In fact, so many died that the colony was desperate for workers.

Even before they had established a colony in the Caribbean, the Danes had traded for products like gold and ivory on the West Africa. So they knew about the slave trade. They also knew that other Caribbean colonies had grown rich using the labor of African slaves. It wasn't long before the Danes decided to trade in slaves themselves: the Danish slave ship, the Cornelia arrived with 100 Africans in 1673. During the next twenty years men, women, and children from a number of West African cultural groups were carried to St.Thomas in European slave ships to build the new colony in the Danish West Indies.

Our historical records do not tell us much about these people, but we can use what is known about West African history to learn what languages they probably spoke. Between 1673 and 1693, the West African Coast between Axim and Popo was the area of greatest importance to the Caribbean slave trade. The European nations which transported the largest number of Africans to St. Thomas were the Brandenburgers and the Danes.

The Brandenburgers traded primarily with the kingdom of Denkyira , an Akan-speaking people who were at war with other Akan speaking peoples. Since West African prisoners of war were sold as slaves to European traders, the slaves purchased by the Brandenburgers very likely would have been speakers a language called Akan.

The story of the Danish slave trade is more complicated. The Danes were first allied with the Accra , a G�- speaking people. Since the Accra were at war with the kingdom of Akwamu, an Akan speaking group, the Accra are likely to have sold Akan-speaking prisoners to the Danes at this time.

While Akwamu was at war with the Accra , they (the Akwamu) were also fighting Akan- and Ewe-speaking people. Akwamu first won their wars against the Akan and the Ewe peoples. Then they won their war against the G� - speaking Accra . When this happened, the Danes shifted their alliance from the defeated Accra to the now very powerful Akwamu, agreeing to buy Akwamu prisoners of war--speakers of Akan, G�, and Ewe.

All three of these languages are members of the larger Kwa language family, so we know that the Africans worked to establish St. Thomas , the first colony in the Danish West Indies, were speakers of Kwa languages.

Press Release: August 3, 1999
Danish professor to evaluate Danish language needs in the U.S. Virgin Islands

Kim Anderson, a Danish language instructor at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark , will visit the St. Thomas campus of the University of the Virgin Islands the week of August 16. Anderson is coming to meet with concerned parties to evaluate the need for Danish language instruction in the Virgin Islands and to plan an appropriate curriculum to meet those needs. A location and time for the planning session has not yet been determined.

UVI professors Dr. Gilbert A. Sprauve and Gene Emanuel are the contacts for Anderson's upcoming visit, which is sponsored by the Ministry of Education in Denmark and is part of a collaborative program being developed between UVI, the University of Copenhagen and the University of Ghana .

"If we are going to be better informed about the history of the Virgin Islands...we are going to need sociolinguistic expertise that has to be brought in from Ghana and from places like Copenhagen ," Sprauve said.

Anderson may return to teach an intensive two-week Danish language course at UVI after assessing community interest in such a course.
Because of the special historical relationship that has existed between Denmark and the Virgin Islands, Virgin Islanders may want to consider how some level of proficiency in Danish might advance their knowledge of their culture and history, Sprauve said. Course work in Danish could also be an essential tool for people who intend to travel to or study in Denmark .

What follows is a list of potential clients for a Danish language course. The list includes but is not limited to:

• Historians and librarians
• Language arts instructors at all levels
• Cultural researchers
• Persons engaged in genealogy studies
• Members of the clergy
• Tourism and hospitality personnel

Professors Sprauve and Emanuel are seeking feedback on whether a Danish language "reading" course would be preferable to a "speaking" course. A reading course would enable participants to make sense of written materials. As a result of these preliminary discussions with Virgin Islanders, Anderson may very well design a course that incorporates many aspects of Danish culture and communication, Sprauve said..

For further information, contact:
Gilbert A. Sprauve Ph.
(H) 340-776-6087 ph. (Off.) 340-693-1342
E-mail: gsprauv@uvi.edu

Gene Emanuel
(H) 340-774-2701 (Off.) 340-693-1348
E-mail: gemanue@uvi.edu

KRAAL CULTURAL MANUAL
This manual is provided online.
Introduction - Cluster One - Cluster Two - Cluster Three