The Low Countries. Jaargang 2

The Dutch Tradition in English Language Studies

English is undoubtedly the dominant international language in the world today. It is the language of power and diplomacy, of information and the media, of science and technology, of liberal democracy, trade and entertainment. And to an extent not seen before in history, English is now the global lingua franca.

In this English-dominated world, the Dutch are active in countless international organisations and networks. They are the second biggest foreign investors in the United States. They run some of the largest multinational companies, and Rotterdam is the biggest port in the world. As a corollary, the English language can be found almost anywhere in the Netherlands today. Cable tv provides direct access to cnn and the bbc. In education, English is the first foreign language for Dutch children from the age of ten, while in the universities an increasing number of courses, text books and theses are in English. In 1988, at least 24% of all new books published in the Netherlands were in English, and 70% of all films shown in Dutch cinemas were made in America.

It would be a mistake, however, to think that the Dutch are all speaking English now, or that they are shortly going to abandon their native tongue. The Dutch language is alive and well, as the natural medium of communication in politics and society, in the economy and in education, in literature, the theatre and the media, at work, at home and in public life.

There is of course also the European context, where multilingualism is a historical and contemporary reality. The same cable that brings cnn and the bbc to Dutch homes, also brings them programmes in German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and the Scandinavian languages. Some of these are taking on the role of regional lingua francas, the most important for the Dutch being German and French. But English occupies a special position: its rise, especially since the sixties, has been spectacular, and it is now the most widely used and needed foreign language in the Netherlands.

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In this context, language skills are obviously of vital importance to the Dutch, and they will therefore have to continue to invest more time and money in the teaching of Dutch and of the three major modern languages, English, French and German (cf. also Uhlenbeck, in The Low Countries 1993-94:31).

In the case of English in particular, the Dutch come well prepared to this task. The Netherlands has a long and distinguished tradition of scholarship in the field of English language studies. Dutch anglicists have made many important contributions to the study of English grammar, lexicography and linguistic analysis, and these have recently been highlighted in an interesting collection of biographical texts covering the period 1885-1990, entitled Dutch Masters and their Era (1993).

The volume opens with an In Memoriam of the first Professor of English Language and Literature in the Netherlands, Jan Beckering Vinckers (1821-1891), who was appointed at the University of Groningen in 1885. At that time, English studies were strongly influenced by the strictly historical-comparative approach of nineteenth-century German philology; indeed, until well into the present century Dutch anglicists often went to German universities in order to obtain their doctorates, since in the Netherlands they could not do so until after 1921.

Stuurman presents a chronological series of wellannotated articles on fifteen Dutch anglicists, the most important of whom are the grammarians H. Poutsma (1856-1937), E. Kruisinga (1875-1944), F.Th. Visser (1886-1976) and R.W. Zandvoort (1894-1990). It is their work which forms the core of the Dutch tradition.

Before the Second World War the most important contributions were Poutsma's Grammar of Late Modern English (1904-1926), Kruisinga's Handbook of Present Day English (1911-1932), and Zandvoort's journal English Studies, which was founded in 1919. Such was the reputation of these Dutch anglicists that in 1936 it was said that, while the English should certainly continue to speak and use their own language, they could safely leave the study and description of its grammar to the Dutch.

After the Second World War Zandvoort continued to play a leading role. His Handbook of English Grammar first appeared in 1946 and ran into many editions. It was phenomenally successful and became the most influential grammar of English by a Dutch anglicist. For many years, Zandvoort also took an active part in the international associations of Professors in English, American Studies and Modern Languages. And he expanded his English Studies into an international journal edited by a committee of anglicists from six European countries.

The last great representative of the Dutch tradition is F.Th. Visser, whose magnum opus, An Historical Syntax of the English Language, was published in three large volumes between 1963 (when Visser was already 77!) and 1973. This work is the last major product of the philological tradition in continental English language studies, and as Zandvoort put it in 1974, it marks the end of Dutch supremacy in this field.

Regarding this Dutch tradition, Sir Randolph Quirk notes, in his Preface to Stuurman's collection: ‘Through the labours of a great generation in the Netherlands, English Studies (as witness English Studies) flourished both within and far beyond the Dutch frontiers, providing models of rich and immaculately accurate data-based research that transformed grammarwriting.’

The pioneering efforts of these Dutch scholars have greatly contributed to the subsequent rapid and successful development of English language teaching in the Netherlands, for which they provided the handbooks, the grammars, the dictionaries, the phonetic manuals, the text editions, and above all the teachers. They also laid the scholarly foundations upon which the present generation of Dutch anglicists continue to build, not just in teaching but also in research, where they are in the vanguard of the electronic revolution and continue to pursue the study of English grammar through their active involvement in new projects and networks for international cooperation.

reinier salverda

Dutch Masters and Their Era. English Language studies by the Dutch, from the last century into the present (ed. F. Stuurman). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1993; 200 pp.