Namibian Black German Explained
| Namibian Black German |
| Also Known As: | Namibian Kiche Duits |
| Nativename: | Kiche Duits |
| States: | Namibia |
| Speakers: | None (only learned as a second language), possibly with some minor transmission to youth |
| Familycolor: | Pidgin |
| Iso3: | none |
| Glotto: | none |
| Ethnicity: | Black Namibians, generally Herero and Nama |
| Family: | German-based creole |
Namibian Black German, also NBG, (German: Küchendeutsch, "kitchen German") is a pidgin language of Namibia that derives from standard German.[1] It is nearly extinct.[2] 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 or Namibian German, Afrikaans, or English.[3] 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.[4]
Prepositions
English and Afrikaans have left an influence on the development of NBG, leading to three primary prepositional patterns:[5]
- 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")
Further reading
- Deumert . A . 2003 . Markedness and salience in language contact and second-language acquisition: evidence from a non-canonical contact language . Language Sciences . 25 . 6. 561–613 . 10.1016/S0388-0001(03)00033-0.
- Deumert, A. (2010). Historical Sociolinguistics in a Colonial World, Methodological Considerations [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from http://hison.sbg.ac.at/content/conferences/handoutsslides2010/Deumert3.pdf
- Deumert . A . 2009 . Namibian Kiche Duits: The Making (and Decline) of Neo-African Language . Journal of Germanic Linguistics . 21 . 4. 349–417 . 10.1017/s1470542709990122. free .
- Langer, N., McLelland, N. (2011). German Studies: Language and Linguistics. The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies, 71, 564–594.
- Shah . Sheena . 2007 . German in a contact situation: The case of Namibian German . EDUSA . 2 . 2 . 20–44 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20150713132325/http://www.sagv.org.za/edusa/edusa_2-07-2/sha_2007_2.pdf . 2015-07-13 .
- 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
Notes and References
- Book: Deumert
, Ama
. Markedness and salience in language contact and second-language acquisition: evidence from a non-canonical contact language. Language Sciences. 25. 6. 561–613. 10.1016/S0388-0001(03)00033-0. 2003. Elsevier Ltd.
- Maitz. Péter. Volker. Craig Alan. 2017-12-04. Documenting Unserdeutsch. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages. 32. 2. 365–397. 10.1075/jpcl.32.2.06mai. 0920-9034.
- Deumert. Ana. 2018-11-09. Settler colonialism speaks. Language Ecology. 2. 1–2. 91–111. 10.1075/le.18006.deu. 135407958 . 2452-1949.
- Maitz. Péter. Németh. Attila. March 2014. Language Contact and Morphosyntactic Complexity: Evidence from German. Journal of Germanic Linguistics. en. 26. 1. 1–29. 10.1017/S1470542713000184. 44022622 . 1470-5427.
- Shah . Sheena . 2007 . German in a contact situation: The case of Namibian German . EDUSA . 2 . 2 . 20–44.
