Article In:
Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages: Online-First Articles

“Mij dodte, mij loppe, in mijn lande”

Extending the horizon on documented contact language use in the Virgin Islands with a quote in incipient Dutch Creole from 1681

ORCID logo | Utrecht University, The Netherlands | Aarhus University, Denmark
ORCID logo | Stockholm University, Sweden
ORCID logo | Aarhus University, Denmark
A 1681 letter written by Jørgen Iversen (1638–1682), the first governor of Danish St. Thomas, unearthed from the Danish National Archives, contains a quote in incipient Virgin Islands Dutch Creole (VIDC). The quote, Mij dodte, mij loppe, in mijn lande, lit. ‘I die/dead, I go, in my country’ (free translation: ‘If/when I die, I will go back to my own country’), predates other early VIDC sources by over half a century. This finding shows that a Dutch-related contact variety was in use on St. Thomas a mere decade after the island’s colonization in 1672. Assessing historical-demographic evidence alongside the linguistic evidence, the most plausible scenario, we argue, is one in which VIDC formed locally on St. Thomas rather than having been imported before the 1680s. The quote is among the earliest fragments of a European-lexifier contact language in the Caribbean, and among the earliest in any Dutch-related contact language.
Keywords: Virgin Islands Dutch Creole, St. Thomas, Danish West Indies, Jørgen Iversen, historical textual evidence, demography
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Historical, demographic, and linguistic background
  • 3.Governor Jørgen Iversen’s letter of 15 September 1681
  • 4.Linguistic analysis
  • 5.Concluding discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations in glosses
  • References
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