Namibian Black German, also NBG, (german: Küchendeutsch, "kitchen German") is a

pidgin A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from s ...

language of

Namibia Namibia (, ), officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and ea ...

that derives from

standard German Standard High German (SHG), less precisely Standard German or High German (not to be confused with High German dialects, more precisely Upper German dialects) (german: Standardhochdeutsch, , or, in Switzerland, ), is the standardized variety ...

. It is nearly extinct. It was spoken mostly by Namibians who did not learn standard German during the period of German rule. It was never a first language. It is currently spoken as a second language by people generally over 50 years old, who today usually also speak

Standard Standard may refer to: Symbols * Colours, standards and guidons, kinds of military signs * Standard (emblem), a type of a large symbol or emblem used for identification Norms, conventions or requirements * Standard (metrology), an object th ...

or Namibian German,

Afrikaans Afrikaans (, ) is a West Germanic language that evolved in the Dutch Cape Colony from the Dutch vernacular of Holland proper (i.e., the Hollandic dialect) used by Dutch, French, and German settlers and their enslaved people. Afrikaans gr ...

, or English. Along with general learning in the metropolitan environments of Southern Namibia where Namibian German is spoken, NBG may be preserved nominally through parent-to-child or in-house transmission.

History

Colonial acquisition of German in Namibia often took place outside of formal education and was primarily self-taught. Like many pidgin languages, Namibian Black German developed through limited access to the standard language and was restricted to the work environment. Currently several hundred thousand Namibians speak German as a second language – many, but not most of them Black, and while Namibian German often does not adhere to standard German, it is not pidgin.

Prepositions

English and Afrikaans have left an influence on the development of NBG, leading to three primary prepositional patterns: *adding a preposition where Standard German would use the accusative *dropping prepositions which are usually present in Standard German *changing the preposition that is required by the verb

Examples

Examples of phrases with Standard German equivalents: * ''Lange nicht sehen ''- long no see ("Lange nicht gesehen") * ''Was Banane kosten? ''- How much does the banana cost? ("Was kostet die/eine Banane?") * ''spät Uhr'' - 'late hour', meaning 'it's late' ("es ist spät") * ''Herr fahren Jagd, nicht Haus'' - "Master went hunting and he's not at home" ("Der Herr ist zur Jagd gefahren und ist nicht zu Hause")

References

* *Deumert, A. (2010). Historical Sociolinguistics in a Colonial World, Methodological Considerations owerPoint slides Retrieved from http://hison.sbg.ac.at/content/conferences/handoutsslides2010/Deumert3.pdf * *Langer, N., McLelland, N. (2011). German Studies: Language and Linguistics. The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies, 71, 564–594. * *Stolberg, D. (2012). When a standard language goes colonial: Language attitudes, language planning, and destandardization during German colonialism. 25th Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics, Workshop 2: Foundations of Language Standardization. Retrieved from http://conference.hi.is/scl25/files/2012/06/Stolberg.pdf German-based pidgins and creoles Languages of Namibia Germany–Namibia relations German-Namibian culture {{pidgincreole-lang-stub

History

Prepositions

Examples

References

Further reading