[tied] Dutch "w" (was: Re: Slavic peoples and places)

--- In cybalist@..., Miguel Carrasquer Vidal <mcv@...> wrote:

> On Sat, 16 Jun 2001 10:14:07 -0000, tgpedersen@... wrote:
>
> >The strange thing is that those who still hold on to the
> >pronounciation /w/ in Jutland are fishermen (judging from TV
> >interviwews) as apparently in Dutch too. To a certain extent,
> >fishermen and sailors form(ed) a separate community in Denmark
> >(Holland too? Katwijk is a fishing town). They are likely to have
> >been the contact with the colonial tongue in colonial times. I

have a

> >suspicion that /w/ -> /v/ is due to French influence, and

therefore

> >18th century. So are you 100% Dutch /w/ can't have been the origin

of

> >Surnams Dutch /w/?
>
> It's possible that 17th c. Dutch still had [w], but one of the
> distinguishing feautures of Dutch colonialism is that it failed to
> have any linguistic effect at all on the population of the colonies.
> In Indonesia, the language of administration was Malay (now Bahasa
> Indonesia). In Saba, St. Eustace and St. Martin, the local language
> is English (the islands were briefly in English hands during the

18th

> c.), and in Aruba, Curacao and Bonaire the vernacular is

Papiamento, a

> Portuguese Creole relexified with Spanish, even though the islands
> have been in Dutch hands since 1643. In Surinam, as I mentioned,

the

> local language is mainly Creole English (Sranan Tongo) [there are
> other English-based Creoles in the interior, spoken by the

descendants

> of runaway slaves, besides American Indian languages and Sarnami,

the

> local Hindustani dialect, spoken by the sizeable (Asian) Indian
> minority]. This despite the fact that the slaves were introduced by
> the Dutch in 1682, and that Surinam has been Dutch up to

independence,

> with only two brief periods of English rule (1799-1802, 1804-1815).

It

> was enough, though.
>
> The main influence on the Dutch spoken (mainly as 2nd language) by

the

> Surinamese has to be 20th century, and not introduced by sailors,

let

> alone fishermen, but schoolteachers.
>
>
> =======================
> Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
> mcv@...

But on the other hand, the main language of the Danish West Indian
Islands (now American Virgin Islands) was known as Negerhollands. And
I would believe that Afrikaans is an exception to your general rule
that the Dutch laguage never influenced the language of the colonies?
And do you know for certain that there was not a small class of house
servants etc in Surinam who picked up the Dutch language and formed a
Dutch-speaking class, as obviously happened in South Africa?

Torsten