Editing Jersey Dutch language (section)

==Varieties==

By the mid-eighteenth century, according to one estimate, up to 20% of the population of the areas of New Jersey with "a strong Dutch element" were enslaved people.<ref>{{Cite book |last=White |first=Shane |title=Somewhat More Independent: The End of Slavery in New York City, 1770–1810 |publisher=University of Georgia Press |year=1991 |location=Athens |pages=18–20}}</ref> Blacks who grew up in insular Dutch communities were raised speaking the Dutch language, or adopted it later in life, to speak both with their white Dutch-descendant counterparts and with each other.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last=Dewulf |first=Jeroen |date=2015-05-01 |title="A Strong Barbaric Accent": America's Dutch-Speaking Black Community from Seventeenth-Century New Netherland to Nineteenth-Century New York and New Jersey |url=https://read.dukeupress.edu/american-speech/article/90/2/131/55451/A-STRONG-BARBARIC-Accent-America-s-Dutch-Speaking |journal=American Speech |language=en |volume=90 |issue=2 |pages=131–153 |doi=10.1215/00031283-3130302 |issn=0003-1283|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Some blacks during this period spoke Dutch as their primary or only language, and for some knowing the language was a point of pride:<ref name=":0" /><blockquote>"They were Dutch and proud of it. I can remember my Aunt Sebania telling me about her great-grandmother, a stern old lady who both spoke and understood English, but who refused to speak it except in the privacy of her home. In public she spoke Dutch, as any proper person should do, a dignified language."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Irvis |first=K. Leroy |date=1955 |title=Negro Tales from Eastern New York |journal=New York Folklore Quarterly |volume=11 |issue=3 |pages=165–176}}</ref></blockquote>Some contemporary reports from white speakers of Jersey Dutch reported a distinct [[ethnolect|variety]] of the language unique to the black population, which they called {{lang|nl-US|Negerduits}}<ref name="nicolinevandersijs" /> ("Negro Dutch", not to be confused with the [[Dutch-based creole languages|Dutch creole]] {{lang|dcr|[[Negerhollands]]}}). This term was used both for the speech of the [[Ramapough Mountain Indians|Ramapough]] (a distinct community of black, white, and [[Lenape]] descent), and of other blacks in [[Bergen County, New Jersey|Bergen County]]. 

However, as attestation of Jersey Dutch from black and Ramapough speakers is scarce, scholars disagree whether ''Negerduits'' can be considered a distinct variety.<ref name=":0" /> Sojourner Truth's Dutch, for example, was described by her owner's daughter around 1810 as "very similar to that of the unlettered white people of her time."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Hendricks |first=H. |date=1892 |title=Sojourner Truth |journal=The National Magazine: A Monthly Journal of American History |volume=16 |issue=6 |pages=665–71}}</ref> The only contemporaneous linguistic treatment of Jersey Dutch draws primarily on the speech of three white Jersey Dutch speakers and one Ramapough speaker, and notes phonetic, syntactic, and lexical differences between the two groups.<ref name="Prince Notes" />