Berbice

Berbice Dutch, a Dutch creole spoken in part of Guyana, has been declared officially extinct, according to an article in the March issue of the Dutch edition of National Geographic.

Berbice Dutch was spoken in plantations along the River Berbice, part of Guyana which was once a private colony founded by a Dutch planter from Zeeland. It is a mixture of the Zeeland dialect of Dutch, the local Arawak Indian language and Ijo, spoken by slaves from Nigeria.

Twenty years ago there were still handfuls of Berbice speakers in Guyana but, since it has been discovered that the last speaker died in 2005, the authoritative international language database Ethnologue has declared Berbice Dutch extinct.