Book review: Arends, J. Language and Slavery: A social and linguistic history of the Suriname creoles.

This book has been in the making for a long time: Jacques Arends spent two decades researching it and after his untimely death in 2005, it took another decade to appear. The wait was not in vain though as the final product goes well beyond Arends’ previous work, shedding new light on Suriname’s early period and sociolinguistic matters. Although aspects of the volume are by now inevitably somewhat dated, it still constitutes the most comprehensive historical treatise on the emergence and early development of the Suriname creoles, and significantly enhances current knowledge on creole genesis.