1.All footnotes represent comments of the translators. When faced with a choice between elegant phrasing and close translation, we chose the latter so that readers might evaluate Pontoppidan on his own merits. Material inserted into the text by the translators appears in [ ]s.

2.Several of the early Land Lister (i.e. tax roles) were written in Dutch, and since the Danish West India Company was organized by Dutch entrepreneurs it is likely that Dutch also had official standing.

3. The expression "nach und nach" may also be interpreted as meaning one person after another; however, this meaning is more typically expressed with the explicit statement "einer nach dem anderen."

4.Tal `language' was not used by the 20th century consultants. This would have been rendered, as prat ju prat `talk your talk.'

5.We understand "formlessness" and "lack the means of putting them together" (see below) as referring to a lack of derivational and inflectional morphology.

6. A 13th century collection of mythological, heroic, and aphoristic poetry.

7. There is no indication of a passive in the creole sentence; however, we translate it as a passive since das wasser kocht fr is ambigous.

8. The only ones from this list that occur in the twentieth century vernacular texts are /maNke/`want' and /trakte/ `treat.' [where N = eng].

9. For de Jong's nine consultants and for Mrs. Stevens lo(p) was `go' and kuri was `run.' There was no overlap.

10. Valls (1981) identifies mumbo jumbo as an apocryphal deity supposedly worshiped in Africa. Katya Leney, in a message posted to the H-net List for African History (1/23/98), suggests that wide-spread use of the term probably can be attributed to the popularity of Mungo Park's narrative in which he relates a tale concerning the fettish Mambo Jambo. The tale "was so confusing to [Park's] European audience that the corrupted term came to represent religious or ritual confusion generally."

11. Makutu is likely related to Bantu forms (e.g. Yao makuti `plaited or thatched leaves' (Baker 1993:129) or Kikongo nkuta plaited basket, singular (p.c. Baker 24/11/96)). Quaet < Dutch kwaad , 'angry,' leeluk `bad, wicked or unpleasant' < Dutch leelijk `bad', fraj `good' > Dutch fraai `lively' , gaw `quick' > Dutch gauw 'quick.' Following the 20th century texts, we would gloss kwat as `angry' and leluk as`evil, bad.'

12. Pat-pat is a reduplicated form of Port. pato `duck' possibly a retention from the West African Coast.

13. An anonymous reviewer of this translation suggests that the hyphen should be interpreted as indicating lexicalized forms. This may not be the case since, in Pontoppidan's 1887 Danish text he writes pik pik `collect, gather,'and gaw gaw `very quick' We would caution readers that the last speaker consistently used frufru 'morning' and wawa `truth.'

14. This appears in de Jong as susu `gratis.'

15. Though this has nothing to do with whether a language is isolating or agglutinating, or whether tense is clause or discourse dependent, the valuation of subtlety and indirectness over explicitness, and directness is attributed to African sources. (Morgan 1993.)

16. Also `her.’

17. Other sources give (h)am or (h)an for third singular, jini for second plural and various forms of sender for third plural.

18. Schuchardt suggests the "o" in flegon may be a typographical error; however, individual variation is such that this is not necessarily so although the etymon does appear to be Zeelandish vleke.

19. Schuchardt accepts Pontoppidan's meaning for this proverb, but rejects Pontoppidan's grammatical translation of the tensed verb, ha breek. Schuchardt suggests a better translation is a "stative passive" `is broken.' As our translation indicates; ha bree(k) is past.

20. There is no object pronoun in the second clause; however, it is not possible to eliminate it in German.

21. Alternatively, based on the language of the 20th century texts, sa mi tai swa fo (am) dra. This basilectal version contains both the adjectival copula and vowel final morphological alternates.

21a. An alternative version is "Fly know what he get out of molasses."

22. Pontoppidan uses a pidginized German to translate this: "Berg kann sich nicht mit Berg begegnen...."

23. Pontoppidan uses fressen which describes animals, not people, eating. He also apparently confuses wollen `to want to' with werden `future tense.' In Negerhollands these are separate sal `future' vs. maõke `want, desire.'

24. Pontoppidan may not have translated this entirely accurately. The proverb means things are not always as they appear.

25. Compare with dative Herodias. Inflectional case marking does not exist in Negerhollands.

26. This is Dutch; Negerhollands would use na fort or na plimbo.

27. Here a non-Germanic stem (i.e. Negerhollands makutu 'basket' is inflected with a Germanic plural suffix (i.e. {-en}).

28. In the basilect this would be man sondu frou en kin.

29.We have added full translations to Pontoppidan's intermittent glosses.

30. Pontoppidan identifies this as deriving from English rather. The combination of the low vowel and the word final /u/ is puzzling. Typically word final, unstressed Dutch er --> u while word final, unstressed English er --> a as it does in the English lexicon creoles. However, de Jong gives only dMr and redM from Dutch eerder `rather.

31. The syntax is pidgin-like here: cf sa gau ha en/ši caluf.

32. Bateta-tow (Lit. potato rope) `vine'.

Works Cited

Baker, Peter. 1993. Assessing the African Contiributions to French Based Creoles. In Africanisms in Afro-American Language Varieties. (ed by Salikoko Mufwene with Nancy Condon). Athens: University of Georgia Press.

Valls, Lito. (1981). What a Pistarkle! A Dictionary of Virgin Islands English Creole. St. John, U.S.V.I.