FLAPTEKST :

this book is an attempt to document the various phases of Negerhollands and make texts in it accessible to a wider audience , with translations and comments

Negerhollands ( lit. ´ Negro-hollandic ´ ) is the original creole language , lexically closely related to Dutch , of the Virgin Islands ( St.Thomas / St.John / St.Croix ) ; whereas previously these islands were under Danish rule and were referred to as the Dutch Antilles , since 1917 they have been a United States protectorate , the US Virgin Islands

Negerhollands emerged as a separate language around 1700 and died out completely only a few years ago , having gradually been replaced by English during the course of the 19th century ; in the introduction , information about the history and features of the language is provided ; the texts vary from letters and collections of proverbs to sections of Bible translations and folk tales and span a period of 250 years ; many were recently found in the archives of Herrnhut ( Germany ) , the centre of the Moravian Missions ; the texts are of interest to historians , linguists , philologists , and anthropologists and provide an image of now vanished plantation culture

Cefas van Rossem is a philologist specialising in the history of Dutch dialects and of Dutch linguistics

Hein van der Voort is a descriptive linguist , who has worked in creoles and inuit contact vernaculars ; he is presently carrying out fieldwork on an Amazonian language