February 25, 2010

Berbice Dutch from Guyana is now extinct

Filed under: General,History by Orangemaster @ 11:32 am
Berbice

Berbice Dutch, a Dutch creole spoken in part of Guyana, has been declared officially extinct, according to the next Dutch edition of National Geographic.

Berbice Dutch was spoken in plantations along the River Berbice, part of Guyana which was once a private colony founded by Dutch planter Abraham van Peere from Zeeland. It is a mixture of the Zeeland dialect of Dutch, the local Arawak Indian language and Ijo, spoken by slaves from Nigeria.

Here a video of this woman, one of the last speakers of the language, gets going at about 1:00 with explanation in English.

(Links: rnw.nl, caribbeanlanguages)

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