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Berbice Dutch Creole (BDC) is a now extinct Dutch-based creole language. It had a lexicon partly based on a dialect of the West African language Ijaw, perhaps the ancestor of the modern Kalabari language. In contrast to the widely known Negerhollands Dutch creole spoken in the Virgin Islands, Berbice Creole Dutch and its relative Skepi Creole Dutch were almost unknown to the outside world until Ian Robertson first reported on the two languages in 1975. Dutch linguist Silvia Kouwenberg subsequently investigated the creole language, publishing its grammar in 1993.

History
The Berbice region was settled in 1627 by the Dutchman Abraham van Peere. A few years later, Suriname was settled by Englishmen Lord Willoughby and Lawrence Hyde under a grant from the English King, Charles II. In the beginning, therefore, Suriname was a British and Berbice a Dutch possession.

On 22 April 1796 the British occupied the territory. On 27 March 1802 Berbice was restored to the Batavian Republic (the then-current name of the Netherlands). In September 1803 the British occupied the territory again. On 13 August 1814 Berbice became a British colony. The colony was formally ceded to Britain by the Netherlands on 20 November 1815.

The Berbice slaves kept speaking a Dutch-based creole among themselves, until the language came in decay in the 20th century. As of 1993 there were some 4 or 5 elderly speakers of the language, although other sources report tens of speakers.

Berbice Creole Dutch was, just as Negerhollands and Skepi Creole Dutch <>, not based on Hollandic dialect of Dutch (the dialect that is closest to the modern standard of the Dutch Language Union), but on Zeelandic.

The last speakers of this language were found in the 1970s by Professor Ian Robertson of the University of the West Indies. These speakers were living on the upper reaches of the Berbice River in and around the area of the Wiruni Creek. The last known Berbice Dutch Creole speaker is Bertha Bell, who was 103 years old when last interviewed by Ian Robertson and a UWI linguistics research team in March 2004.

In February 2010, the language was declared officially extinct, according to an article in the upcoming March issue of the Dutch edition of National Geographic magazine. In the 80's there was still a small number of Berbice speakers in Guyana but, since was discovered that the last speaker died in 2005, the authoritative international language database Ethnologue had declared it extinct.[4]

BDC survived on the upper reaches of the Berbice River, the areas around which the old Dutch colony of Berbice was concentrated prior to a shift to the coast in the late 18th century. One-third of the basic words in Berbice Dutch Creole, including words for 'eat', 'know', 'speak' are of Niger–Congo origin in West Africa, from a single language-cluster, the Eastern Ijaw languages.

Vowels
Berbice Dutch Creole has six vowels. /e/ and /ɛ/ are almost in complementary distribution, and were probably allophones at an earlier stage of the language.

[the above chart is from the original wiki page; LMK & I determined it's better to keep the original instead of the one I made]

There is a large degree of free variation in the vowels, with the range of realizations of the phonemes overlapping.

Consonants
Berbice Dutch Creole has fourteen consonants. Though included on the chart, the consonants in parenthesis have various explanations for not being considered part of the consonant inventory:


 * and occur only in loanwords from Guyanese Creole.
 * /ç/ and /x/ exist only in the first person plural form of the Wiruni Creek dialect. For speakers of the Wiruni creek dialect, [ç] and [x] are considered allophones of /ʃ/.
 * [w] and [j] are allophones of /u/ and /i/.
 * is usually in complementary distribution with, occurring only before , but there are a handful of exceptions.
 * is usually in complementary distribution with, occurring only before , but there are a handful of exceptions.

[the consonant chart is also from the original wiki page]

Stress
There are some stress patterns in BDC, although not many.

Non-derived words
For monomorphemic non-derived words, stress falls on the penultimate syllable. Stress is assigned to every other syllable in polysyllabic words, and most exceptions to this rule occur within trisyllabic words. For example, many three-syllable words have stress on the first syllable, such as opropo (pig), or potoko (mud). All three-syllable words ending in /ingi/ have stress on the first syllable, including palinggi (eel), and stelinggi (landing).

Syllable Structure
Syllables in Berbice Dutch Creole can have onsets and codas, but they are not required. While codas cannot have more than one consonant, onset may have up to two. Syllables can also have CVV construction.

Morphology
As most creole languages, Berbice Dutch Creole makes heavy use of reduplication and category conversion, instead of derivational and affixational morphology.

Nominalization
The nominalizing -jɛ acts as a suffix, and can apply to adjectives or nouns.

Somtiti di doto-jɛ bif-tɛ mɛtɛ di lefu-jɛ

Perhaps  the dead-NOM speak-PF with the  life-NOM

"Perhaps the dead one has spoken with  the living one..."

In the above example, "dead" is nominalized to mean "dead one," and "life" is nominalized to mean "living one."

Pluralization
The pluralizing suffix -apu can be added to nouns or pronouns, alone or with other affixes.

Musu kɛnapo dotɛ lahanteni kalkali bebjapu

"Many people died (and) left their little babies."

o mɛrɛ gu dɛn djap

3sg more big than this-PL

"She is older than these."

Içi wa justu tama.. gugujapu

1pl PAST PASTHAB pick big-big-NOM-PL

"We used to pick up big ones."

Didap da di kalijapjɛ

That-PL be the small-NOM-PL-NOM

"Those are the small ones'." ("those are the ones that belong to the small ones.")

Reduplication
Reduplication is used to several ends in verbs, adverbs, and adjectives in Berbice Dutch Creole, but rarely used in nouns.

Adjectives
Adjectives in BDC can receive various types of reduplication, including:


 * Intensifying reduplication

aʃ ɛkə leʃa di wotap draitɛ sa kalkali fi ɛkɛ

if 1sg read-IPF the word-PL turnPF so small-small for 1sg

"When I am reading, the words become so tiny for me."


 * Emphatic reduplication

da ɛkɛ eʃti, eʃti-eʃti mantoko dida

"(He) is my first, very first son, that one."


 * Distribution reduplication (distributing “old” across all the people it describes; only relevant for PL nouns.)

Də potɛpotɛ kɛnap alma dototɛ...

The old-old person-PL all die-PF

"The old people all died..."

==== Verbs ==== Reduplication of verbs can receive the following types of reduplication:

tito kikt.. ɛkuma hiso das, das mumu andrə plɛk
 * Iteration (something carried out habitually)

"When he sees me coming here he goes somewhere else."


 * Aimless repetition

o kapkaptɛ di tuku, pinapinətɛ di tuku

3sg cut-cut-PF the root peel-peel-PF the root

"He cut the roots (here and there), peeled the roots (here and there)."


 * Repeated small steps (“the activity is iterated until some final stage is reached”)

wɛl ju mumu tut á:lma di fals famatɛ

well 2sg go-go until all the falls finish-PF

"You keep go-go(ing) until all the waterfalls have finished.”

Alma di pakitapu, en.. findifinten
 * Repetition of the same activity with different objects. For example,

"All the pockets, they opened each of them."

Adverbs
Reduplication is used in adverbs for intensification. For example,

di kɛnap wat jɛnda farfarə

"...the people that were living far away..."

Nouns
On occasion, nouns are pluralized by reduplication instead of by receiving the pluralizing -apu suffix. This form tends to be used while describing reoccurring instances of an event.

Idri daka ɛk justu kriki skelingskelings

Every day 1sg PASTHAB get cent-cent

"Every day I would get an 8 cents piece."

Cliticization
In BDC, cliticization is rare and non-mandatory. Among its various uses, cliticization is sometimes used to distinguish the locative case (the only grammatical case used in BDC). For example, in

Di dakta kumtɛ di bedjanga

"The doctor came to my bed"

The word "bed" (bedi) is combined with the locative postposition (angga).

Word Order
The basic word order of Berbice Dutch Creole is SVO, as seen below:

di tokap furfurtɛk buku

"The children stole my books."

Headedness
In general, BDC favors head-initial constructions. For example, the head-initial pair of "the" and "man":

Di man mosi a        jɛnda       kandid an   kiktɛ.

"the man must have been near and watching (him)."

Adpositions can be either prepositions or postpositions in BDC. Adpositions with, from, of, until, before, for, without, after, and about) are prepositions:

Ɛkɛ na pam  bo di boki ka.

1sg not tell about the money NEG

I didn’t tell (them) about the money,"

The most notable exception to BDC's head-initialness is found in BDC's use of postpositions. The adpositions behind, in, on, in front of, near, over, under, and between are postpositions.

In jɛn di goli benjap

3pl be the  gully inside-PL

"They live inside the gullies."