A regional history of Dutch

CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Kölner UniversitätsPublikationsServer II. The major dialect regions o Dutch: linguistic structure, spectrum o variation and dynamics 5. A regional history o Dutch 1. Present and past boundaries of the Dutch language area 2. Ancestors: People and languages in the Low Countries before the Old Dutch period (i.e. before c. 700) 3. The period of Old Dutch (c. 700⫺1150) and its delineation to related Old West Germanic languages 4. The Low Countries during the Middle Ages ⫺ Middle Dutch (c. 1150⫺1500) 5. The Modern Era: Linguistic, political and cultural evolution in the North (1500 until now) 6. The Modern Era: Language history in the South, in its political and social context 7. References 1. Present and past boundaries o the Dutch language area The Dutch language area, the area in Europe in which Dutch is the official standard language, nowadays extends over two countries: the Netherlands and the northern part of Belgium (Flanders). In the north and the west it is bordered by the natural border of the North Sea. In the east and in the south, the Dutch language area has political boundaries. In the east it is bordered by the national border with Germany, which was officially demarcated in 1815. In the south it is bordered by the Dutch-French language boundary, which runs through the middle of Belgium and was finally fixed by law in 1962⫺1963. The language boundary constitutes the political boundary between the present Flemish and Walloon regions in Belgium. Dutch is, in addition, an important language in Surinam and the Netherlands Antilles (cf. De Kleine, ch. 44 in this volume). In the past, however, the territory in which the different dialects of Dutch were written and spoken was larger than today. It enclosed not only the present-day Dutch dialect areas, but also the French Westhoek, which nowadays belongs to France, and the Lower Rhine region, nowadays a part of Germany. On the other hand, it did not include the Frisian area, where Frisian dialects were spoken. This article will provide an overview of the geographical, sociocultural and political circumstances under which the Dutch standard language and its varieties arose and developed in the course of history. Moreover, attention will be paid to the historical relation of the dialects of Dutch to Old High German, Old Saxon and Old Frisian. In this contribution we will discuss some of the most important developments in the external history of the Dutch language and its main varieties in chronological order. Each section ends with a brief list of references to what we consider as key readings. Brought to you by | Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln Authenticated Download Date | 3/18/20 5:34 PM 82 II. The major dialect regions of Dutch 2. Ancestors: People and languages in the Low Countries beore the Old Dutch period (i.e. beore c. 700) As Dutch is a Germanic language, we start its history in the period of the arrival of Germanic peoples in the Low Countries. Around 500 BC groups of Germanic farmers migrated from northern Germany south-westwards to the north of the Netherlands. The local population mixed with the Germanic newcomers and took over their language. Around 200 BC the Germans reached the south of the Low Countries, where they encountered the Celts, a people that in the centuries before had spread over present-day France, the south of Belgium as well as the British Isles. In northern Gaul, the Celts and the Germans lived side by side and to a certain extent also intermixed. As the Celts had a higher level of civilization, the early language contact resulted in the borrowing of a number of Celtic elements by the Germans, possibly by way of Vulgar Latin. Relicts of Celtic words in Dutch are e.g. ijzer < Celt. *isarno ‘iron’, ambacht < Celt. *ambaktos ‘trade’, rijk < Celt. *rigjon ‘realm’ (Maier 2003: 53, 23, 100). A number of place names of Celtic origin also show the Celtic influence in the southern part of the present-day Dutch language area, e.g. Nijmegen (< Celt. novio ‘new’ and Celt. magos ‘market’), which was named by the Romans according to the Celtic name pattern (Gysseling 1960: 742). In 58 BC the Roman political and military leader Julius Caesar started the conquest of Gaul, which at this point in time was a territory with a partly German-speaking, a partly Celtic-speaking and a partly linguistically mixed population. Caesar conquered Gaul up to the Rhine river in the Netherlands. The area above the Rhine would maintain its independence. This so-called ‘free Germania’ was mainly inhabited by the Frisians and a small number of other Germanic peoples. The Roman occupation lasted for more than four centuries (until 406) and had thorough consequences for the local population, its civilization and its language. The Celts in Gaul were profoundly romanised: they even gave up their own language in favor of Vulgar Latin. The Germans, on the other hand, kept their Germanic dialects, but the German vocabulary was considerably expanded by the introduction of loanwords from Latin. In those times, words for objects that were clearly related to the Roman world were borrowed, e.g. wijn ‘wine’ (< vinum), straat ‘street’ (< via strata), kelder ‘cellar’ (< cellarium) (Van der Wal and Van Bree 2008: 171). From the third quarter of the third century onwards, the Roman Empire weakened at its borders due to the crumbling of the Roman central authority and the withdrawal of the Roman military forces. Germanic tribes who lived north of the Rhine invaded the Roman Empire: the Francs over land and the Ingvaeones over the sea. The Romans reacted by strengthening the Rhine border and by installing the Limes Nervicanus, a solid double line of defences along the Roman roads between Kortrijk and Tongeren and Bavay and Cologne, respectively. Nevertheless, repeated raids by the Francs across the Rhine at Cologne and Mainz led to the final collapse of the Roman Empire in northern Gaul in 406, after which the Germanic Migration Period began. The Francs advanced fast in the south. Around the year 500 they had almost completely conquered Gaul, which henceforth came to be called Francia. On the remnants of the former Roman Empire they founded a strong Frankish Realm, in which the Low Countries were included. Brought to you by | Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln Authenticated Download Date | 3/18/20 5:34 PM 5. A regional history of Dutch 83 Apart from the Francs, the Low Countries were at the time inhabited by various Ingvaeonic people on the coasts of Holland, Sealand and Flanders, by the (also Ingvaeonic) Frisians in the north and by the Saxons, who settled there in the sixth and seventh century, in the northeast. The Frankish Realm, which existed from the third until the tenth century AD, reached its greatest bloom and expansion under the Carolingean dynasty. The emperor Charlemagne (768⫺814) ruled over an empire that extended from Friesland in the north as far as the middle of Italy in the south and from the Pyrenees in the west to the Danube in the east. During the Carolingean sovereignty, the Frisians and the Saxons maintained their native dialects, but the Ingvaeonic dialects at the western coastal regions were profoundly influenced by Old Low Franconian, the dialect of the dominating Carolingeans, which around 700⫺800 was adopted by the inhabitants on the coast. Only a number of Ingvaeonisms in the present-day coastal dialects survive from the period in which these dialects were still entirely Ingvaeonic, e.g. the unrounded s-plural riks for Dutch ruggen ‘backs’. See Janssens and Marynissen 2008: 40⫺54, Van der Wal and Van Bree 2008: 48⫺60. 2.1. Emergence o the Germanic-Romance language boundary In the Frankish Realm, the civilizations of two different peoples, the autochthonous Gallo-Romance population and the Francs, the Germanic conquerors, ran into each other. As a result, a multilingual, multicultural society developed in the southern part of Flanders, central Belgium and northern France. However, within this society cultural shifts gradually occurred, related to the structure of the population and the cultural orientation of its elites. The emergence and the final fixation of the Germanic-Romance language boundary was a result of this development. Initially, three languages were used in the Frankish Realm: classical Latin was used in official documents such as charters, legal and ecclesiastical texts and Low Franconian and Gallo-Romance were used in everyday speech. The use of both vernaculars was geographically distributed: in the largest part of Gaul (present-day France and the south of Belgium), the Frankish conquerors gradually adopted Gallo-Romance Vulgar Latin, i.e. the Latin that was spoken by the local population, instead of their own Germanic mother tongue. Around the ninth or tenth century, Vulgar Latin had developed into Old French, which would later evolve into modern French. In the northernmost part of Gaul (present-day Flanders and the south of the Netherlands), however, Low Franconian remained the favoured vernacular of the Germanic inhabitants. Multilingualism developed into bilingualism and finally into monolingualism in the communities involved, which process lasted from the sixth until the ninth century, and as a result a linguistic boundary was formed between the Romance-speaking Gallo-Romans and the romanised Germans on the one hand, and the Germanic-speaking non-romanised Germans on the other hand. At the time of its formation, the language boundary more or less coincided with the former Limes Nervicanus: it ran from Etaples-Montreuil (nowadays in northern France) in the west to the tripoint around Aken-Vaals in the east. Later on, the language boundary continued to move northward, especially in the western part of this area, i.e. in French Flanders until northern Hainault. From the ninth until the twelfth century this movement to the north was due to the high economic and cultural prestige of the Romance-speaking Picardy. After the annexation of French Flanders by the French king Louis XIV in the seventeenth century, this region was gradually further frenchified. More Brought to you by | Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln Authenticated Download Date | 3/18/20 5:34 PM 84 II. The major dialect regions of Dutch to the east, in Brabant and Limburg, on the other hand, the linguistic boundary remained virtually unchanged. See Gysseling 1976, Van Durme 2002, Janssens and Marynissen 2008: 62⫺67. 3. The period o Old Dutch (c. 7001150) and its delineation to related Old West Germanic languages After the rule of the emperor Charlemagne, the Frankish Empire broke up into three parts by the Treaty of Verdun (843): East, Central and West Francia. The largest part of the Low Countries belonged to the Central Frankish Realm. Only Flanders stricto sensu was part of the Western Realm. The river Scheldt constituted the border between Central and West Francia. In 855, the Central Frankish Empire in turn was divided into three parts. The Low Countries, except for Flanders (which belonged to the western realm), belonged to the northern part, which in 925 was added to the Kingdom of Germany, the former East Francia. In this politically fragmentated territory, the first documents in Old Low Franconian were written, the dialects that were used by the Francs during the early Middle Ages in the Netherlands and the northern part of present-day Belgium. Only a few written testimonies dating from this era are preserved, as Latin was still the official written language at that time. Moreover, no texts at all have been preserved in Ingvaeonic, the dialect that was spoken by the inhabitants of the coastal areas. The old Ingvaeonic dialect had so strongly been influenced by Franconian that it had almost completely disappeared. Only a number of Ingvaeonisms that were adopted by the Frankish dialects could reach present-day SD, e.g. vijf ‘five’ (cf. chapter 6, by Van Bree, in this volume). Old Low Franconian has come down to us in an eastern and a western variety. The most important surviving text in Old East Low Franconian is a translation of Latin psalms, the so-called Wachtendonckse psalmen, written in the tenth century by a monk who lived in the region between Venlo and Krefeld. Old West Low Franconian is preserved in a number of place and personal names in Latin charters and other historical documents, e.g. place names ending on -heim/-hem ‘home’, -lo ‘small wood’, -beke ‘stream’ or -zele ‘small house’ as in 966 Berechaim (Berchem), 838 Uttarlo (Otterlo), 877 Thobacem (Tubeke/Tubize), 1133 Wenekensele (Winksele) (Gysseling 1960: 122, 777, 980, 1081). A number of glosses are also attested: words in the vernacular that were written in the margin or between the lines of Latin texts, e.g. durpilus < Dutch dorpel ‘threshold’ in the Lex Salica, the law of the Salian Francs, which was recorded in Latin. A larger text is the so-called Leidse Williram, a Dutch adaptation of around 1100 of a comment written on the Song of Songs by Williram, abbot of Ebersberg. The Dutch copier, who probably worked in the abbey of Egmond in North-Holland, adapted the language of the original East Low Franconian text to his own western Dutch dialect. The most famous piece of western Old Dutch is no doubt a short love verse that was written down at the end of the eleventh century by a West Flemish monk in the abbey of Rochester on a piece of parchment: hebban olla uogala nestas hagunnan hinase hic enda thu uuat unbidan uue nu ‘all birds have started to build a nest, except me and you, what are we waiting for now?’ For those colleagues who did not understand his West Flemish vernacular, the amorous copier added the Latin translation of the verse (for a Brought to you by | Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln Authenticated Download Date | 3/18/20 5:34 PM 5. A regional history of Dutch 85 discussion of this sentence see Van Oostrom 2006: 93⫺100, De Grauwe 2004). The language used in both western and eastern texts is called Old Dutch or Old Low Franconian. Since the eighth century the Low Franconian dialects, which included a limited number of Ingvaeonisms, underwent a number of linguistic changes, through which they were differentiated from the other continental Old West Germanic languages, Old High German, Old Saxon and Old Frisian. Old Dutch can be neatly contrasted with Old High German by means of the High German consonant shift, a phonological development that affected the dialects of central and southern Germany. The dialects of Dutch did not undergo this sound change, except for a part of Limburg, in which the stop k in Dutch ik, ook, -lijk ‘I’, ‘also’, ‘-ly’ and maken ‘to make’ changed into the fricative x, just like in High German ich, auch, -lich, machen. A map showing the course of the ik/ich-isogloss (the so-called Uerdinger Line) and the maken/machen-isogloss (the so-called Benrather Line) in Limburg is presented in Van Bree (1996: 235). The Old Saxon or Low German dialects, which were mainly used in northern Germany and the eastern part of the Netherlands, were also unaffected by the second Germanic consonant shift, which therefore led to a very important northsouth contrast within the West Germanic dialect continuum: the split between Low German and Dutch on the one hand, and High German on the other. The demarcation between Old Dutch and the Old Saxon dialects that were spoken in the eastern part of the Netherlands is much more unclear. From a geographical point of view, the river IJssel is the traditional border between the Saxon-speaking and the Franconian-speaking regions. Linguistically speaking, the use of one grammatical ending in the whole plural paradigm, the so called eenheidspluralis ‘unity plural’, is traditionally mentioned as the borderline, although this is a rather weak criterion. As a matter of fact, hardly any traces are left of an old contrast between Dutch and Low German in the northeastern Dutch dialects. The differences that are found rather rely on the distinction between western innovations and relics of eastern dialect features that had been autochthonous already for a long time. Not before the fifteenth century did eastern Gelderland, Overijssel, Drenthe and Groningen switch to a written language with mainly Dutch characteristics. Old Frisian, the precursor of modern Frisian, was spoken from the eighth until the sixteenth century on the continental North Sea coast. In the early Middle Ages, Frisia stretched from the area around Bruges to the river Weser in northern Germany. However, by 1300 the Frisian territory had been pushed back to the Zuyder Zee, the part of the North Sea east of Amsterdam which is largely surrounded by land and which, after a long dam had been built, was transformed into a lake, called IJsselmeer, in 1932. In the course of history, Frisian lost ever more territory to Dutch in the west and to Low German in the north and northeast. Being an Ingvaeonic language, Old Frisian had a number of linguistic features in common with Old English. See Van den Toorn et al. 1997: 23, 185⫺186, Janssens and Marynissen 2008: 49⫺56, Van der Sijs and Willemyns 2009: 150⫺157. 4. The Low Countries during the Middle Ages  Middle Dutch (c. 11501500) Around the year 1000, the Low Countries had disintegrated into a patchwork of small territories. Within this politically fragmentated area a number of feudal lords were able Brought to you by | Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln Authenticated Download Date | 3/18/20 5:34 PM 86 II. The major dialect regions of Dutch to establish their power in a greater region. They became seigniors, subordinated to the German King, except for the count of Flanders, who was a vassal of the French Crown. Important seigniorial domains that developed were, among others, the County of Flanders, the County of Holland and Sealand, the Duchy of Brabant, the Prince-Bishopric of Liège, the Duchy of Guelders and the Prince-Bishopric of Utrecht. In the second half of the fourteenth century, the Burgundian House took over power in the Netherlands. The new rulers initiated the political unification of the area. Between 1369 and 1443 the Dukes of Burgundy acquired almost half of the seigniorial domains in the Netherlands, mostly by means of favourable marriages and inheritances. Under the Burgundian governance, large parts of the Netherlands were united into one realm. In 1477 Mary, Duchess of Burgundy, was married to archduke Maximilian of Austria. As a result of this marriage the Burgundian Netherlands came under the rule of the Habsburg Dynasty. Their grandson, Charles the Fifth, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, completed the unification of the Netherlands. He acquired all remaining seigniorial domains, except for the Prince-Bishopric of Liège. In 1548 this complex became a separate entity within the Holy Roman Empire. It was called the Burgundian Circle or, more commonly, the Seventeen Provinces. The fairly long-standing political fragmentation was reflected linguistically. The term Middle Dutch refers to the different dialects that were written and spoken between 1150 and 1500 in the Netherlands, except for Old Frisian. Five main dialect groups, each with its own linguistic characteristics, are usually distinguished: Flemish-Zeelandic, Hollandic, Brabantian, Limburgian-Low Rhenish and the northeastern dialects. Thanks to the large number of medieval manuscripts that were written in the vernaculars and have been preserved, official documents as well as literary texts, the similarities and dissimilarities between the various Middle Dutch dialects could be investigated in detail. The oldest Middle Dutch literary texts emanate from the Meuse-Rhine-region. The most famous text is the legend of Saint Servatius, which was written about 1170 by the Limburger Hendrik van Veldeke, the first Middle Dutch poet we know by name. He lived and worked in the Low Rhenian culture area of the twelfth century, a transitional region between the Dutch and the German language area. His texts contain a number of High German features, which are still preserved in the present-day Limburgian dialects. Hendrik van Veldeke’s literary works are considered to mark the beginning of both Dutch and German poetry. The switch from Latin to the vernacular in the administration was first made in the County of Flanders, which in the twelfth and thirteenth century was the most mighty and thriving region in the Low Countries. The oldest known official document in Dutch that was not a translation, is a letter of the bench of eldermen of Bochoute, dating from 1249 (cf. Taeldeman and Van Durme 1999). By the third quarter of the thirteenth century, the civilians in important Flemish cities like Bruges, Gent and Ypres commonly made use of their vernacular for official documents, e.g. charters, while Latin maintained its functions as language of the church and of science. In the so-called Corpus Gysseling, all texts that were written in the vernacular before 1301, original texts as well as copies, are diplomatically edited. The first nine volumes contain more than 2000 official documents, the following six volumes contain all literary texts that have come down before the end of the thirteenth century (Gysseling 1977⫺ 1987). Literature also flourished in the County of Flanders in the thirteenth century. The satirical beast epic Reynard the Fox, written in East Flanders by a certain Willem, and Brought to you by | Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln Authenticated Download Date | 3/18/20 5:34 PM 5. A regional history of Dutch 87 the extensive scientific and historical works of the Flemish poet Jacob van Maerlant are highlights of Middle Dutch literature. The creation of a great number of literary texts, some of which were commissioned by noble rulers, reflects the economic and cultural prosperity of the southwestern part of the Low Countries in this period of time. The writing tradition that had developed in Flanders would serve as a model for the Middle Dutch literary and official language, also outside of the County. The language used by writers in the Duchy of Brabant was strongly influenced by the Flemish writing tradition, especially in the thirteenth and fourteenth century. Although in the Middle Ages Brabantish was linguistically more closely related to the Limburgian than to the Flemish or Hollandic dialects, many Brabantish medieval texts show both Flemish and Brabantish characteristics, as the language of the influential Flemish scriptoria was imitated. In the fourteenth and the fifteenth century, the economical and cultural hegemony shifted from Flanders to Brabant. The Brabantish cities of Louvain, Brussels, Mechlin and Antwerp became important centres of political, economic or cultural activity. From the fifteenth century onwards, an increasing number of Brabantish dialect features appeared into texts. The mystic Jan van Ruusbroec (1293⫺1381), who worked in a monastery near Brussels, especially contributed to the high prestige of Brabantian in the next centuries with his mystic tracts. The Hollandic medieval dialect was first known from official documents that originated in the chancellory of the counts of the House of Holland. A lot of charters, written by Hollandic clerks since the last quarter of the thirteenth century, stood the ravages of time. As an illustration of a literary text in the Hollandic vernacular we can mention the Rijmkroniek, a chronicle in rhyme on the countship of Holland, which was written about 1300 by Melis Stoke. The language of this historiographical text, at that time a new genre, was still influenced considerably by the Flemish writing tradition. Texts that originated one century later, however, e.g. Der minnen loep, a collection of stories and anecdotes about love that was written by Dirc Potter, already reveal more typically Hollandic dialect features. For a short time, a number of Hollandic texts manifested a certain influence of German, due to the presence of rulers of the House of Bavaria at the Dutch court from the second half of the fourteenth century until the early fifteenth century. Not until the fifteenth and sixteenth century did the language of the Hollandic manuscripts start to obtain a clearly Hollandic character. The designation ‘northeastern Middle Dutch’ refers to the language of the area north of Limburg and east of Utrecht, i.e. eastern Gelderland, Overijssel, Drenthe and Groningen. This language appeared in official documents in the second half of the fourteenth century and in spiritual, moralizing and didactic works from the circle of Geert Groote (1340⫺1384), the founding father of the Modern Devotion. As was mentioned above, the northeastern dialects initially belonged to the Low German language area. As Dutch influence only slowly trickled through in the local written language, a number of Low German characteristics occur in northeastern medieval texts. A mainly Dutch written language came into use in this region only in the fifteenth century. It should be clear that in the course of the Middle Ages the Dutch vernaculars were finally established as fully fledged written languages. Nevertheless, the role of two other languages, Latin and French, should be discussed briefly as well. Although Latin had lost its monopoly in the domain of administration, it continued to be used in the church, i.e. in the liturgy and the ecclesiastical organization and in science, as scientists communicated in Latin. The use of French was favoured by political and social factors. In the Brought to you by | Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln Authenticated Download Date | 3/18/20 5:34 PM 88 II. The major dialect regions of Dutch County of Flanders, which belonged to the French Crown, the aristocracy, the prominent merchants and the clergymen needed a command of French in order to get in touch with fellows in the French-speaking regions of Hainault, Artois and Picardy. The assumption of power by the Burgundians, who chose Brussels as their residence, further strengthened the familiarity with the French culture in Flanders and Brabant. Ever since the County of Holland came under the influence of the French-speaking House of Avesnes (Hainault) in 1299, French became prominent as the everyday language of the Hollandic nobility as well. The use of French at the Dutch court would last until 1890. Due to these social and political circumstances, particular groups in society became bilingual. Most ordinary people, however, continued to speak their native dialect, the only language they actively commanded. At the end of the Middle Ages, certain external factors created the need for a language that could be used in larger parts of the language area. The growing mobility in the politically unified territory stimulated trading and cultural contacts between the Provinces, which led to increasing language contact between speakers of different vernaculars. The invention of the printing press caused the practical need to standardize the language and of course the spelling, since many copies of a book could now be produced and be distributed across large areas. The rise of a feeling of national identity also stimulated the development of a standard language. Nevertheless, in spite of these favouring conditions, the prototype of a supraregional Dutch did not develop until after the Middle Ages, in the sixteenth and seventeenth century (Van den Toorn et al. 1997: 186). See Janssens and Marynissen 2008: 69⫺88. 5. The Modern Era: Linguistic, political and cultural evolution in the North (1500 until now) In this section, we will discuss the development of Dutch as a written and spoken language in the northern part of the language area from the sixteenth century until the present day, in relation to the particular political, social and cultural circumstances. 5.1. Standardization o Dutch in the Republic o the United Netherlands (sixteenthseventeenth century) The sixteenth century was a tempestuous period in the history of the Low Countries. In this era major political, religious and economic changes occurred, which were to have important consequences for the development of the language. From 1530 onwards the influence of Protestantism, a religious renewal movement that had entered the Netherlands from both Germany (Martin Luther) and northern France (John Calvin), increased. The harsh reaction to the Reformation by the catholic king Philip II of Spain (Charles the Fifth’s son, overlord of the Habsburg Netherlands) as well as Philip’s strong centralization of power and the controversial taxations he imposed, led to a rebellion against his regime. Under the leadership of William of Orange, the Seventeen Provinces started a war against the Spanish Empire in 1568, which lasted until 1648: the Eighty Years’ War. Between 1583 and 1586, the Spanish army Brought to you by | Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln Authenticated Download Date | 3/18/20 5:34 PM 5. A regional history of Dutch 89 conquered most of the Flemish and Brabantian cities. The important city of Antwerp was captured by Philip’s troops in 1585. After the Fall of Antwerp, the southern part of the Netherlands definitively came under the rule of catholic Spain. The northern provinces separated from Spain: they founded the independent Republic of the Seven United Provinces, better known as the Dutch Republic. The independence of the Republic was internationally recognized in the peace treaty of Westphalia (Münster) in 1648: the Northern and the Southern Netherlands had become legally separated. After the separation of the North, the Southern Netherlands culturally and economically declined rapidly. The stagnation of the Southern Netherlands was due to the exodus of many industrials, tradesmen, intellectuals, artists, printers and clergymen, who fled from the catholic South to the North, where they could practice their protestant faith in freedom. This protestant elite greatly contributed to the bloom of the northern United Provinces in the seventeenth century, the so called Dutch Golden Age. The Dutch Republic became a world power and experienced a period of high economic, intellectual and cultural prosperity. The Dutch trade, arts and sciences were among the most acclaimed in the world. The Dutch East and West India Companies, chartered companies of Dutch merchants, had a trade monopoly to carry out colonial activities in Asia and the West Indies, respectively. Both companies remained important trading concerns for almost two centuries. Due to the economic wealth, seventeenth century Dutch art was flourishing. Famous writers included Vondel, Hooft, Bredero and Huygens. Dutch masters such as Rembrandt, Vermeer and Hals made Dutch painting world famous. At the university of Leiden renowned scientists lectured, who were often of southern origin, such as the botanist Rembert Dodoens and the mathematician Simon Stevin. The loss of policital unity and the shift of the economic, political and cultural centre from Brabant to Holland led to a diverging development of the language in the North and the South. In the sixteenth century the spoken language still showed considerable regional variety. The dialects of the southwest (Flemish and Zeelandish), of the central south (Brabantine), of the southeast (Limburgian), of the northwest (Hollandic) and of the northeast (Low Saxon) differed from each other in important ways. An overarching standard language had not yet been developed. The earliest attempts to set up a general written Dutch language were initiated in the South, in Brabant. After the political separation to the North, however, the southern standardisation process came to a standstill. From the end of the sixteenth century onward and in the course of the seventeenth century, a national SD language was developed among the upper classes in the well-to-do Hollandic cities. The Hollandic dialect, enriched with influences from the southern writing tradition and the spoken language of the numerous Flemish and Brabantian immigrants, became the basis of the Dutch standard language. Contemporaneous linguists deliberately reflected upon which language variants would actually be part of the standard language-under-construction. Many publications reflecting on language, such as dictionaries, normative grammars and proposals for uniform spelling rules, were published, which all contributed to the codification of written Dutch. The Dutch written language quickly rose to great esteem. The rise of a national identity in the young Dutch Republic and the spread of the Reformation, which intended to reach all social classes by distributing printed bibles and by preaching in Dutch, Brought to you by | Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln Authenticated Download Date | 3/18/20 5:34 PM 90 II. The major dialect regions of Dutch promoted the interest in and the positive attitude towards SD. The use of Dutch for scientific communication by scientists like Stevin and Dodoens also contributed to the prestige of the mother tongue, although Latin still maintained its status as the international language of science. Literary authorities like Vondel and Hooft, who actively participated in the debate on language norms, greatly contributed to the acceptance of Dutch as a cultivated language. The so called ‘States Bible’ (1637), the first official Dutch translation of the bible directly from Greek and Hebrew, made by order of the States-General of the Netherlands, had a profound influence on the standardization and the spread of written Dutch (see Van der Sijs and Willemyns 2009: 234⫺239). It was written in a ⫺ supposedly ⫺ generally acceptable Dutch, designed to be understandable for every Dutch-speaking person. In order to ensure that all churches in the country would commit themselves to God’s word in Dutch, the translators and proofreaders who worked on the new translation were selected from all regions of the language area. The process of constructing a supraregional Dutch written language took place in the seventeenth century among cultivated people in the Hollandic cities. In oral communication and in local texts, on the other hand, a considerable level of regional variability was retained. See Janssens and Marynissen 2008: 101⫺107, 113⫺127. 5.2. Language regulation and elevation o the written language in the eighteenth and nineteenth century The eighteenth century was a period of stagnation for the Dutch Republic. Several wars with England weakened its political and economic position. In 1795, the French revolutionary troops, who had occupied the Southern Netherlands one year earlier (see section 6.2. below), advanced to the North. The French proclaimed the Batavian Republic (1795⫺1806), a vassal state of the French Empire. In 1806, the Kingdom of Holland was founded; Napoleon’s brother Louis Bonaparte accessed to the throne. A few years later, in 1810, the Kingdom of Holland was annexed by the French Empire. In 1813 the French were chased out of the Netherlands. At the Congress in Vienna (1814⫺1815) the Northern and Southern Netherlands were, after almost 250 years of separation, reunited in a unitary state, the so called United Kingdom of the Netherlands, under King William I of Orange. The political reunification of the North and the South was not a success, however (see section 6.3. below). The growing opposition against William I in the South in 1830 led to the Belgian Revolution and the proclamation of the independent Kingdom of Belgium. After a union of hardly 15 years, the North and the South were separated again. In the eighteenth century, reflection on the Dutch written language continued. Ever more normative grammatical rules and prescriptions were issued, even if these did not correspond to actual usage. Influenced by eighteenth century rationalism, grammarians like Arnold Moonen and Balthasar Huydecooper intended to improve and elevate the Dutch written language by regulating it ever more. As a result, an artificial written language developed, which was characterized by long and complex sentences, archaic Brought to you by | Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln Authenticated Download Date | 3/18/20 5:34 PM 5. A regional history of Dutch 91 case forms and gender distinctions that had by then almost disappeared from the spoken language. By the end of the eighteenth century, after an age-long process of selection, codification and functional spread, a clear unity in the written language was obtained. This written uniform Dutch was known and accepted by intellectuals in all provinces across the country. The spoken language, however, still showed considerable regional and social variation. The fact that the small noble elite and courtly circles continued to use French, which was very prestigious, as its preferred language for conversations in salons and for international correspondance, possibly slowed down the standardization of spoken Dutch. In the beginning of the nineteenth century written SD was consolidated in an official spelling regulation (Siegenbeek, 1804) and a grammar (Weiland, 1805). Although the grammatical rules described by Weiland were actually respected, the written language was criticized because of its unnatural character and because it was too far removed from the spoken language. The topic of the proper relation between the written and the spoken language dominated the linguistic debate in the nineteenth century. An increasing number of authors shared the opinion that the written language should conform to the spoken language, and not the other way round. The author Multutali (writer’s name of E. Douwes Dekker) and, at the end of the century, a group of writers referred to as the Eightiers were passionate supporters of a written language that would follow spoken Dutch as closely as possible. A movement for renewal in education, in which simplification of the written language was pursued (A. Kollewijn), further contributed to the ongoing modernization of written Dutch. At the end of the nineteenth century, the spoken language had shifted away from the traditional dialects towards written SD. Moreover, a consensus had been reached among the upper class in the Hollandic cities about a generally used, cultivated pronunciation of Dutch, called ‘Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands’ (ABN): ‘General Civilized Dutch’. Three centuries after the beginning of the standardization of written Dutch, spoken Dutch had also become standardized. See Janssens and Marynissen 2008: 127⫺135. 5.3. Expansion o ABN in the twentieth century and broadening o the norms o SD In the twentieth century, spoken SD (ABN) quickly expanded from the urban Hollandic elites, by whom it had been developed, to other social groups and to regions outside of Holland. Due to improved education, growing geographical and social mobility, and the influence of modern means of communication, by the 1950s and 1960s ABN was generally accepted and used across the Netherlands. Nearly all Dutch people were able to read and understand ABN, and most of them could speak and write it as well, although the intellectuals felt more familiar with SD than less educated people. For many young people, SD became their mother tongue. Until about 1970 the norms for SD were quite restricted. The fairly strict norms for ABN that had been established were quite generally accepted. Especially the middle classes considered a thorough command of ABN as an instrument of social mobility. Brought to you by | Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln Authenticated Download Date | 3/18/20 5:34 PM 92 II. The major dialect regions of Dutch In the second half of the 1960s, Dutch society was affected by important social changes. The democratization of society involved a growing informality of manners, which had consequences for the status and the norms for the use of spoken Dutch: a more tolerant attitude against variation in pronunciation and choice of words developed. Informal registers of language were increasingly used, also in more formal settings, originally by the younger generation, and later also by other groups of Dutch people. Due to this broadening of norms, a number of substandard variants that had already been used by certain sections of the population gradually reached SD. Famous examples of innovations in pronunciation are the devoicing of the fricatives g, v and z in the onset, the only prosodic position in which voice contrasts occur in varieties of Dutch, the diphthongization of the long monophthonghs ee, oo and eu and the lowering of the diphthongs ei, ui and ou to aai, au and aau (Van de Velde 1996). These pronuncation variants had already been prevalent for a long time in broad city dialects of western Holland. However, these variants are nowadays used in situations in which previously this was not acceptable: in radio and television broadcasts, in education, at university, even in the House of Representatives. The initially substandard pronunciation variants are no longer regarded as broad talk, but are more or less accepted in spoken SD. As a result of the broadening of these norms, present-day spoken SD differs audibly from the ABN that was used in the fifties and sixties. In 1997 the linguist Jan Stroop introduced the term ‘Polder Dutch’ for the variety of Dutch speech in which ee, oo and eu are pronounced as diphthongs and the first elements of the diphthongs ei, ui and ou are lowered in articulation. According to Stroop, current speakers of Polder Dutch are especially middle-aged, educated, successful women. Recent research by Jacobi (2008) showed that it is not the speakers’ gender, but their socioeconomic background that plays a role: if social class is higher, they will show more diphthongization. Whether such pronunciation variants will succeed in expanding to all speakers of Dutch across the country should become clear in the next decades. See Stroop 1997, Jacobi 2008, Janssens and Marynissen 2008: 187⫺196. 6. The Modern Era: Language history in the South, in its political and social context This section deals with the conflictual relation of Dutch and French in Flemish society up to the nineteenth century, to the acquisition of a SD language by the Flemings and to the so-called Flemish language struggle in the nineteenth and twentieth century, and finally, to the emergence of a new substandard variety in Flanders from the 1970s onwards. 6.1. Dutch in an inerior position during the late Spanish period (until 1713) and under Austrian rule (17141794) After having been dominated by the Spanish Habsburgs for more than 150 years, the Southern Netherlands came under the sovereignty of the Austrian branch of the dynasty in 1714. As a result of their different political and economic evolutions (cf. section 5.1.), the Northern and Southern Netherlands went through different linguistical evolutions Brought to you by | Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln Authenticated Download Date | 3/18/20 5:34 PM 5. A regional history of Dutch 93 during the seventeenth and eighteenth century as well. In contrast to the North, the standardizing process of the Dutch language came to a standstill in Flanders, in the South. For government and administration purposes at the highest level, French was used, whereas at the regional and local level people adhered to the Flemish or Brabantine writing systems, which had been used since the end of medieval times (cf. section 4). The French-speaking part of the population in Flanders increased, especially during the eighteenth century, because the nobility and the higher bourgeois families started to consider French as the cultivated language par excellence. The upper ranks of society practically all turned to French. French also became the language of secondary education, next to Latin. Due to these circumstances, the Dutch vernacular acquired a mark of social inferiority in Flanders. At the end of the eighteenth century, some Flemish intellectuals reacted against the neglect of the Dutch language, such as the Brussels politician Jan Baptist Verlooy, who wrote a famous essay pleading in favour of the native language and calling on the Flemish population to resist the pressure of French. See Kossmann-Putto and Kossmann 1997: 30⫺37, Willemyns 2003: 137⫺171. 6.2. Frenchiication o the middle class during the French period (17941814) The Southern Netherlands were occupied by the French in 1794, and annexed in 1795. The country underwent far-reaching reforms. The use of the French language was made mandatory or was strongly favoured in all official domains. Of great importance was the fact that in Flanders the middle class, too, had begun to use French, which widened the gap between them and the masses of peasants and workers, who continued to speak their local Dutch dialects. By the year 1810, public life in Flanders had become practically completely Francophone. In addition, many inhabitants of the country, particularly those of the well-to-do and well-instructed middle class, had become Francophile. They were thoroughly convinced of the cultural, intellectual and linguistic superiority of the French language. The Dutch vernacular used by the common people in Flanders was left with no prestige at all. In this way, the social language gap that had arisen in the centuries before was strengthened during the French period. See Willemyns 2003: 172⫺183. 6.3. Redutchiication o oicial domains during the Dutch period (18141830) After Napoleon had been defeated in October 1813 near Leipzig, the French were forced to leave the annexed Southern Netherlands some months later. The Vienna Congress (1814⫺1815) decided to reunite the Southern and the Northern Netherlands into a unitary state, the so-called United Kingdom of the Netherlands, under the new Dutch King William I of Orange. William aspired to weld the catholic Southern and protestant Northern Netherlands together on the basis of a shared sense of national identity, which he wanted to achieve through a policy of economic and social integration, of religious tolerance or neutrality, and through a language policy aiming at installing one national language in the whole country. This national language would be Dutch, the language Brought to you by | Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln Authenticated Download Date | 3/18/20 5:34 PM 94 II. The major dialect regions of Dutch that had been standardized and was already successfully used as official language in the northern provinces. Hence, William promulgated laws installing Dutch as the official language for administration, courts of justice and education in Flanders. Several influential groups and individuals in the South opposed William’s language policy: the Catholic Church, which regarded the Dutch language as an instrument of Calvinism, the liberals, who wanted individual freedom of language, and many common Flemings too, who perceived the Dutch language of the North as quite different from their own vernaculars. In spite of this opposition, by 1828, French had almost completely been abandoned in the official domains mentioned above in Flanders, and Dutch was being used instead. In 1829⫺1830, the southern opposition to William’s authoritarian regime grew stronger and the King was obliged to some political concessions, also concerning his language policy. The Belgian Revolution in September 1830 brought an end to William’s ambitions. The United Kingdom fell apart and the Southern Netherlands became a separate, independent state, the Kingdom of Belgium. Its Constitution created a modern parliamentary monarchy, a unitary state with a Chamber of Representatives directly elected by a limited number of voters from the well-to-do French-speaking classes. See De Jonghe 1967, Janssens and Steyaert 2008: 35⫺65. 6.4. Belgium as an independent state (1830 onwards)  emergence o the Flemish movement According to the Belgian liberal Constitution, language usage was a matter of choice. But in reality the country was governed in French, the language of the ruling classes, and a language with international prestige. Dutch, which was considered the language of the northern ‘enemy’ just after the Revolution, disappeared almost completely from public life in Flanders. Thanks to its early heavy industry at the time of the Industrial Revolution, Wallonia (in the south of Belgium) was the most prosperous part of the country in the nineteenth century. Flanders, on the other hand, which had had its heyday during the Middle Ages, went through a deep crisis. The majority of the Flemish population remained fairly passive with respect to language matters, but as early as the 1830s a number of Flemish intellectuals and ‘language lovers’, such as Jan Frans Willems and Jan Baptist David, started reacting against the hegemony of French and the discrimination of their own native language in Belgium. These intellectuals wanted to work actively for the development and promotion of the language of the Flemish people. Their ideas were clearly inspired by romanticism and nationalism; in the nineteenth century many places in Europe became convinced of the close relationship between people, country, language and history. The Flemish intellectuals we just mentioned represented the very outset of the so-called Flemish movement, a complex cultural and social current aiming at the statutory recognition of the language of the Flemish people as an official language in Belgium, and at the intellectual, cultural, social and economic emancipation of Flanders. See Kossmann-Putto and Kossmann 1997: 41⫺44, Willemyns 2003: 205⫺213. 6.4.1. Acquiring a standard language The question which kind of Dutch should be used in Flanders was a point of discussion for the young Flemish movement. Evidently, the absence of a standard Flemish language Brought to you by | Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln Authenticated Download Date | 3/18/20 5:34 PM 5. A regional history of Dutch 95 weakened its claims for the recognition of the native language of the Flemings as an official language. Two different answers to the language issue were proposed by two different tendencies within the Flemish movement: the integrationist option and the particularist one. The integrationists proposed to adopt the existing SD language of the North. They argued that only a standard language based on a linguistic and cultural solidarity or unity with the North would be strong enough and would have the necessary prestige to counter the French language in Flanders. The particularists, on the other hand, wished to create an authentically Flemish civilized standard language, on the basis of one of the dialects in Flanders, since they regarded the mother tongue as a central factor in the identity of the Flemish people. There were two groups of particularists. First, there was a very active group of West Flemish particularists, who wanted to create a civilized language on the basis of the West Flemish vernaculars, in particular the dialect of Bruges, which had been very prestigious during the Middle Ages. Second, there was an Antwerp group of particularists, who wished to create a more Brabantine-like literary language. The discussion between particularists and integrationists continued for many decades in the nineteenth century. Around 1900, it became clear that the integrationists were on the winning hand. However, the Flemings did not adopt the Dutch standard language of the North as it was, especially not its pronunciation. Since hardly any samples of spoken northern Dutch were available in Flanders in the first decades of the twentieth century, it was the written Dutch language that was taken as a model, for instance in school books. Generation after generation, Flemings have worked at acquiring a standard language that little by little and more and more resembled northern SD, among other things by eliminating dialectisms, archaisms and gallicisms from their native vernaculars. In fact, the actual SD language in Flanders is the result of an ample but not full adaptation to northern Dutch, in combination with autonomous southern standardizing processes. Today, the Dutch language written in Flanders and the one written in the Netherlands are very similar, except for (among other things) a relatively small number of so-called referential belgicisms (words referring to typically Belgian institutions or notions, such as assisenhof, a court of justice in Belgium that has no exact equivalent in the Netherlands) and a number of southern, mostly Brabantine words (such as hesp instead of northern Dutch ham) and (often older or archaic) grammatical features (such as the preservation of masculine and feminine gender differentiation in non-human pronominal reference, e.g. ze (⫽ the door) staat open instead of northern Dutch hij staat open) that have been largely accepted in Flanders. In the spoken language, these southern words and grammatical features are more frequent, and the pronunciation of Dutch in Flanders is quite different from that in the Netherlands (see the sketch in section 5.3. above). Note that for most Flemings the SD that they have learned at school has remained a rather artificial, unnatural, almost ‘foreign’ language that is only spoken at school and in other quite formal circumstances. Most Flemings do not feel at ease with the SD language. At home and with friends, and in informal situations in general, they speak either dialect or, more recently, a type of civilized vernacular to which we will return in section 5.5. See Willemyns 2003: 249⫺298, 320⫺338, 341⫺350, 353⫺358, Janssens and Marynissen 2008: 148⫺159, and also see Haeseryn in the present volume for the structural aspects of Belgian Dutch (ch. 37). Brought to you by | Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln Authenticated Download Date | 3/18/20 5:34 PM 96 II. The major dialect regions of Dutch 6.4.2. The Flemish language struggle The first significant political action of the Flemish movement was the so-called Flemish petition in 1840: thousands of Flemings insisted on the right to use the vernacular language for public administration, justice and school education in Flanders. The petition was ignored by the Belgian authorities. In 1856, under pressure of supporters of the Flemish movement, the government installed a commission to investigate the principal Flemish language grievances, but the commission’s proposals, which more or less met the claims of the 1840 petition, were brushed aside by the new government some time later. This refusal led to the start, around 1860, of a second phase in the actions of the Flemish movement. By means of better organization, campaigning and involvement in the press and in elections, militants of the Flemish movement tried to acquire political power themselves in order to redress their language grievances. In the 1870s, this change of strategy started to be rewarded. The Flemish people obtained the right to be tried in their own language (1873), to be attended to by civil servants in their own language (1878), and to be educated in state secondary schools at least partly in their own language instead of exclusively in French as before (1883). In 1898, the so-called Equality Law was passed ⫺ a law with great symbolic value, that recognized Dutch as an official legal language in Belgium, next to French. However, this first piece of Belgian language legislation still guaranteed the French language a place in all public domains in Flanders. Flanders had a bilingual status by the end of the nineteenth century ⫺ no more, no less. This meant that French could still be used in Flanders, and in practice in many cases was indeed used, since French remained the language with the highest prestige and social power. Consequently, the Flemish people continued to feel discriminated in their own region. To put an end to this situation, Dutch had to become the only official language in Flanders. Flanders had to become an officially monolingual Dutch-speaking region. In the 1920s, Flemish and Walloon politicians agreed to divide Belgium into language territories. Flanders would officially have monolingual Dutch status, while Wallonia would be monolingually French, and Brussels would become officially bilingual. Through the approval of language laws in the 1930s, the principle of territorial linguistic integrity was fully applied to all sectors of public life in Flanders. By the end of the 1930s, Flanders had become an officially monolingual territory. One problem remained, however: the boundary between the Flemish and the Walloon territories had not been definitively fixed, and this regularly led to (new) quarrels and discussions between the language communities. In 1962⫺1963, the Dutch-French language boundary was finally fixed by law. Some Flemish and Walloon communes with large minorities of Francophone and Dutch-speaking inhabitants, respectively, acquired ‘language facilities’. The monolingual status of Flanders was further strengthened. See Willemyns 2003: 213⫺241; <ucl.ac.uk/…/flemish_movement/>. 6.5. Federalization o Belgium (1970 onwards)  emergence o an intermediate language in Flanders By the end of the 1960s, Flemish and Walloon politicians decided to change Belgium into a federal state. The process of federalization started in 1970. Today, Flanders has Brought to you by | Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln Authenticated Download Date | 3/18/20 5:34 PM 5. A regional history of Dutch 97 achieved political autonomy in many important domains. Moreover, over the last decades it has become economically prosperous. At present, the use of Dutch is compulsory in public life in Flanders. Over these last decades, a new variety of Dutch has been developing in Flanders, a variety that is linguistically situated somewhere in between the dialects, on the one side, and the Dutch standard language on the other. Because of this intermediate position, the variety in question is referred to as Flemish ‘intermediate language’ by linguists (more recently also as modern colloquial ‘Flemish’, and Colloquial Belgian Dutch). From the 1970s onwards, more and more Flemings turned away from the dialect in informal situations, for raising children and for contacts with colleagues, casual acquaintances and even friends, because dialects had become socially stigmatized, and branded as definitely lower class. However, they did not want to use standard (Belgian) Dutch in these informal situations either, because they did not sufficiently master it, or because they considered SD to be ‘unnatural’, too formal, too official, almost as ‘foreign’ language (see 6.4.1. above). So, these Flemings wanted to speak a language variety that did not sound as coarse as the stigmatized dialects, but at the same time remained close, familiar and natural to them, away from the ‘stiff and formal’, almost ‘estraneous’ official standard (Belgian) Dutch. Speakers of this intermediate language variety tried and nowadays still try to avoid broad dialectal accents, allowing widely accepted regional words and grammatical features they feel rather close to, especially words and grammatical features originating from the prestigious Brabant area, the economic heart and linguistic centre of Flanders. From the end of the 1980s onwards, this language mix, which many call Schoon Vlaams (literally: ‘fair Flemish’) and Tussentaal (‘intermediate language’), has started to be used in television broadcasts such as soap operas and popular game shows as well, and it can also be heard in interviews and commercials. For many people, this use in the media in a way legitimizes the intermediate language. More and more Flemings speak it, in ever more ⫺ even formal ⫺ situations. Intermediate language has become the mother tongue of many young people. A growing number of Flemings consider it as a valuable spoken alternative to standard (Belgian) Dutch. Nevertheless, this new, intermediate language variety has several problematic aspects. First of all, its emergence has made the language spectrum in Flanders more complex than it was already ⫺ even opaque for people from outside. In fact, three or four different types or varieties of Dutch are being used in Flanders today: standard (Belgian) Dutch for writing and for oral communication (the latter only in more formal situations, and nearly only by the well educated), intermediate language as a civilized go-as-youplease speech variety in most informal and semi-formal situations by very many Flemings, and dialect or regiolect in informal situations, at least with people from the same region, e.g. with relatives or close friends (mostly by elderly people, and the less well educated). The two ‘civilized’ speech varieties in this language spectrum, standard Belgian Dutch and intermediate language, are very different. A second problematic aspect of Flemish intermediate language is the question of its acceptance or acceptability, not only among the Flemish themselves, but also among other Europeans. A number of Flemish intellectuals do not accept the new variety as an alternative to standard (Belgian) Dutch. They consider it to be a language without a literature (in writing, it is almost solely used for internet chat and in text messages), and without cultural prestige. They ironically call it Soapvlaams, ‘soap Flemish’, or Verkavelingsvlaams, ‘suburban Flemish’, meaning the kind of common Flemish spoken in the Brought to you by | Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln Authenticated Download Date | 3/18/20 5:34 PM 98 II. The major dialect regions of Dutch new suburbs. They regard it as a variety that endangers the language unity with the Netherlands, weakening the linguistic position of Flanders within the European Union. Just like in the nineteenth century, integrationists are opposed to particularists, the former in favour of a standard language shared with Dutchmen (apart from pronunciation and other Belgian characteristics ⫺ section 6.4.1.), the latter striving for a civilized Dutch language variety with clear roots in Flanders. The discussion between the two continues to this very day, although this time the particularists seem to be winning. Optimistic integrationists hope that the intermediate language gradually will grow closer to standard Belgian Dutch as time goes by. In the meantime, the acceptance of the new variety abroad is problematic: opinion polls among students and teachers of Dutch abroad show that when given the choice between northern Dutch or Flemish intermediate language, they would prefer the first, because the latter is judged to be too limited in geographical, social, cultural and functional reach. A third problematic aspect of Flemish intermediate language is that it still shows (great) individual and regional variation. Although Flemish intermediate language does show aspects of stabilization in the recent past, at the same time a situation of diaglossia (Bellmann 1998; cf. ch. 1, section 4) has become a fact of linguistic life for many Flemings, in which the intermediate language plays a central role. See Taeldeman 1992 and 2008, Janssens 1995, Van de Velde 1996, Geeraerts 1997, Goossens 2000, Jaspers 2001, Plevoets, Speelman and Geeraerts 2007, Janssens and Marynissen 2008: 196⫺204, De Caluwe 2009, and see also Geeraerts in the present volume for more information on the features and structure, the sociolinguistic distribution and the attitudinal and critical reception of Colloquial Belgian Dutch. 7. Reerences Bellmann, Günter 1998 Between base dialect and standard language. Folia Linguistica 32: 1⫺2, 23⫺34. [Special issue: Peter Auer (ed.), Dialect levelling and the standard varieties in Europe.] De Caluwe, Johan 2009 Tussentaal wordt omgangstaal in Vlaanderen. Nederlandse taalkunde 14(1): 8⫺25. De Grauwe, Luc 2004 Zijn olla vogala Vlaams, of zit de Nederlandse filologie met een koekoeksei in (haar) nest(en)? Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde 120: 44⫺56. De Jonghe, Albert 1967 De taalpolitiek van Koning Willem I in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden (1814⫺1830). SintAndries-bij-Brugge: J. Darthet. Geeraerts, Dirk 1997 Standaardisering en substandaardisering in Belgisch-Nederlands. In: Ariane van Santen and Marijke van der Wal (eds.), Taal in tijd en ruimte, 289⫺298. Leiden: SNL. Goossens, Jan 2000 De toekomst van het Nederlands in Vlaanderen. Ons Erfdeel 43(1): 3⫺13. Gysseling, Maurits 1960 Toponymisch Woordenboek van België, Nederland, Luxemburg, Noord-Frankrijk en WestDuitsland (vóór 1226). 2 vols. Belgisch Interuniversitair Centrum voor Neerlandistiek. Gysseling, Maurits 1976 Ontstaan en verschuiving van de taalgrens in Noord-Frankrijk. Jaarboek De Franse Nederlanden, 71⫺85. Brought to you by | Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln Authenticated Download Date | 3/18/20 5:34 PM 5. A regional history of Dutch 99 Gysseling, Maurits 1977⫺1987 Corpus van Middelnederlandse teksten (tot en met het jaar 1300). Reeks I: Ambtelijke bescheiden, Reeks II: Literaire handschriften. 15 volumes. ’s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff. Jacobi, Irene 2008 On variation and change in diphthongs and long vowels of spoken Dutch. Ph.D. thesis, University of Amsterdam. Janssens, Guy 1995 Algemeen Vlaams extra muros? In: José Cajot, Ludger Kremer and Hermann Niebaum (eds.), Lingua Theodisca. Beiträge zur Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft. Jan Goossens zum 65. Geburtstag, 877⫺884. Münster: Lit. Janssens, Guy and Ann Marynissen 2008 Het Nederlands vroeger en nu. Leuven/Voorburg: Acco. Janssens, Guy and Kris Steyaert 2008 Het onderwijs van het Nederlands in de Waalse provincies en Luxemburg onder koning Willem I (1814⫺1830). Niets meer dan een boon in een brouwketel? Brussels: VUB Press. Jaspers, Jürgen 2001 Het Vlaamse stigma. Over tussentaal en normativiteit. Taal en Tongval 53: 129⫺153. Kossmann-Putto, Johanna A. and Ernst H. Kossmann 1997 The Low Countries. History of the Northern and Southern Netherlands. Rekkem: Ons Erfdeel. Maier, Bernhard 2003 Kleines Lexikon der Namen und Wörter keltischen Ursprungs. München: Beck. Plevoets, Koen, Dirk Speelman and Dirk Geeraerts 2007 A corpus-based study of modern colloquial “Flemish”. In: Stephan Elspass, Nils Langer, Joachim Scharloth and Wim Vandenbussche (eds.), Germanic Language Histories “from Below” (1700⫺2000), 179⫺188. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Stroop, Jan 1998 Poldernederlands; waardoor het ABN verdwijnt. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker. Taeldeman, Johan 1992 Welk Nederlands voor de Vlamingen? Nederlands van nu 40(2): 33⫺52. Taeldeman, Johan 2008 Zich stabiliserende grammaticale kenmerken in Vlaamse tussentaal. Taal en Tongval 60: 26⫺50. Taeldeman, Johan and Luc Van Durme (eds.) 1999 750 jaar “Schepenbrief van Bochoute”. Studia Germanica Gandensia 48. Van Bree, Cor 1996 Historische taalkunde. Leuven/Amersfoort: Acco. Van den Toorn, M. C., W. J. J. Pijnenburg, J. A. van Leuvensteijn and J. van der Horst (eds.) 1997 Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse taal. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Van der Sijs, Nicoline and Roland Willemyns 2009 Het verhaal van het Nederlands. Een geschiedenis van twaalf eeuwen. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker. Van der Wal, Marijke and Cor van Bree 2008 Geschiedenis van het Nederlands. Fifth edition. Utrecht: Het Spectrum. Van de Velde, Hans 1996 Verkavelingsvlaams. Wat is mij dat nu? In: Roeland van Hout and Joep Kruijsen (eds.), Taalvaraties, 261⫺271. Dordrecht: Foris. Van de Velde, Hans 1996 Variatie en verandering in het gesproken Standaard-Nederlands (1935⫺1993). Ph.D. thesis, Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen. Brought to you by | Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln Authenticated Download Date | 3/18/20 5:34 PM 100 II. The major dialect regions of Dutch Van Durme, Luc 2002 Genesis and Evolution of the Romance-Germanic Language Border in Europe. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 23(1⫺2): 9⫺21. Van Oostrom, Frits 2006 Stemmen op schrift. Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur van het begin tot 1300. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker. Willemyns, Roland 2003 Het verhaal van het Vlaams. De geschiedenis van het Nederlands in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden. Antwerp/Utrecht: Standaard Uitgeverij/Het Spectrum. Ann Marynissen, Cologne (Germany) Guy Janssens, Liège (Belgium) 6. The spectrum o spatial varieties o Dutch: The historical genesis 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Introduction Changes and contrasts Discussion Atlases References 1. Introduction Many patterns in the Dutch dialectal landscape have very old roots; some of them reach back to a stage before the diversification of continental West Germanic. In this contribution I will try to describe and explain the patterns in question, according to their supposed times of origin and their geographical shapes. 1.1. Selection o data The present-day Dutch dialect landscape is fairly complex. Because there are many isoglosses, which haphazardly criss-cross each other, we have to look for a reliable criterion to select them. As far as phonology is concerned, the most important isoglosses, resulting from important changes are described in Van Bree (1987, mainly based on Van Loey 1970). These are mostly isoglosses pertaining to contrasts in the vowel system. We can base the choice of syntactic contrasts on Van Bree (2009), whose data were taken from De Schutter (1990, 2002⫺2003). As far as morphology is concerned, we will focus on the morphological effects of phonological developments and some changes in the system. Brought to you by | Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln Authenticated Download Date | 3/18/20 5:34 PM