Mohawk Dutch

Last updated
Mohawk Dutch
Native to New Netherland
RegionNorth America
Extinct possibly late 19th to early 20th century
Dutch-based creole with Mohawk
  • Mohawk Dutch
Language codes
ISO 639-3 None (mis)
Glottolog None
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Mohawk Dutch is an extinct Dutch-based creole language mainly spoken during the 17th century west of Albany, New York, in the area around the Mohawk River, by the Dutch colonists who traded with or to a lesser extent mixed with the local population from the Mohawk nation.

At the height of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands's North American colony of New Netherland, there were 18 languages spoken within Dutch-controlled territory. [1] [ citation not found ] Dutch settlers frequently married indigenous women, most commonly from the Mohawk, with whom they were strong allies. [2] The resulting children often drifted between the territory of the Iroquois Confederacy and New Netherland, forming among themselves a creole taking elements from both languages.

One lullaby purported to be in Mohawk Dutch was recorded as part of the research for the Dictionary of American Regional English; [3] it is mostly German with one Dutch diminutive suffix (whose German equivalent also occurs), one Dutch word and one word ("baby") that probably comes from a local language.[ citation needed ]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Netherland</span> 17th-century Dutch colony in North America

New Netherland was a 17th-century colonial province of the Dutch Republic located on the East Coast of what is now the United States. The claimed territories extended from the Delmarva Peninsula to Cape Cod. Settlements were established in what became the states of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut, with small outposts in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Schenectady, New York</span> City in New York, United States

Schenectady is a city in Schenectady County, New York, United States, of which it is the county seat. As of the 2020 census, the city's population of 67,047 made it the state's ninth-most populous city and the twenty-fifth most-populous municipality. The city is in eastern New York, near the confluence of the Mohawk and Hudson rivers. It is in the same metropolitan area as the state capital, Albany, which is about 15 miles (24 km) southeast.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Schoharie County, New York</span> County in New York, United States

Schoharie County is a county in the U.S. state of New York. As of the 2020 census, the population was 29,714, making it the state's fifth-least populous county. The county seat is Schoharie. "Schoharie" comes from a Mohawk word meaning "floating driftwood." Schoharie County is part of the Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY Metropolitan Statistical Area. The county is part of the Mohawk Valley region of the state.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Languages of the United States</span>

The United States does not have an official language at the federal level, but the most commonly used language is English, which is the de facto national language. In addition, 32 U.S. states out of 50 and all five U.S. territories have declared English as an official language. The majority of the U.S. population (78%) speaks only English at home as of 2023. The remainder of the population speaks many other languages at home, most notably Spanish, according to the American Community Survey (ACS) of the U.S. Census Bureau; others include indigenous languages originally spoken by Native Americans, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and native populations in the U.S. unincorporated territories. Other languages were brought in by people from Europe, Africa, Asia, other parts of the Americas, and Oceania, including multiple dialects, creole languages, pidgin languages, and sign languages originating in what is now the United States. Interlingua, an international auxiliary language, was also created in the U.S.

The Mohicans are an Eastern Algonquian Native American tribe that historically spoke an Algonquian language. As part of the Eastern Algonquian family of tribes, they are related to the neighboring Lenape, whose indigenous territory was to the south as far as the Atlantic coast. The Mohicans lived in the upper tidal Hudson River Valley, including the confluence of the Mohawk River and into western New England centered on the upper Housatonic River watershed. After 1680, due to conflicts with the powerful Mohawk to the west during the Beaver Wars, many were driven southeastward across the present-day Massachusetts western border and the Taconic Mountains to Berkshire County around Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

Creole peoples may refer to various ethnic groups around the world. The term's meaning exhibits regional variations, often sparking debate.

Patois is speech or language that is considered nonstandard, although the term is not formally defined in linguistics. As such, patois can refer to pidgins, creoles, dialects or vernaculars, but not commonly to jargon or slang, which are vocabulary-based forms of cant.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mohawk people</span> Indigenous First Nation of North America

The Mohawk, also known by their own name, Kanien'kehà:ka, are an Indigenous people of North America and the easternmost nation of the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois Confederacy.

Sranan Tongo is an English-based creole language that is spoken as a lingua franca by approximately 519,600 people in Suriname.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Upstate New York</span> Region of New York state

Upstate New York is a geographic region of New York that lies north and northwest of the New York City metropolitan area of downstate New York. Upstate includes the middle and upper Hudson Valley, the Capital District, the Mohawk Valley region, Central New York, the Southern Tier, the Finger Lakes region, Western New York, and the North Country. Major cities across upstate New York from east to west include the state capital of Albany, Utica, Binghamton, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Portuguese-based creole languages</span> Creole languages lexified by Portuguese

Portuguese creoles are creole languages which have Portuguese as their substantial lexifier. The most widely-spoken creoles influenced by Portuguese are Cape Verdean Creole, Guinea-Bissau Creole and Papiamento.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jersey Dutch language</span> Extinct dialect of New Jersey and New York, US

Jersey Dutch, also known as Bergen Dutch, was a Dutch dialect formerly spoken in northeastern New Jersey from the late 17th century until the early 20th century. It evolved in one of the two Dutch-speaking enclaves that remained for over two centuries after the dissolution of Dutch control in North America, the other giving rise to Mohawk Dutch. It may have been a partial creole language based on Zeelandic and West Flemish Dutch dialects with English and possibly some elements of Lenape.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fort Orange (New Netherland)</span> United States historic place in Albany, New York

Fort Orange was the first permanent Dutch settlement in New Netherland; the present-day city and state capital Albany, New York developed near this site. It was built in 1624 as a replacement for Fort Nassau, which had been built on nearby Castle Island and served as a trading post until 1617 or 1618, when it was abandoned due to frequent flooding. Both forts were named in honor of the Dutch House of Orange-Nassau. Due to a dispute between the Director-General of New Netherland and the patroonship of Rensselaerswyck regarding jurisdiction over the fort and the surrounding community, the fort and community became an independent municipality, paving the way for the future city of Albany. After the English reconquered the region they soon abandoned Fort Orange in favor of a new fort: Fort Frederick, constructed in 1676.

Beverwijck, often written using the pre-reform orthography Beverwyck, was a fur-trading community north of Fort Orange on the Hudson River within Rensselaerwyck in New Netherland that was renamed and developed as Albany, New York, after the English took control of the colony in 1664.

Dutch dialects and varieties are primarily the dialects and varieties that are both cognate with the Dutch language and spoken in the same language area as the Standard Dutch. They are remarkably diverse and are found within Europe mainly in the Netherlands and northern Belgium.

Ots-Toch was a Mohawk woman from Canajoharie, New York. She married an early Dutch colonist, and her children became interpreters between the Mohawk nation and New Netherland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dutch language</span> West Germanic language

Dutch is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken by about 25 million people as a first language and 5 million as a second language and is the third most spoken Germanic language. In Europe, Dutch is the native language of most of the population of the Netherlands and Flanders. Dutch was one of the official languages of South Africa until 1925, when it was replaced by Afrikaans, a separate but partially mutually intelligible daughter language of Dutch. Afrikaans, depending on the definition used, may be considered a sister language, spoken, to some degree, by at least 16 million people, mainly in South Africa and Namibia, and evolving from Cape Dutch dialects.

New Netherlanders were residents of New Netherland, the seventeenth-century colonial outpost of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands on the northeastern coast of North America, centered on the Hudson River and New York Bay, and in the Delaware Valley.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Johannes Megapolensis</span>

Johannes Megapolensis (1603–1670) was a dominie (pastor) of the Dutch Reformed Church in the Dutch colony of New Netherland, beginning in 1642. Serving for several years at Fort Orange on the upper Hudson River, he is credited with being the first Protestant missionary to the Indians in North America. He later served as a minister in Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, staying through the takeover by the English in 1664.

References

  1. Pearson, Jonathan; MacMurray, Junius W. (1883). A History of the Schenectady Patent in the Dutch and English Times. Albany, NY: Joel Munsell's Sons.
  2. Nellis, Milo (1951). The Mohawk Dutch and the Palatines: Their Background and Their Influence in the Development of the United States of America . Retrieved 23 September 2021.
  3. Russom, Geoffrey (fieldworker) (1969). Primary Informant NY194 (MP4) (Fieldwork recording) (in English and Mohawk Dutch). Canajoharie, NY: Dictionary of American Regional English. 4:27 minutes in. Retrieved 23 September 2021 via University of Wisconsin–Madison Libraries.{{cite AV media}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)