Dutch Language language: An encyclopaedia entry

DUTCH Status and functions. Dutch is spoken by some 21 ml. native speakers and some 2 ml. secondary speakers (estimate 2013, 5 million speakers of Afrikaans not included). It is one of the official languages of Netherlands and Belgium. (The others are Frisian, resp. French and German in Belgium). It is also the official language of Suriname in South America and the first language of about the half of the population, as well as one of official languages of the three Caribbean island nations under the Dutch Royal Crown (Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten) and Dutch Caribbean island municipalities with special status: Bonaire, Saba and Sint Eustatius – alongside with coofficial languages Papiamento and English). It was also widely used in the former Dutch colony of Indonesia prior to 1948 and exercised significant influence on the modern vocabulary of Bahasa Indonesia. Language name. The language name is Nederlands [ne:dərlants] , derived from the country name Nederland [neder = “low, beneath, down” + land]. The dominant part of the country is Holland – nowadays split in two provinces: North Holland and South Holland – whose name is often being used as a synonym for Netherlands. Sometimes it is also called Hollands or Flemish (Vlaams [vla:ms] ), which is a colloquial term for the same language in the Dutch speaking area of Belgium. However, the official term in Belgium is also Nederlands. Flanders is however only a part of Flemish speaking countries - beside East and West Flanders, Dutch is spoken also in Belgian provinces of Brabant and Limburg (not to confuse with Netherlands provinces with same names!), Brussels and Northern Wallonia. In the past the language was also known as Diets, Duits, Nederduits (until beginning of the 20th ct.), meaning (Low) German, where also the English name “Dutch” comes from (compare Deutsch for /proper/ German). In French the name is néerlandais or hollandaise, in German holländisch or niederländisch, as in many other languages that confuse the terms Holland, (the) Netherlands and Low Countries (Northern Belgium and Netherlands taken together). Croatian, Czech, Slovak, Slovene and Polish use nizozemski or other translations for “Low Countries language”, while Serbian has only “holandski” – like many other languages. In French the country name is Pays Bas, the people are les hollandais en the language is néerlandais. Technically speaking Hollandic (Hollands) and Flemish should refer only to the dialects of the provinces concerned, but very often they function as synonyms for (Standard) Dutch. Genetic affinity. Dutch is an Indo-European language spoken alongside the Eastern shores of the North Sea and belongs to the Istvaeonic or (Low) Franconian branch of West Germanic languages. It is most closely related, on one side, to the Ingvaeonic languages (Low Saxon/Low German, Frisian languages, English and Scots) and – on the other side – to Erminonic languages (High German, Yiddish, Luxemburgish), with which it forms a linguistic continuum with various transitional dialects. By many measures Dutch takes an intermediate position precisely between English and German. Dutch dialects – Franks and Saxons. Technically speaking only Franconian (Istvaeonic) idioms should be considered as Dutch dialects, for Ingvaeonic ones belong to the Low Saxon and Erminonic to Central German. That is why the commonly used term in Dutch is “regional languages” (streektalen). But there are very good reasons to classify these idioms together with other Dutch dialects. Alongside the border between Germany, Belgium and Netherlands there are no clear-cut linguistic lines. Nowadays the Low Saxon dialects differ among themselves also due to the influence of dominant national standard languages, Dutch or German. The most important Low Franconian dialects are Hollandic and Brabantish. The Zealandic dialect in Netherlands forms a dialectal continuum with West Flemish in Belgium and France. East Flemish is a set of transitional idioms between West Flemish towards Brabantish. Limburgian is spoken in Eastern Belgium and Netherlands province of Limburg, where it enjoys the status of regional language (but not in Belgium where majority of its speakers lives!). Limburgian is a complex collection of vernaculars which can be classified in various ways, some of them also as dialects of (Central) German. To the North it shares many features with Brabantish and Gelric vernaculars but on its South Eastern flank it slowly glides towards the Erminonic group (German). Low Saxon – A language between languages. The Eastern and Northern part of Netherlands are homeland to a sequence of varieties of Low Saxon language which forms the western extension of the Ingvaeonic linguistic continuum with the so called Low German (Plattdüütsch, Nedderdüütsch or Niederdeutsch; in Dutch: Nedersaksisch). In Netherlands it has the status of regional language, but is less widely used and less popular than the local vernaculars in Netherland’s Limburg. (This status was denied to Zealandic, mostly for financial reasons). It is highly influenced by Standard Dutch and Hollandic, as well as that same language in Germany is influenced by High German and Standard German, but in the past, it was a very influential contact language of North-Western Europe (as the language of the Hanseatic Union. Sic transit gloria linguarum!) There are also some transitional mixed dialects like Stellingwerfs, which forms a bridge between Nedersaksisch and Frisian language. Urban vernaculars. There are also many urban dialects (Rotterdam, The Hague, Amsterdam, Antwerpen, Gent, Brussels etc.). Some of these urban idioms enjoy prestige nation-wide, like Haags or Antwerps. These dialects are often mutually unintelligible, which makes Standard Dutch a real necessity. Dialects in Belgium and Netherlands are still very much alive, although steadily in retreat, as elsewhere. Mixed languages. The so called Stadsfries is the spoken language of some major cities in the province of Fryslân. However, according to most scholars, Stadsfries in not a Frisian but essentially a North Hollandic dialect spoken by Frisians – a kind of mixed language, a Hollandic dialect developed on a Frisian basis. De dialect of Bilt in North Fryslân or that of some Frisian islands are combinations of same ingredients but the other way round: it is a Frisian spoken by Hollanders, which gave birth to other kinds of a mixed languages. Dutch based creoles: The offsprings. Several creole languages sprung from Dutch like the Ceylon Dutch Creole (Sri Lanka); Berbice Dutch and Skepi in British Guyana and Negerhollands (Virgin Islands, the Caribbean). In North America Mohawk Dutch was spoken by a mixed Iroquois and Dutch population and Jersey Dutch was the vernacular of African slaves in New Jersey, based on Zealandic dialect, as same as Berbice, Skepi and Negerhollands. Petjo and Javindo are Dutch based creoles raised in contact between Dutch and Javanese and Betawi languages. Of these, only Ceylon Dutch and Petjo are possibly still spoken by a handful of speakers, although there are still reports of small communities of speakers of creolized forms of Dutch in e.g. Guinea, Brazil and Siberia (menonites). The last speaker of Berbice Dutch died in 2010. Afrikaans – a sister language. The only still massively spoken Dutch based creole is Afrikaans, one of eleven official languages of South African Republic. It is also one of very few creoles that became literary language and advanced to the status of standard and literary language. Afrikaans is in fact only slightly creolized, a kind of semi-creole. It counts some 5 ml. native speakers and several ml. secondary users in South Africa and Namibia, and perhaps some users in Botswana, Zimbabwe and recently in significant emigrant communities in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere. Afrikaans and Dutch are to a large extent mutually intelligible but clearly distinct languages. Dutch abroad. There are large Dutch linguistic communities in diaspora in Australia, Canada, USA, New Zealand and elsewhere (about 0,5 ml. speakers). It is also the first or second language of many immigrants in the Netherlands and Belgium, like Arabs, Turks, Kurds and many others. E.g. in the city of Rotterdam there are about 200 different languages spoken but the Dutch serves as the lingua franca for all. As minority language Dutch is spoken in France (the environs of Dunkerque) and in Germany (Kleve), although in both regions it might disappear soon. The speakers of this South Gelric dialect in and around Kleve however do not possess Dutch ethnical conscience and can not be considered an ethnic minority. They are Dutch speaking Germans. There are no Dutch ethnical or linguistic minorities across the frontiers in the neighboring countries and no German of Flemish minorities in the Netherlands. When people change the country they integrate almost immediately. Standard Dutch. The standard language has its roots in 16th ct. and literary tradition which was laid down in the Flemish countries and Southern Brabant (now Belgium) and later brought to the northern parts of the language territory by protestant refuges settled in Holland, where it further developed into a rich language with a significant Hollandic features. At the same time, it was suppressed in the South governed by the Habsburgs and French (and Germans in Limburg). The Flemish usually say that they lent their language to the Dutch to keep it alive, in order to reclaim it back later. Standard variants. Dutch is a pluricentric language, with special developments in various territories. The southern variant of Dutch (Belgium, Flemish Dutch, Vlaams Nederlands) is based upon Brabantian standard pronunciation - the so-called Standard Flemish – and a Northern one (Netherlands), upon the pronunciation habits of the West Netherlands (mostly Holland), but actually it can not be localized. A popularly widespread accent of the West is called Polder Dutch (Poldernederlands), which in fact does not correspond to the norm but is commonly accepted, not only in informal communication but even on television, so that it can be considerd as spoken standard (it is in this sense similar to Estuary English in Great Britain). In Belgium the language norm is been more rigorously observed in formal communication and media, but in everyday life the local vernacular is the commonest. There is also a mid-way idiom (tussentaal), so called Verkavelingsvlaams or Schoon Vlaams, used for less formal purposes, lying somewhere between the formal norm and dialect. The third variety is Surinamese Dutch (Surinaams Nederlands), with various special features, especially in pronunciation and lexicon. It tends to be more conservative tha European Dutch in many aspects and is marked by influence from local languages like Sranan, Sarnami, Saramakan a.o. The Northern variant (Netherlands, Hollands Dutch, Dutch Dutch) is the dominant and leading for the others, which tend to converge to it in a lesser or higher degree. The Antillean variant is also a variant of its own, marked by influences from Papiamento, Spanish and English, but leans strongly to the language habits of the Netherlands. Dutch is thus a language with many faces and various sources of enrichment. Language planning. Spelling. The language planning and linguistic policy are being coordinated by Dutch Language Union (Nederlandse Taalunie), a common – and sometimes controversial – intergovernmental body for Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname. The main result of their activity is the common spelling, popularly known as The Green Booklet (Het Groene Boekje). The funny thing is that it has not been commonly accepted, at least not in Netherlands, where an alternative spelling (“The White Spelling” from The White Booklet (Het Witte Boekje) was developed in 2005 by a language lovers association Onze Taal. This popular alternative spelling immediately had a wide support of public media and influential language users. The differences between the two spellings are however not dramatic. DUTCH ALPHABET A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X (IJ) Y Z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x (ij) y z Alphabet. For the above mentioned reasons, it is not easy to determine how many letters there are in the Dutch alphabet. In the most important spelling manuals, there is not even a list of letters! In fact, it is not even codified. The commonest is the list with 26 letters, however q, x and y are used only in borrowings, and they are the letters with least frequency of use (see figure bellow). There is also a controversy whether digraph “IJ, ij” (like in IJsland - Iceland) is separate letter or not. Many argue that it deserves status of a letter, but than there are also digraphs like ch, ei, ie etc. which represent a single sound but are not considered letters but merely a combination of it. Dutch also uses a broad set of diacritics, about 15 of them (see figure bellow), which are also not considered independent letters. Some of these diacritics have various functions, which make the writing in Dutch even more complicated. A good speller in Dutch has to posses also a good command of English, as for many words there are no alternatives to the borrowings (baby, privacy e.s.). One of peculiarities of the Dutch spelling is the letter combination “ ‘s- “— ‘s-Gravenhage, ‘s-Hertogenbosch – to be found only in Dutch. Figure: Frequency of letters in Dutch words (without proper names) Sounds of Dutch. Dutch has about 40 sounds (phonemes): 24 consonants and 16 vowels, including 4 diphtongs. However these numbers should be taken with a certain reserve, especially when it goes for vowels, for some additional vowels can occur in foreign words. The Dutch long vowels tend to be pronounced as double sounds (diphtongs): ee like [e:i,] oo like [o:u] e.s. – at least in the North West. The distinction between long and short vowels is very important. Also, about the consonants it is controversial whether Dutch has affricate sounds or not. If yes, one should add some 5 or 6 consonants to the sound inventory. Some dialects are tonal (e.g. in Weert, Limburg) which makes the vocalic picture of Dutch even more complex. The Guiness book of records actually lists Weerts and the world’s language system with the largest set of vowels. It is not possible to say with absolute precision how many sounds/phonemes Dutch language in fact has. It goes even for the standard language for the pronunciation norm was never exactly established. But in certain degree it goes for all languages, considering that the language norm is a matter of choice and decision. One of the most difficult sounds for non-native speakers is the pronunciation of the diphtong ui [œy] (ui = “onion”) and the distinction between the “f-sound” and “v-sound” (the latter being characteristic for Dutch (the problem is that the primary cue for these differences for many speakers is not vocal fold vibration, but relative length) and various “h-sounds” (g,ch [ɣ], [x] and h – chaos, lach, hoog). Even native speakers to the North of Brabant do not make the distinction between [f] and [v], like they do not distinguish between [s] and [z]. These are also the points where the standard pronunciation differs between the Standard (Northern) Dutch and Standard Flemish, where most distinctions are clearly conserved. The shortest word of Dutch arguably is ‘u’ = “you” (formal address form), but there are some other one-sylabic single vowel words, especially various names of rivers and creeks: like: Aa, Ae, E, Ee, Ie, or IJ: all these words contain one sound, sometimes long or diphtongised. The longest word in a dictionary or text is probably the psychiatric term “multiple personality disorders’ = meervoudigepersoonlijkheidsstoornis – 35 letters long. Another word of 38 letters has been found in a corpus: ontwikkelingssamenwerkingsorganisaties – “collaborating developments organizations” (38 letters). Puzzlers and “extremlylongwordlovers” make even longer compound words. One of the loveliest is perhaps the word hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliofobie - “the phobia of long words.” Most of the thirty-letters-or-more-words are quite regularly formed according to the rules of typical Germanic morphology (which is so absent in English!) and is as a normal daily used word. Even in an agglutinative language as Esperanto the longest words are about 12 letters at most. Despite that the average word length in Dutch is 5.51 letters. Compare it to the fact that an average word length on Twitter in English lies at about 4 letters. However, one should notice that there are different methods of calculation with different results. E.g. a measurement of word length in the text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights resulted an average of 5.51 for Dutch, 5.10 for English, 5.13 for French 6.26 for German. Structure of Dutch. Grammar. These examples tell us something about one of the characteristic features of Dutch morphology, e.i. its inclination to form complex compound words. Otherwise is Dutch a rather simple language with quite poor morphology: more like English, less than German, and quite unlike the Slavic and Baltic languages, Latin or Greek. Only the verbs show typically Germanic complexity in inflection, especially the strong and irregular verbs, which are abundant and frequent in daily usage. There are only two genders: male/female (common gender) and neutral, marked by definitive articles de and het respectively. In plural there is only de. The de-words are accompanied by a simple inflection when undefined, adding an –e to the adjectives (grote man / groot huis). The plural is usually formed by adding -en to the root (vrouw-en, kinder-en / “women, children) or less often -s (kamers - “rooms”), which is the general plural ending in Afrikaans and some dialects. The case inflection is still conserved by personal pronouns (i.e. in dative and accusative case used for direct and indirect object). There is also a set of shorter and longer personal inflected pronouns: ik, me, mij – jij, je, jou – hij, hem, ie – zij, ze, haar – wij, we, ons (I, me, mine – you – he, him – she, her – we, us) depending whether they are used for emphasis or not. The verbal system is based on opposition between present/past and perfective/imperfective tenses. There is no morphological future or conditional tenses, and subjunctive is as good as extinct. After the complex verbs have been mastered the greatest deal of the grammar is in fact sentence making, the syntax. Word order. Syntax. Word order is SVO (Subject-Word-Object) in main clauses and SOV in subordinate clauses. It is rather strict but a bit less severely than in English. Typologically Dutch is a fusional (inflective) language with more analytic than synthetic features in morphology and syntax: the nominal case system is as good as gone and there are merely vestiges of declension in some fixed espressions (vrouw des huizes – “lady of the house” (with a genitive on the determiner and the noun), the relationships between notions are expressed by prepositions and word order (like in English). Lexicon. Dutch lexicon is mostly Germanic but with large intrusions from Latin, German, French, and English – more or less in that order in time and amount of borrowings. The influence of English in modern times is of such extent that the great majority of speakers know English to some degree, and it is even impossible to understand and write Dutch correctly without good knowledge of English, due to many borrowings which retain the English spelling. Some universities and many secondary schools teach in English. However, the nicest part of the Dutch expressional richness lies not in the words but in many effective and picturesque sayings, metaphors and idioms that give a kind of visual dimension to this language. It is called “beeldspraak” (picture talk) and is considered as high style in any kind of narration. These expressions are mostly untranslatable to other languages. Language development. The position of Dutch is healthy and stable, terminological development is tremendous and literature in Dutch is blooming. One of the most massive civil organizations is Onze Taal, a club of Dutch language lovers with members all over the language territory (albeit with a strong concentration in the Netherlands). This organization is also very influential, especially in the Netherlands, in spite of its informal non-governmental character. The Duch are very fond of choosing the nicest word of the language, dialect, city or the word of the year, the nicest place name etc. One of the often-quoted champions is the word desalniettemin (nevertheless), and the nicest place name Doodstil (Deadly silent). Famous language users. Erasmus of Rotterdam - philosopher, Baruch de Spinoza - philosopher, Christiaen Huygens - scientist, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek – scientist, Henrik van Veldeke – medieval Dutch and German poet, Dick Bruna - author of Miffy, Sylvia Kristel (actrice, Emmanuela), Jeroen Krabbé – actor, Rutger Hauer – actor, Rudi Carrell – TV-personality, Linda de Mol – TV-personality, André Rieu -musician and performer. Other famous speakers of Dutch were Mata Hari, Johan Cruyff, André Kuipers, Piet Mondriaan, Vincent van Gogh, Rembrandt, Rubens, writers Harry Mulisch, E.F.E. Douwes Dekker (Multatuli), Hugo Claus, and – let’s not forget her - Anne Frank, the most translated and the most unfortunate Dutch writer ever. 5 words: Yes, no, man, thanks, language : ja, nee, man, dank (u), taal.