Negerhollands

Conjugate Verbs

Facts

  • Language: Negerhollands
  • Alternate names: Negrodutch, Dutch creole
  • Language code: dcr
  • Language family: Indo-European, Classical Indo-European, Germanic, Northwest Germanic, West Germanic, Macro-Dutch, Middle-Modern Dutch, Modern Dutch, Southwestern Dutch, Zeeuwic
  • Creole language
  • Number of speakers: Extinct
  • Script: Latin

More information:

    Introduction

    The last speaker died recently. There may be some remaining second language speakers. Extinct. NT 1781-1833.

    Negerhollands is a Dutch-based Creole language that was once spoken in the Danish West Indies, now known as the U.S. Virgin Islands. It was also spoken on Leeward Islands and Puerto Rico. Dutch is its superstrate language with Danish, English, French, Spanish, and African elements incorporated.

    The verb

    Negerhollands has five verbal markers relating to tense, aspect and mood. Sa(l) is a future marker. Lō functions as a progressive marker that can also occur in habitual contexts and as a future marker, in that sense also occurring as lō lō. Progressive lō occurs as well in constructions with a copula, possibly under influence from the English progressive construction, e.g. ‘he was reading’. There is no semantic difference between the construction with and the one without copula. The verb is not conjugated by person.

    Sample

    jusakādrādiajuhan
    2SGIRRPERFcarryDETin2SGhand

    'You should have carried this in your hands'

    Verblist

    External Links