Mohawk Dutch

Mohawk Dutch^[1] is a now extinct Dutch-based creole language mainly spoken during the 17th century west of Albany, New York, by the Dutch colonists who traded with or to a lesser extent mixed with the local population from the Mohawk nation.

See also

Jersey Dutch

Foot Notes

1. ^ "The Dutch quoted in the foregoing was 'Mohawk Dutch'. In Father Joguc's time (1543), there were eighteen different languages spoken at New York, presumably as many at Albany. A considerable number of the early settlers had Indian wives. (Domine Megapolensis says the Dutch are constantly running after the Mohawk women.) The children growing up with Indian relatives, among the tribes and with men speaking so great a variety of tongues built up a patois of their own, the 'Mohawk Dutch', many words met with in it defying the dictionary of the schools and yielding only to the explanation of very old men who had been familiar with this kind of Dutch and the Indian languages in their early youth. Many words are untranslatable save by the context." A History of the Schenectady Patent in the Dutch and English Times, by Jonathan Pearson, Junius Wilson MacMurray. Published 1883 by Munsell's Sons, Schenectady, NY. Original from Harvard University, digitized May 10, 2007. Available for download and "online reading" at "Google Book" [1] This book is in the public domain.

External links

• The Mohawk Dutch and the Palatines