Until now, hardly anything was known about the development of Dutch in Suriname from the seventeenth century. The recently published 'Dictionary of Dutch in Suriname from 1667 to 1876' changes that. The words were collected by the late biologist Jan van Donselaar. Nicoline van der Sijs put the finishing touches to this edition.
In 1667 the Dutch conquered Suriname from the English and they also brought the Dutch language with them. The Dutch language adapted to its new environment with other plants, animals, foods and lifestyles. New compositions and derivations were formed and words were borrowed from native languages. The resulting words were collected from a large number of written sources by biologist Jan van Donselaar – who passed away earlier this year.
Historical linguist Nicoline van der Sijs, who knew Van Donselaar personally, explains how his fascination for language arose:“In the late 1950s, he and his wife went to Suriname to collect material for his thesis on local vegetation. He saw that very different plant names were used in Suriname than he knew from the Netherlands. This aroused his interest in other words as well.”
Historical dictionary
When Van Donselaar returned to Suriname after his PhD in the 1960s, he systematically collected words and meanings that occurred in Surinamese Dutch and deviated from Dutch in the Netherlands. He published the result in 1977 in his 'Wordenboek van het Surinamese-Dutch' (extended in 1989). That was the first dictionary of this overseas variety of Dutch. He received the De La Court Prize from the KNAW for his work.
Then he continued to collect the older words. Van der Sijs explains:“He has gone through an enormous amount of Dutch texts from Suriname. From archives and such. He mainly looked at which words and meanings were used there that we did not know.”
He was able to complete that list of words before his death, but not the introduction with explanation. Van der Sijs:“When he got older he realized that he could no longer publish it himself and he asked me if I wanted to take care of the publication. He did leave some documents, and I distilled the data needed to understand the method used and the terminology used in the dictionary. He also had many abbreviations in the glossary. I have made it an edition that is easy to read for everyone.”
Together with Van Donselaar's modern dictionary from 1989, this publication offers new perspectives for research, says the researcher:“I digitized the 1989 dictionary a few years ago. To this data we add the material from the historical dictionary in an SQL database. We are going to link those two dictionaries and they will then be placed on the website of the Meertens Institute so that researchers can do all sorts of things with them. In fact, no variety from overseas – except African – has so much historical and modern material. That is unique.”
Peanut butter and shaved ice
This gives research into Surinamese Dutch an impulse. Van der Sijs outlines a few historical developments:“You see words arise and sometimes disappear again, because society changes. Others have been preserved and others have also returned to the mother tongue, European Dutch. The historical dictionary mainly consists of single words, because we have few spoken or written language utterances from that time. In the modern dictionaries you also see nice syntactic phenomena. Some of these have also returned to the Netherlands, such as Ííís good, with an elongated i. Something people often say these days. That was probably taken over from Surinamese.”
“When it comes to words, it is mainly many names of foods that have found their way to the Netherlands:garter, roti, pom. An unexpected example is peanut butter. That was invented in Suriname. You used to shave off pieces of a thick block of crushed peanuts, just like you shave cheese. Hence the peanutcheese is called 'peanut butter', as in the English peanut butter. The current version that is made in the Netherlands is buttery. It is specially made for the European market. But the original peanut butter that was made in Suriname is a block.”
“You now also hear a lot of Surinamese words in slang. Doekoe for money is a very well known one. This word goes back to Sranan but is also used in Surinamese Dutch. Surinamese Dutch has many loanwords from Sranan. An example of a new formation is shaved ice. That is ice cream that you eat with a spoon.” Van der Sijs reads:“'Shaved ice is a snack consisting of ice shavings and syrup'. Stroop has the meaning of lemonade syrup in Suriname. So that is an example of a Dutch word that Surinamese use in a different way.”
Multilingualism
In Suriname everyone was raised to be multilingual. But because there are so many population groups, (Surinamese) Dutch acts as a binding factor, says Van der Sijs:“So that actually speaks to everyone. There is variation. Some speak Surinamese Dutch that is close to European Dutch and others – or the same people in a different context – with a great deal of influence from Sranan.”
“Very little research has been done into ethnic varieties of Dutch, while we do know a lot about regional variation within the Netherlands and Flanders. That is why I have agreed with colleague Sjef Barbiers that we will conduct part of the SAND, MAND and FAND surveys in Suriname as a pilot. To see which syntactic, morphological and phonological phenomena are typical of Surinamese Dutch, and whether these can be explained by language contact or by autonomous developments. Little research has been done into Surinamese Dutch, because until recently there was very little material available. That has now changed.”