Namibian Black German
Namibian Kiche Duits
Kiche Duits
Native toNamibia
EthnicityBlack Namibians, generally Herero and Nama
Native speakers
None, possibly with some minor transmission to youth
German-based creole
Language codes
ISO 639-3None (mis)
GlottologNone

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")

References

  1. ↑ Deumert, Ama (2003). Markedness and salience in language contact and second-language acquisition: evidence from a non-canonical contact language. Language Sciences. Vol. 25. Elsevier Ltd. pp. 561–613. doi:10.1016/S0388-0001(03)00033-0.
  2. ↑ Maitz, Péter; Volker, Craig Alan (2017-12-04). "Documenting Unserdeutsch". Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages. 32 (2): 365–397. doi:10.1075/jpcl.32.2.06mai. ISSN 0920-9034.
  3. ↑ Deumert, Ana (2018-11-09). "Settler colonialism speaks". Language Ecology. 2 (1–2): 91–111. doi:10.1075/le.18006.deu. ISSN 2452-1949. S2CID 135407958.
  4. ↑ Maitz, Péter; Németh, Attila (March 2014). "Language Contact and Morphosyntactic Complexity: Evidence from German". Journal of Germanic Linguistics. 26 (1): 1–29. doi:10.1017/S1470542713000184. ISSN 1470-5427. S2CID 44022622.
  5. ↑ Shah, Sheena (2007). "German in a contact situation: The case of Namibian German". EDUSA. 2 (2): 20–44.

Further reading


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