Skepi is an extinct Dutch-based creole language of

Guyana Guyana ( or ), officially the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, is a country on the northern mainland of South America. Guyana is an indigenous word which means "Land of Many Waters". The capital city is Georgetown. Guyana is bordered by the ...

, spoken in the region of

Essequibo Essequibo is the largest traditional region of Guyana but not an administrative region of Guyana today. It may also refer to: * Essequibo River, the largest river in Guyana * Essequibo (colony), a former Dutch colony in what is now Guyana; * Esseq ...

. It was not

mutually intelligible In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as a ...

with

Berbice Creole Dutch Berbice Creole Dutch (also known as Berbice Dutch) is a now extinct Dutch creole language, once spoken in Berbice, a region along the Berbice River in Guyana. It had a lexicon largely based on Dutch and Eastern Ijo varieties from southern Nigeri ...

, also spoken in Guyana. This language has been classified as extinct since 1998.

Description

By the twentieth century, the existence of a Dutch creole language in the former Essequibo colony was largely forgotten about, and the language only gained the interest of linguists after the Guyanese linguist Ian E. Robertson, who had already brought

to the attention of the scientific community, also found people on the Essequibo River who remembered a Dutch creole language. In contrast to Berbice Creole Dutch, however, Skepi—which name derives from ''Yskepi'', the first Dutch name of the Essequibo River—was not actively spoken anymore during Robertson's fieldwork. The sample sentences and a

Swadesh list The Swadesh list ("Swadesh" is pronounced ) is a classic compilation of tentatively universal concepts for the purposes of lexicostatistics. Translations of the Swadesh list into a set of languages allow researchers to quantify the interrelatednes ...

compiled by Robertson were thus based on the memories of non-native speakers of the language still spoken by their parents or grandparents. After Robertson published his material, some older sources emerged. In the memoir of reverend Thomas Youd, who was a missionary in

British Guiana British Guiana was a British colony, part of the mainland British West Indies, which resides on the northern coast of South America. Since 1966 it has been known as the independent nation of Guyana. The first European to encounter Guiana was ...

, it is asserted that British missionaries learnt Skepi in the 1830s and that they used this language in their church services. According to this memoir, these missionaries also produced a dictionary of the language, which since has been lost, however. This is equally the case for a "word list submitted by a German veterinary surgeon." In 2013, a letter written by Essequibo planter Wernard van Vloten emerged which contained a small fragment in Skepi Dutch. This letter, which was dated 26 September 1780, is believed to be the oldest source of the Skepi language. In 2020, 125 Skepi sentences and 250 Skepi words found in the diary of Thomas Youd were published in the '' Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages'' by Bart Jacobs and Mikael Parkvall.

Sample texts

Since the language was already extinct when Ian Robertson first investigated the Dutch creoles in Guyana in 1975, much of Skepi is known only through the memory the descendants of native speakers have of the language their forefathers spoke. The following three sample sentences appeared in a Zeelandic newspaper in 1997.Evenhuis, M. (1997)
Zeeuwse creooltalen sterven een stille dood
, ''Provinciale Zeeuwse Courant''. 1 December. Translation: ''I want a slice of bread.'' Translation: ''Where shall I put it?'' Translation: ''"It was not you, it was that other minister (clergyman)."''

Fragment from the 1780 letter by Van Vloten

Translation: ''" ..and try to come one beautiful day to Uncle who lives in a warm country, and when he comes back to the country of the White people, he will bring nice things for the four children.’"''

Notes

References

* * * * * {{cite book , last = Veness , first = William T. , title=Ten Years of Mission Life in British Guiana: A Memoir of The Rev. Thomas Youd , publisher = Society for promoting Christian knowledge , year = 1869 , location = London , url = https://archive.org/details/tenyearsofmissio00vene Dutch-based pidgins and creoles Dutch language in the Americas Languages of Guyana Extinct languages of South America Languages attested from the 18th century Languages extinct in the 20th century