Jersey Dutch () (Low Dutch), also known as Bergen Dutch, was a Dutch dialect formerly spoken in northeastern New Jersey from the late 17th century until the early 20th century. It evolved in one of the two Dutch-speaking enclaves that remained for over two centuries after the dissolution of Dutch control in North America, the other (around Albany, New York) giving rise to Mohawk Dutch. It may have been a partial creole language based on Zeelandic and West Flemish Dutch dialects with English and possibly some elements of Lenape.

Jersey Dutch was spoken by the descendants of New Netherlanders who settled in Bergen, New Netherland, in 1630, and by Black slaves and free people of color also residing in that region, including the ancestors of the state-recognized Ramapough Mountain Indians.

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. Black people 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. Some Blacks during this period spoke Dutch as their primary or only language, and for some knowing the language was a point of pride:</blockquote>Some contemporary reports from white speakers of Jersey Dutch reported a distinct variety of the language unique to the black population, which they called 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. The following chart is based on the speech of two white Jersey Dutch speakers recorded in 1910 and 1941 respectively. Parentheses "indicate that the vowel is attested in few forms."

{| class="wikitable"

|+Jersey Dutch vowel phonemes

! rowspan="3" |

! colspan="4" |Front

! rowspan="3" |Central

! colspan="2" rowspan="2" |Back

|-

! colspan="2" |unrounded

! colspan="2" |rounded

|-

!short

!long

!short

!long

!short

!long

|-

!Close

|()

|

|

|

|

|()

|

|-

!Close-mid

|

|

|

|

|

|

|

|-

!Open-mid

|

|

|

|

|()

|

|

|-

!Open

|

|

| colspan="2" |

|

|

|

|-

!Diphthongs

| colspan="7" | () ()

|}

Consonants

Jersey Dutch consonants are largely the same as those of Standard Dutch, with a few exceptions.