Creole

Stefan Zimmer
On Language Genesis: The Case of Afrikaans
in
Perspectives on Indo-European Language, Culture and Religion
vol. II
"
Afikaans came into being between 1652, the year of the Dutch colony's
foundation at the Cape, and around 1800, when it's first deliberate
uses are recorded.
"
Footnotes:
"
Earliest attestation is a political pamphlet of 1795; article in
journals appear from 1826 on.
"

and from Kolbe (1719):
'Wagtum, ons altemal daarvan loopum zoo': "Wait, we'll run away
altogether"

(Interesting with that verbal -um suffix, also known from
stylised 'Native American' creoles, supposedly (I recall from a
Scientific American article) a transitivity marker.) Also note
already nom. 'ons'.

That's a long time between the 'founding event' of a language and its
first written attestation. I'm reminded of a similar length of time
between 1066 and the appearence of a creolised Middle English. And of
an even longer time between the violent upheaveal in Germany and
Scandinavia at the beginning of our era and the appearence of
creolised Platt, Dutch and North Germanic? Östen Dahl believes the
apparent uniformity of Runic was the result of the inscriptions being
written in a koine by a uniform class of people (Heruli?) and that
inscriptions don't mirror the actual state of the language among the
(non-Heruli, presumably).

Torsten