The Virgin Islands Dutch Creole Textual Heritage. Philological Perspectives on Authenticity and Audience Design

Book excerpt: Creoles are new languages. We know when they emerged. Documentary sources of their early stages are therefore crucial for finding out how they emerged. However, the authenticity of these sources should be looked at critically. Virgin Islands Dutch Creole did not exist before 1672 and was mentioned for the first time in 1736. In the following decades Moravian and Lutheran missionaries started a tradition of translating Christian texts into this new language of the Danish Antilles (US Virgin Islands). On the surface of it, these texts look bookish, influenced by missionary jargon, Dutch-like, and perhaps even artificial. This dissertation studies the authenticity of Virgin Islands Dutch Creole texts from a philological perspective.