cookies, coleslaw, and stoops * boek Cookies ed. AUP.indd 1 24-07-09 15:14 Process Black * boek Cookies ed. AUP.indd 2 24-07-09 15:14 Process Black Nicoline van der Sijs Cookies, Coleslaw, and Stoops The Infl uence of Dutch on the North American Languages Amsterdam University Press * boek Cookies ed. AUP.indd 3 24-07-09 15:14 Process Black The publication of this book has been made possible by the support of The Nederlandse Taalunie (Dutch Language Union). A Dutch version of this book is also available, titled Yankees, cookies en dollars. De invloed van het Nederlands op de Noord-Amerikaanse talen, isbn 978 90 8964 130 4. Translation: Piet Verhoeff and Language Unlimited. Cover Design: Kok Korpershoek and Jonatan van der Horst Book Design: Kok Korpershoek and Femke Lust isbn 978 90 8964 124 3 e-isbn 978 90 4851 042 9 nur 624/632 © Nicoline van der Sijs, 2009 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher. * boek Cookies ed. AUP.indd 4 24-07-09 15:14 Process Black * boek Cookies ed. AUP.indd 5 24-07-09 15:15 Process Black * boek Cookies ed. AUP.indd 6 24-07-09 15:15 Process Black Contents Preface 11 1. The Dutch language in North America 17 1.0 “The last real speaker of the dialect” 18 1.1 Dutch colonists and Native Americans 20 1.2 The Dutch language on the American East Coast: Low Dutch 27 1.3 Dutch place-names from the seventeenth century 51 1.4 Dutch and double Dutch 56 1.5 The American Dutch, American Flemish and American Frisian 61 of nineteenth- and twentieth-century immigrants 1.6 Dutch place-names from the nineteenth and twentieth century 100 1.7 The Dutch language and culture in the US, anno 2009 107 2. Dutch words that have left their mark on American English: a thematic glossary 113 2.0 Introduction: sources and structure of the glossary 114 2.1 Food, drink, and stimulants 117 2.2 Flora and fauna 144 2.3 Household effects and everyday implements 167 2.4 Polity and citizens 180 2.5 The American landscape 201 2.6 Human traits and characterizations 212 2.7 Religion and religious festivals 219 * boek Cookies ed. AUP.indd 7 24-07-09 15:15 Process Black 2.8 In and around the house 226 2.9 Trade 232 2.10 Money and units of measure 237 2.11 Children’s language 242 2.12 Transport by sea and land 256 2.13 Clothing 264 2.14 Miscellaneous 270 2.15 Dutch loanwords that did not originate from immigrants 276 2.16 Conclusion 280 3. Dutch infl uence on North American Indian languages 283 3.0 Introduction 284 3.1 Delaware Jargon 284 3.2 Amerindian languages that were spoken on the East Coast in 286 the seventeenth century 3.3 Thematic overview of Dutch loanwords 289 3.4 Alphabetical survey of Dutch loanwords 293 3.5 Conclusion 296 Bibliography 299 List of illustrations 311 Index to the American English words in chapter 2 317 * boek Cookies ed. AUP.indd 8 24-07-09 15:15 Process Black * boek Cookies ed. AUP.indd 9 24-07-09 15:15 Process Black * boek Cookies ed. AUP.indd 10 24-07-09 15:15 Process Black Preface * boek Cookies ed. AUP.indd 11 24-07-09 15:15 Process Black n 1609 the fi rst Dutchmen, Flemings, and Frisians landed on the American East Coast; they brought with them their culture, customs, and religion, and, of I course, their language, too. The Dutch language was to remain the offi cial language of the East Coast for half a century. Although the Dutch colony was taken over by the English in 1664, Dutch managed to hold its own surprisingly long in the United States. Four centuries have passed in the meantime – which is what we celebrate in this “Hudson year” – and up to this day, the Dutch traces in the North American languages have not been wiped out. This book describes why that is and what those traces are. It will become abundantly clear that there have been special linguistic and cultural ties between the Low Countries and the United States for a very long time. At fi rst, Dutch immigrants came to the East Coast of America to trade with the Native Americans. They brought furs back with them to Europe, and in exchange they took all kinds of Dutch products with them to the New World. Much of that was new to the Native Americans, who adopted the Dutch terms for these items, adding them in their languages. In chapter 3, 69 Dutch loanwords that were borrowed by one or more North American Indian languages will be discussed. When New Netherland was annexed to New England in 1664, English began to compete heavily with Dutch as the primary language in the area. Dutch remained in use for quite a while, however; this was true in (originally) Dutch circles, as well as outside of them. Despite this, Dutch eventually lost more and more ground to English. Just when most Dutch descendants had exchanged Dutch for English, half- way through the nineteenth century, a second wave of Dutch, Flemish, and Frisian immigrants arrived and settled in several American states, bringing Dutch and Frisian to the American continent once more. Some of them quickly exchanged their native language for English, others stuck to Dutch or Frisian. Chapter 1 describes the fates of the Dutch, Flemish, and Frisian languages in relation to both the fi rst and the second wave of immigrants. There are signifi cant similarities between the ways in which the Dutch of the two waves has developed, and the domains where it has held out the longest. Possibly the most spectacular aspect of this process is that many speakers were so devoted to their native language that they passed it on from generation to generation. Even now, it seems that many Americans are very proud of their Dutch roots, despite the fact that so few of them can speak Dutch nowadays: “If you ain’t Dutch, you ain’t mu(t)ch” has become a stock phrase, often found printed on cards, T-shirts, and plaques. Both the English and the Dutch languages have developed in America, indepen- dently of European English and Dutch. On the American continent, new words were made or borrowed for specifi c geographical circumstances, indigenous animal and * boek Cookies ed. AUP.indd 12 24-07-09 15:15 Process Black preface 13 plant species, individual social and cultural developments, and technical innovations. New phrases were developed, and the language went its own way in spelling and grammar. Language became an issue when the US declared its independence from Great Britain in 1776. The newly independent country tried to forge its own identity and its own form of government to differentiate itself from its former mother country. In order to distance itself as much as possible from Great Britain and everything connected with it, the Americans came to stress the differences between the English and the American culture and language. This is probably also a reason why English has never been accepted as the offi cial language of the US. Despite this, in actuality, English had become the principal colloquial language in the young US. In order to distinguish themselves linguistically, too, from the erstwhile mother country, the Americans decided not to regard the peculiarities of the American language as mistakes any longer but as characteristics of their own national language. For these expressions, words, and phrases that were typical of America, John Witherspoon, head of Princeton University and one of the signatories of the Declaration of Indepen- dence, invented the term Americanisms in 1781. Now it was offi cial: American English was different from British English, and that was something of which to be proud. To make the difference between the two languages even greater, the lexicographer Noah Webster proposed to introduce a special American spelling in 1789, making it clear directly from the form of the words whether a text was written in American English or in British English. In this way, the spelling deviations that had been used in the US for a long time – and that had been regarded as spelling mistakes up until then – could now be used as evidence of America’s own national identity. And that is what happened – from the nineteenth century onward, articles and monographs, and especially dictionaries, were published in which the unique character of American English and the Americanisms were described. Among the special items was the introduction of loanwords from languages of groups of immigrants, for example, from the Low Countries. These loanwords did not occur in British English, or did so only later, sometimes through American English. Chapter 2 describes which words American English borrowed from Dutch. There are about 246 words which, for the most part, are still in use: some of these are used very generally, others only regionally, and a small group of words are used only as historical terms.