Berbice Dutch, a Dutch creole language spoken in Guyana’s ancient county, has been declared officially extinct, according to an article in this month’s issue of the Dutch edition of National Geographic.

A report on the Radio Netherlands Worldwide website said 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.

The report stated that 20 years ago there were still handfuls of Berbice Dutch speakers in Guyana. However, it noted, since it has been discovered that the last speaker died in 2005, the authoritative international language database Ethnologue has declared Berbice Dutch extinct.