Amerikaens
Amerikaens (Amerikaens: /ɑː.mi.riˈkɑːns/) is a West Germanic language spoken across and native to vast swathes of North America. The language is a descendant of numerous Dutch dialects introduced to New Netherland in the 17th century which were spoken by settlers from the Netherlands. Distance from Europe, the impact of indigenous and immigrant lects, as well as preservation of archaic dialectal features caused Amerikaens to develop distinguishing characteristics over the next few centuries. In 1910, a standardized orthography devised by the Amerikaens Taelkomisie and based on the prestigious New Amsterdammer accent was adopted.
Amerikaens | |
|---|---|
| Ethnicity | Amerikaeners |
Language family | Scythian
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Early forms | Leeg Duits
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Writing system | Latin |
| Official status | |
Official language in | New Netherland Tussenland South Tussenland Amerikaens Free State Opdamsland Boschland |
Recognised minority language in | |
| Regulated by | Amerikaens Taelkomisie |
Today, Amerikaens serves as the official language of a number of Amerikaener states such as New Netherland, Tussenland, Boschland, and several others. Since 1951, it has also become one of the official languages of the Association of North American Nations.
History
Phonology
Due to Amerikaens phonology differing greatly by dialect, the Juys Mondordt (/jœus mondɔːrt/, 'correct speech') accent of New Amsterdam is widely considered to be the standard and most prestigious variety of the language. It has 21 consonants, 12 vowels, and 6 diphthong phonemes.
Consonants
| Labial | Alveolar | Post-alveolar | Dorsal | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | |||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | k | ||
| voiced | b | d | g | |||
| Affricate | t͡ʃ | |||||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s | ʃ | χ | h |
| voiced | v | z | ||||
| Approximant | w | l | j | |||
| Rhotic | r | |||||
Vowels
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Sound changes from Dutch
The Juys Mondordt accent, as well as several other Amerikaens varieties, are incredibly phonologically distinct from the standard Dutch of the Netherlands and non-American Batavosphere countries. The phonological base for Amerikaens largely rests upon the lects spoken by the founding settlers — dialects which evidently share a strong similarity with modern dialects spoken in Utrecht, north Brabant, and south Holland. Generally, short front vowels were lowered while long front vowels were backed; meanwhile, back vowels were variously raised, rounded and umlaut-ed. This vowel shift can be described as counterclockwise (Linksom). Consonants remain relatively closer to Dutch despite some undergoing palatalization and mergers.
Additionally, consonants in the middle of words have experienced lenition. Most notably, it affects the suffix -tie. Initially, the suffix was realized as /tsi/ but has since shifted solely to /si/. Deletion of final sounds (coda) is also common; final consonants and vowels, commonly n and e, are elided. These changes are markedly reflected in modern Amerikaens orthography; for example, Dutch politie has become Amerikaens polisie ('police').
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Orthography
Modern Amerikaens orthography is based on a number of phonemic innovations and historical principles inherited from Dutch. The formal language was largely written in line with the mainstream Dutch orthographic standard until the late 19th century, when indigenous orthography gradually came to predominate in media, education, and government. In 1886, the popular New Netherland newspaper De Amerikaense Telegraef was among the first publications to diverge from the Dutch standard. In 1903, the Amerikaens Taelkomisie, a regulatory institution for the Amerikaens language, was established by Raedpensionaris Mees van Haerst. Seven years later, the first edition of the Taelbück was published, creating a standardized orthography for the language. Aside from the nativization of loan words and minor spelling corrections, Amerikaens orthography has remained largely unchanged since 1910.
Many features of the language's orthography is consistent with the tendencies of 17th century Dutch spelling and dialectal phonemic spelling, while others are inherited from other Germanic languages or are completely indigenous innovations.
- The digraphs oo and oe have been converted to ö and ü respectively. These letters were initially adopted from German to show i-umlaut in closed syllables but eventually came to replace the previous digraphs completely, whether the vowel is phonologically fronted or not. For example, both zön (/zøːn/, 'son', Dutch zoon) and dü (/du/ 'do', Dutch doe) use umlauted letters, despite only zön being phonologically umlauted.
- Numerous archaic spellings from early modern Dutch orthography have been preserved in Amerikaens, such as ae for aa, ÿ for ij, ey for ei, uy for ui, and ue for uu. Additionally, one might occassionally find dt for final d, k for final ck, and the doubling of m and l to mm and ll in the middle of words.
- Many words formerly ending in -f are instead spelled with a -v, showing either their derviation from inflected forms, the influence of Scandanavian orthography, or the consonant's phonological voicing.
Alphabet
Amerikaens is generally recognized as having 44 distinct standard graphemes representing 39 phonemes and diphthongs, not including less common digraphs, trigraphs, and tetragraphs.
| A | Ae | Ai | Au | Auw | B | C | D | E | Ey | Eu | F | G | Gh | H | I | Î | Ie | J | K | L | M |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| /ɑ/ | /ɑː/ | /ɑi/ | /ɑu/ | /b/ | /s/, /k/ | /d/ | /ɛ(ə)/, /ə/ | /ɑi/ | /œː/ | /f/ | /g/, /χ/ | /h/ | /i/, /ɛ/ | /i/, /ɛə/ | /i/ | /j/ | /k/ | /l/ | /m/ | ||
| N | Ng | O | Ö | Oi | Ou | Ouw | P | Q | R | S | Sch | T | U | Ü | Ue | Uy | Uw | V | W | Ÿ | Z |
| /n/ | /ŋ/ | /ɔː/, /o/ | /øː/, /u/, /o/ | /ɔi/ | /ɑu/ | /p/ | /k/ | /r/ | /s/ | /ʃ/ | /t/ | /ə/ | /øː/, /u/ | /y/ | /œu/ | /yu/ | /v/ | /w/ | /ɑi/, /i/ | /z/ | |
Grammar
Compared to other Germanic languages, Amerikaens is considered weakly inflected, genderless, and by far more analytic of a language. The simplification of several features is usually attributed to the language's early role as a lingua franca between several ethnolinguistic groups.
Nouns and pronouns
| Person | Subject | Object | Possessive |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st singular | Ik ('k) | Mÿ (me) | Mÿn (men) |
| 2nd singular | Jÿ (je) | Jou (ju) | Jouw (juw) |
| 3rd singular, masculine | Hÿ (he) | Hem (em) | Hÿs (hes) |
| 3rd singular, feminine | Sÿ (se) | Her (er) | Hers (ers) |
| 1st plural | Wÿ (we) | Ons | |
| 2nd plural | Jul | Juls | |
| 3rd plural, for a person | Hun | Huns | |
| 3rd plural, for an object | It | Its | |
Amerikaens only differs between the singular and plural forms, much like English. The plural form is usually created by the addition of the suffix -s (/s/ or /z/). If a word already ends in an s, then an -en (/ən/) is added instead in order to signify plurality.
Amerikaens also preserves the possessive genitive case from archaic Dutch declension unlike other Netherlandic varieties. Its survival beyond the early 18th century most probably was influenced by the English language.
- Dutch de vriend van de man lit. 'the friend of the man' → Amerikaens des mans friendt lit. 'the man's friend'
Like Dutch, Amerikaens pronouns retain case distinction; subject (nominative), object (accusative), and possessive (genitive). Pronouns occur in a stressed form and an unstressed form (shown in brackets). The stressed form retains the whole original vowel and is used mainly in formal situations or when distinction is needed.
Determiners
Only two articles, the definitive de 'the' and the indefinitive în 'a(n)' exist in Amerikaens. They may be inflected in the genitive form (for example, Koninckrÿck der Nederlandts lit. 'Kingdom of the Netherlands').
| Singular | Plural | Indefinite | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative | de | în ('n) | |
| Genitive | des | der | îns ('ns) |
Demonstratives are words used to distinguish entities being referred to. As grammatical gender does not exist, there are only four demonstrative determiners in Amerikaens. Proximal indicates that the entities are close to the speaker, while distal indicates that they are far away.
| Singular | Plural | English | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Proximal | dese | This, these | |
| Distal | dat | That, those | |
| Possessive | dies | dier | Their's, the latter's |
Verbs
Much like its sister language Afrikaans, Amerikaens does not inflect or conjugate, nor is there a distinction between the infinitive and present forms of verbs. In order to form different verb forms such as tense, aspect, and modality, the infinitive form of the verb is accompanied by a pronoun and an auxiliary verb. The below table uses the example of the verb ît (/it/, 'eat') in the perfect and continuous tenses.
| Amerikaens | Dutch | English | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pronoun | Auxiliary verb | Infinitive | |||
| Present | Ik | ∅ | ît | Ik eet | I eat |
| Past | hab | Ik at | I ate | ||
| Future | zhal | Ik zal eten | I will eat | ||
| Present continuous | dü | Ik ben aan het eten | I am eating | ||
| Past continuous | dîd | Ik was aan het eten | I was eating | ||
| Future continuous | zhal dü | Ik zal eten | I will be eating | ||
See also