LL-L "History" 2007.09.10 (05) [D/E]

[Lowlands-L List]

L O W L A N D S - L  -  10 September 2007 - Volume 05
Song Contest: lowlands-l.net/contest/ (- 31 Dec. 2007)
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From: Elsie Zinsser <ezinsser at icon.co.za>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2007.09.09 (03) [E]

Hi all,

A fascinating topic, Ron, if not so horribly sad. I found more references
today:

http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jwh/14.2/vink.html#FOOT105
A well-referenced article on VOIC slavery in the Indian ocean.

http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Meadows/7589/Personalia_en.html
Some German names found in the Cape.

Paul, Edith Raidt mentions that the Germans and French Huguenots quickly
assimilated with the local population. By 1774, Stavorinus wrote: 'De eerste
Europische bevolking dezer Colonie, uit verscheiden Natieën bestaan
hebbende,
zijn thans, door langheid van tijd, zoodanig onder een gesmolten, dat zij
niet meer
van elkanderen te onderscheiden zijn; zelfs de meesten van die, welken in
Europa
geboren zijn, en eenige jaaren hier hebben gewoond, hebben als 't ware hun
nationaal
character voor dat van deze landaart verwisseld".

Yes, indeed, the Perthian Afrikaans-speakers now have formed their own
Afrikaans
language church too and I've seen calls in Die Kerkbode for dominees to work
there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrique_of_Malacca
Interesting piece about Magellan's servant and interpreter, bought in a
Malaccan

slave market and baptized as Henrique (or Enrique), real name Panglima
Awang,

and able to converse to the locals in "Mazaua" ("probably in the
Philippines") using

a dialect of the Malay language.

http://www.eisa.org.za/WEP/madoverview1a.htm
With references to slaves from Madagascar and the Indian islands such as
Réunion and Mauritius.

Incidentally, my paternal forbearer, a certain Cornelis Gerritsz Van Niekerk
was banned to Mauritius in
1706 after he and 9 other Free Burghers revolted against the VOIC's Willem
Adriaen van der Stel. They
refused to appear in court and were fined 200 rijksdaalders. Van Niekerk
died in Mauritius of malaria
and his widow, Maria (née Van der Westhuyzen) remarried a Samuel Walter
(from Pressburg) in 1711.

Regards,
Elsie Zinsser

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language varieties

Thanks a lot, Elsie!  I find all this fascinating, not surprisingly,
considering that language contacts and the creation of new languages from
such contacts are my particular thing.

I find it interesting that Guam got involved, because it was a Spanish
colony, not a Dutch one.  As such, there were close ties with Legazpi and
other parts of what are now the Philippines.  By the way, Chamorro (Chamoru)
and the native languages of the Philippines, the Indonesian Archipelago and
the Malay Peninsula all are Malayo-Polynesian, thus Austronesian.  Modern
Chamorro is strongly Spanish-influenced, lately also English-influenced.

Of course, just because slaves came from a certain place doesn't necessarily
mean that's where they originated. Slaves tended to be traded and thus
shipped about.  For instance, there are two small but relevant minorities in
Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon). The Burghers (now less than 1% of the
population) began as children of Portuguese and Dutch fathers and Sinhalese
mothers, and British and African admixtures came to be added later. Their
original language was Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese Creole which is still used
by many so-called "Portuguese Burghers," while others now have English as
their first language.  Interestingly, the second minority worth mentioning
are the Sri Lankan Malays (now 0.3% of the population) many of whom still
speak Sri Lankan Creole Malay which is influenced by Sinhalese and Tamil,
apparently also by Dutch as well as Persian and Arabic. I don't know how the
Malays got there, but I suspect that Dutch colonization had something to do
with it, if not Portuguese colonization prior to that. This would make
connection with South Africa more understandable, namely transport of Malays
via Sri Lanka to the Cape.

We should not forget that there were also Malagasy-speaking slaves from
Madagascar in South Africa.  Malagasy, too, is Malayo-Polynesian, thus
Oceanic, the westernmost member of this large family (in pre-modern times
the largest family spread across water).

By the way, I hear that there is now a substantial Afrikaans-speaking
community in Perth, Western Australia. There were few Afrikaans speakers
there when I lived there, though many Anglo-South Africans.
----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language varieties

Thanks a lot for all the info, Elsie!

Yes, slave trade in the Indian Ocean a fascinating but sad string of history
that remains largely unexplored, as the authors quoted by Vink say.  And you
have to add the topic of indentured labor on top of this, which wasn't
exactly a bed of roses either.

A long time ago I was involved in bringing the Indian Ocean Festival (before
it ever really took off) to Murdoch University in Perth.  (Unfortunately,
South Africa wasn't a part of this festival then.)  And this topic came up
quite often in discussions.  So this history is still on people's minds at
local levels, although the great picture is sketchy.

My honors thesis for my minor in Southeast Asian studies was a comparison of
"population management" in colonial Indonesia and the Philippines, with
reference to colonial Malaya, and the emergence of homegrown "mixed blood"
ethnicities (Peranakan, Indo-Dutch, Mestizo and Baba) and their languages.
Obviously I hardly scratched the surface.  However, I came across a lot of
slavery references in old Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese and English documents,
and many referred to the Cape.  I was amazed to realize that hardly any of
them had ever been used in previous studies.  So there's still rich grazing
land to be found.

Mazaua appears to be a Visayan (thus Malayo-Polynesian) language variety of
today's Philippine Island of Limasawa, now a part of Southern Leyte Province(
members.tripod.com/philipppines/mazauatime.htm).  Most probably it was a
northern Cebuano dialect (lowlands-l.net/anniversary/cebuano-info.php,
lowlands-l.net/anniversary/philippines.php).

http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Meadows/7589/Personalia_en.html
Some German names found in the Cape.

Four things became apparent to me right away (
www.geocities.com/Heartland/Meadows/7589/Pics/Herkunft.jpg):

   1. The largest clusters of emigrants from Germany to early South
   Africa came from in and around Berlin, Hamburg, Lübeck and a strip between
   Magdeburg and Hanover, at that time (17th & 18th century) all predominantly
   Low-Saxon-speaking.
   2. By far the largest cluster of emigrants from the Netherlands came
   from what are now Northern and Southern Holland, only a comparatively small
   cluster from Zealand and Western Flanders. (I'm mentioning this because of
   the claim that Afrikaans was based mostly on Zealandic.)
   3. Among the names of people that emigrated from Germany to South
   Africa I see a good sprinkling of French names (supposedly Huguenots), Dutch
   names and a sprinkling of what appear to be Jewish names. Interestingly
   also, many Low Saxon names acquired closely related Dutch versions (
   e.g., Bode ~ Both ~ Botha, Butendach ~ Buitendag, von Böllen ~ van
   Beulen, Balduin ~ Boudewyn, Bruhn ~ Broen ~ Bruyn, Kutscher ~ Coetser, Löwe
   ~ Leeuw).  However, there appear to be more people with more than one
   version each where Middle Saxon spelling persisted and where Low Saxon and
   German names competed, this being the era when German began to seriously
   encroach upon the Low Saxon area.
   4. Several people came from what are now Denmark and France.

Interesting material!

Reinhard/Ron
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