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Abstracts
Willem and Willems: two fathers of the Flemish Movement?
Roland Willemyns
This article brings the text of my introduction as the convener of the colloquium.
It opens with an overview of historical- sociolinguistic research on 19th century Dutch as it has been carried out during the past 15 years at the Department of Dutch Linguistics of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
It continues with a state of the art survey of how the period of reunification of the Netherlands (1814-1830) and the language policy of its sovereign King Willem I have been mis- and under-represented in the traditional historiography of the Dutch language.
The main part is used to explain the real impact of Willem's linguistic legislation, based on original and often neglected contemporary sources, as they have been analyzed in dissertations and other publications from members of my Brussels research team. It is argued that, instead of a failure as many earlier publications claim (with no proof), Willem I has actually succeeded completely in implementing his policy and in thoroughly changing the linguistic situation in the Southern part of the United Netherlands.
In the final part of the article the various contributors and contributions to the colloquium are introduced.
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The influence of French ‘grammairiens’ on teaching methods for Dutch in the Walloon provinces.
Guy Janssens
It is commonly assumed that the French linguists from the school or tradition of Port-Royal have only had a limited influence on linguists of the Dutch language. However, this assumption is not valid for a number of teachers of
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Dutch in the Walloon provinces in the south of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands (1814-1830), under King Willem I. Teachers and linguists such as Ph. Olinger, J.F.X. Würth and G.B.J. Raingo borrowed a large number of principles and techniques from the French grammarians (e.g. literal interlinear translation, grammatical analysis, using general grammar and the native language as a starting point for understanding the particular grammar of a foreign language, etc.) and integrated these in their teaching methods for the Dutch language to French speaking Belgian pupils. Their textbooks by the so called translation-grammar method were widely used, as they were better adapted to the francophone public than the traditional manuals by the grammatical or grammar-translation method, and led to (or were supposed to lead to) a greater comprehension of the differences between the foreign language and the mother tongue.
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L'enseignement du néerlandais en Wallonie pendant les années suivant le Royaume-Uni des Pays-Bas.
Roland Lousberg
Les mesures prises en matière d'enseignement durant la période hollandaise expliquent en partie la situation de l'enseignement des langues vivantes, en particulier celui du néerlandais, dans les années 1830-1850. Il est donc intéressant de jeter un bref regard sur la période 1814-1830 durant laquelle la Belgique et la Hollande formèrent le Royaume-Uni des Pays-Bas. La révolution belge et l'indépendance furent à l'origine de changements appréciables dans l'organisation générale de l'instruction publique, ce qui ne resta pas sans conséquences pour l'enseignement des langues vivantes dans les provinces wallonnes.
Cet article traite quelques aspects de cet enseignement, en particulier celui du néerlandais, dans les collèges et athénées wallons entre les années 1830 et 1850. Nous passerons en revue quelques-unes des mesures politiques prises en matière d'enseignement des langues modernes, dont celui du néerlandais, ainsi que leur application réelle dans les collèges et athénées wallons. Nous examinerons ensuite l'organisation des cours de langue, spécialement de néerlandais, les méthodes didactiques employées dans les cours d'allemand, d'anglais et surtout de néerlandais ainsi que la formation des professeurs de langue.
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‘A Southern product of the cold ground’: language-political aspects of the Dutch literary historiography in the Walloon provinces.
Kris Steyaert
In the development of Dutch Studies as an academic discipline during the first decades of the nineteenth century, the philosopher and poet Johannes Kinker occupied a unique position. A loyal subject of Willem I, he tried to put into practice the King's politics of unification at the newly-founded University of Liège where he was appointed Professor of ‘literatura Hollandica, eloquentia et poesis’. Kinker's most diligent student was the Luxemburger Jean François Xavier Würth (1800-1874), who became his successor in later years. Though his activities as a teacher of Dutch were at least as purposeful as his mentor's, Würth's importance for the history of Dutch Studies has been left underexposed. It is to him, for instance, that we owe the first academic history of Dutch literature (1823) geared specifically towards the French-speaking inhabitants of the Walloon provinces. In a largely hostile environment, he drew on his minor poetic talents and his superior didactic skills in his efforts to consolidate the status of Dutch in the South as the ‘national language’.
New facts about the reception of Würth's handbooks have recently come to light, bearing witness to their impact on Dutch language and literature classes in the Walloon provinces beyond the walls of Liège University. There is even reason to believe that Würth's literary history and Dutch anthologies helped to shape, albeit indirectly, a number of educational materials used and developed in Flanders. Contemporary critiques confirm the polarizing effect of such educational tools in the linguistic and political power struggle that played its role in the eventual disintegration of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.
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Societal language use in the ‘Montzener Land’ during the reign of Willem I.
Jeroen Darquennes
Along the Germanic-Romance language border one is confronted with a number of areas that were marginalized in the aftermath of nation-building
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processes. One of these areas is the Montzener Land, i.e. the German-speaking area around the villages of Montzen and Welkenraedt in the Northeastern part of the Belgian Province of Liège. With the foundation of the Belgian state the asymmetrical German-French multilingualism that used to characterise this area quite rapidly evolved into societal German-French language shift. Various aspects of the latter shift process are well documented in sociolinguistic and contact-linguistic literature, as far as the second half of the twentieth century is concerned. The further one moves back in time, however, the scarcer the documented knowledge about societal multilingualism, language shift and language maintenance in the Montzener Land becomes. This paper tries to bridge some of these ‘gaps’ through a survey of the multilingual history of the Montzen area back to the reign of Willem I. Although the paper is exploratory and remains limited to hypothesis building for certain aspects, it is hoped that it will contribute in a positive way to the growing interest for the historical sociolinguistic study of a marginal, yet remarkable part of contemporary Belgium.
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‘Conseil’, ‘raed’ or ‘raad’. Flemish town chancelleries at the time of Willem I.
Eline Vanhecke
During the reign of Willem I, at least three opposing language varieties existed within the southern part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands (UKN): French, Dutch and Flemish. Willem implemented a very explicit language policy in favour of Dutch.
A large-scale research project concerning language choice and language use in Flemish town chanceries revealed that the decision to use one of these varieties as the lingua franca for official and administrative purposes was usually motivated on ideological grounds. Several examples indicate that, especially at the end of the UKN, town chanceries used language as an instrument to emphasize their political position versus the central government. Not only the use of a specific language, but even that of a specific orthographical system was a valuable indicator of political correctness or of the degree of loyalty towards the national government.
In this contribution we will focus on the relationship between the explicit language policy of Willem I and the de facto language use (i.e. language
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choice and spelling) in a large number of Flemish town hall administrations; we will further try to explain the plausible motives for specific spelling and language choices.
We will also draw explicit attention to two commonly accepted statements, which are to a significant extent invalidated by a number of recent studies on the basis of authentic historical sources (cf. Vanhecke, Vandenbussche, Willemyns & De Groof 2006).
| 1) | Up until recently, it was commonly agreed that Willem's explicit language policy did not succeed. Unanimous research results obtained from detailed analyses in 133 town hall administrations, however, prove that Willem's language policy did not fail and that the dutchification of public life in Flanders was a full success. |
| 2) | Another important ‘generally accepted fact’ was the long-standing idea that the Southern part of the kingdom had no official orthographical system under Willem's reign. Up until recently, it was believed that the Flemish officials were free to use any spelling system they preferred. This statement was invalidated by De Groof's (2004) research, who found solid proof that the (Northern) Dutch orthographical system of Siegenbeek was the only official norm in the entire kingdom. |
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Language history across borders. The language policy of Willem I and the northern Low Countries.
Gijsbert Rutten
The language policy of King Willem I has not gained a lot of attention from the side of historians. Already in the nineteenth century - both during and directly after Willem's reign - journalists and historians were predominantly interested in the economic, financial and religious aspects of Willem's politics. The lack of scholarly interest at the time for his promotion of Dutch in the southern Low Countries may be explained by the fact that Willem's full integration of the notions of culture, language and nation into a language policy was too well in line with nineteenth century nationalist ideas to be considered as remarkable.
Language historians and sociolinguists have equally shown little interest in Willem's language politics. According to the ‘standard view’ on the history
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of Dutch, modern Dutch was established around 1650 in the northern Low Countries. As a consequence, the sociolinguistic events that affected the Dutch language during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in general, and in the southern Low Countries in particular, were considered to be of no interest for the historiography of modern Standard Dutch. Willem and his language policy could therefore be neglected.
Two cases are studied in the present article in order to dispute the standard view: the first concerns the masculine article in the nominative case (northern de vs. southern den), the second deals with the second person of the imperfect (northern gy leerdet vs. southern gy leerde). Both cases show that the linguistic history from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as well as from the southern Low Countries are of great interest for a detailed account of the history of modern Dutch.
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From ‘Batavisation’ to ‘Verdeutschung’: Willem's language policy in the Grand Duchy (1815-1840).
Gerald Stell
William I has definitely not gone down in Belgian history as a herald of French language and culture. Paradoxically, this is pretty much what he was in the so-called ‘Quartier Allemand’ of his Grand Duchy of Luxembourg until the outbreak of the Belgian Revolution. In that territory, German was initially regarded as the sworn enemy, i.e. the language of hegemonic Prussia, against which a symbolic bulwark needed to be erected. Ironically, German which was favoured at the expense of French later on, when the latter language was seen as the language of expansionist Belgium after 1830. Against this background of power relations, measures in favour of Dutch, the ‘Landtaal’, were until 1830 seriously contemplated for the Quartier Allemand of the Grand Duchy, and to a certain extent enforced without meeting with any noticeable public discontent. The events that took place in 1830 brought the official policy of ‘netherlandicization’ to a standstill, although some of its agents remained in place for a while. Nowadays, little direct evidence of Dutch linguistic influence from Willem's reign can be found in the Grand Duchy. But the Orangist imagery, manipulated by Luxembourgish nationalists as a symbol of political and cultural independence versus Prussia, motivated the cultivation of a remote Dutch connection in the interest of the nascent Luxembourgish linguistic particularism.
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We want Willem back. The United Kingdom of the Netherlands as catalyst for a new history of the Dutch language during the 19th century.
Wim Vandenbussche
In the concluding remarks to this edition, I make a plea for the ‘rediscovery’ of the linguistic history of 19th century Dutch. Many of the contributions in this volume confirm - and add new elements to - our conviction that our understanding of this vital period for the history of Dutch in Belgium has been based on unsubstantiated claims. Analyses of original archive documents indicate over and again that the state of the Dutch language at the time was far less dramatic than we have always thought. For some reason, however, few colleagues seem to have taken the effort to consult these sources in the past. The traditional historiography of Dutch in Flanders may - with the best intentions - have been influenced by the same state-of-mind that prevailed over the historiography of the Flemish Movement at large, up until recently. A renewed analysis of policy sources from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands (UKN) may serve as a starting point for a fresh and evidencebased look on 19th century Dutch in Belgium. Towards the end of the contribution I suggest a number of themes that may be worth exploring in this respect, including language education in the periphery of the UKN and the European dimension of Willem's language policy.
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