IETS OVER DE TAAL EN DE SPROOKJES VAN SURINAME

Father Donicie is a missionary in Dutch Guiana. The following is a brief digest of his article. The so-called Negro-English is made up of African elements as well as English and Dutch, with a few vestiges of Portuguese and French. The Surinamese language hardly has any written literature. Many of the traditional stories which are handed down orally have been transcribed by Moravian and Dutch missionaries and by a few research workers. An analysis of the language of Suriname can thus best be made by looking for its structure in the old folk-tales, although the transcriptions otfer difficulties as to the phonestic systems used. The author bases his analysis on a number of tales collected by Fafher Ahlbrinck in 1912. From these and other collections (van Cappelle, Herskovits), he shows that about half of the tales are concerned with Anansi, the spider. The influence of European fairy tales on Surinamese folklore has hardly been studied as yet. Anansi certainly originates in Africa and may be considered as one of the gods of death and of fertility (sun-symbol). Father Donicie states that the custom of telling tales as bed-time stories is disappearing, but that on the eve of a burial anansi-stories are still widely in use (dede-hoso: dead house) and also amongst the balatableeders in the bush. He quotes a lively description by Campagne of the way in which stories are told in the evening, not only about the spider, but adaptations of the Arabian Nights, and riddles and special interrupting songs as well. In order to give the reader a feeling of the simple atmosphere of the tales Father Donicie explains some of the linguistic rules, the sound system and the syntax. Western European language categories are not applicable to Surinamese, but the author has to use them for the sake of European trained readers. He then proceeds to give a full text and a dutch translation of The Goose and the'Girl and The Spider, the Dog and the Piece of Liver.