Nederlands in Amerika. Vragen rond het Leeg Duits (‘Low Dutch’)

At the end of the 19th century it became clear that in the eastern part of the USA a variety of the Dutch language was still in use. This so-called ‘Low Dutch’or ‘Leeg Duits’, now extinct, was used by small groups of speakers in rural areas. For a considerable time ‘Leeg Duits’ functioned as a spoken language for informal purposes only. Consequently, texts containing samples of 18th and 19th-century ‘Leeg Duits’ are rather scarce. In this paper some texts are discussed that may contain authentic data of this language variety.