Dutch. A linguistic history of Holland and Belgium

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Section 1 The Present

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Map 1: The Netherlands and Belgium showing provincial borders and main cities.

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1 What is Dutch?

Dutch is the mother tongue of some 14 million people living in the Kingdom of the Netherlands (also known as Holland), of some 6 million so-called Flemings living in Belgium (the remaining 4 million Walloons speak French) and is also spoken by a chiefly rural population numbering about 150,000 in the north-west of France (French Flanders). In addition, it is the official language of the Republic of Surinam and of the Leeward group of islands of the Dutch Antilles (Curaçao, Aruba and Bonaire) - this is not to say that it is necessarily the mother tongue of these peoples, but it is spoken by most of the population (250,000 and 264,000 respectively). Although Indonesia has been independent since 1948, there are still many older people who were educated under the Dutch in the former Dutch East Indies and who still speak the language very well. After the war approximately 300,000 Indonesians chose to move to Holland where all assimilated, at least linguistically, very well. In the years prior to the granting of independence to Surinam (Dutch Guyana), many of the Creoles, Indians, Negroes, Javanese and Chinese chose to move to Holland (half of the population in fact) and these people have also been linguistically assimilated. Surinamers have, in effect, continued to arrive in Holland since their independence in November 1975. It should also not be forgotten that hundreds of thousands of people left the Netherlands, in the 1950's in particular, to settle in Canada, U.S.A., Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. Many of these have retained their mother tongue, although many have not preserved it as well as other similar migrant groups in the countries mentioned.

Afrikaans, which has gradually developed from the Dutch of the first settlers that arrived in South Africa in the seventeenth century, is spoken by about 5 million people as mother tongue (2½ million Whites and 2½ million Cape Coloureds) and is used by millions more of all races as a second or third language. It is reasonably easily understood by speakers of Dutch, particularly in its written form.

So what might at first glance appear to be one of Europe's minor languages is, in fact, spoken by a considerable number of people in the world as a whole. When looked at in an historical perspective there was of course a time when the Dutch sailed the high seas to every corner of the earth where their influence was felt and their language used. The few Dutch-speaking areas outside Europe mentioned above are the meagre remains of that period.

As this book is to deal with many different aspects of the concept Dutch, definition of a certain number of terms is imperative at this early stage. The terms I will attempt to define in the following paragraphs can be quite confusing, often having more than one meaning depending on context and the point of view of the user. They have also often led to misconceptions which are wide-spread both within Holland and abroad, not the least in English-speaking countries.

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Dutch

It may have struck the reader as strange that the country should be known as Holland or the Netherlands and yet the people and their language are designated by the word ‘Dutch’. Those with a knowledge of German will immediately recognise the word as being cognate with Deutsch but probably still wonder how this semantic shift occurred. After all, in Dutch itself the word Duits (formerly spelt Duitsch - see p. 41) means German too.

It is worth spending a little time on the origin and connotations of these cognate words as it is both an interesting and an important issue in a book such as this. Etymologically these forms are all to be traced back to a Germanic word *ᚦeoda^1. (tribe, people) and the adjective pertaining to this word, *ᚦeodisk. The word was first recorded in latinised form in the second half of the eighth century i.e. in the Carolingian era and area and thus very close to, if not in the Netherlands. The word occurs in Old High German as diutisk. By this time many of the Germanic peoples that had moved southwards during the Great Migrations (see p. 85) were becoming romanised and the term frankisk, for instance, was already ambiguous. An unambiguous name to denote the Germanic speech of the area, as opposed to the Vulgar Latin Speech of Gaul as well as the Latin of the Church and the learned, was theudisk i.e. the language of the people. Subsequently it came to denote all the German peoples. Further cognate forms are Teutonic, often used as a synonym for Germanic, and the Italian word tedesco (German).

The Germanic peoples of both the Low Countries and Germany called themselves Duits(ch)ers/Deutsche and their language Duits(ch)/Deutsch, although from the seventeenth century on the designation Nederduits (Low German) was commonly used in Holland, as it was in the north of Germany where the concept it designated was in fact somewhat different. In Germany the term Niederdeutsch refers to all those German dialects, most of the which are Saxon based, that did not take part in the Second German Sound Shift (see p. 123) and which do not form the basis of the standard written and spoken language known as Hochdeutsch.

According to the Oxford Dictionary entry under ‘Dutch’, Germany was known to its inhabitants from the 12th and 13th centuries as Deutschland and in the 15th and 16th centuries the word ‘Dutch’ in English meant German, including the Low German of the Netherlands. When the Netherlands became an independent state in the late 16th century and then emerged in the 17th century as a great seafaring nation, in which capacity there was much contact with England, the word underwent a narrowing of meaning in English and came to designate simply the (Low) Dutch of the Seven United Provinces, otherwise known in English as the Dutch Republic. In Holland the word retained its original ambiguous meaning until the late 19th century, although usually in the form Nederduits^2.; it gradually ceded to the less ambiguous Nederlands in the early 20th century.

Dutch also knows an Ablaut variant of the word Duits, namely Diets. Seen

1. It is conventional in historical linguistics to place an asterisk beside reconstructed forms to indicate that they are only hypothetical. The symbol ᚦ is a former rune which is used to designate voiceless th.

2. The word is still preserved in the names of two of the Dutch Reformed Churches in South Africa, die Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk, die Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk.

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historically, the modern word Duits is derived from the Middle Dutch duutsc, the Hollands form of the word, whereas dietsc was the Flemish form in the Middle Ages. What were thus originally merely regional variants of the same word are now separate words. Diets is or has been used in some circles to designate Dutch, particularly the idea of the whole Dutch-speaking area e.g. Dietsgezind (pro-Diets). The term Diets was commonly used by the NSB, the Dutch Nazi movement. An interesting remnant of its former wider use is the expression iemand iets diets maken - to make something clear to someone (lit. to explain it in the vernacular).

Nederlands

The most common and only official designation for Dutch in the language itself is Nederlands (formerly Nederlandsch). As was mentioned above, this term fully replaced Nederduits as the most usual name from the beginning of the twentieth century although it was commonly used long before that time. Some early English books refer to Dutch as Low Dutch, a literal translation of Nederduits. Standard Dutch, which is discussed in more detail on p. 17, is called Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands (General Cultivated Dutch) and is often referred to by the abbreviation ABN. During the last few years there has been a concerted effort in Belgium to replace the word Vlaams (see below) in all official titles and correspondence by the word Nederlands, reinforcing the idea that there is in fact no distinction between Nederlands and Vlaams, e.g. the Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie voor Taal en Letterkunde in Ghent had its name so changed in the said period. In speech the term still competes with Vlaams in Belgium and in the Netherlands it competes with the word Hollands (see below). In linguistic and other learned circles the terms Noord-en Zuidnederlands are often used when it is necessary to make a distinction between the Dutch of Holland and that of Belgium. For instance, Van Dale's dictionary, the one most commonly consulted in both countries for the final word on language issues, designates peculiarly Belgian words and phrases as Zuidnederlands, this in keeping with the name Zuidelijke Nederlanden, which is often used in historical contexts. The term Zuidnederlands can however also refer to anything south of the rivers (see p. 13); of course usage in Belgium and in the provinces of Holland south of the rivers is also very often the same.

From time to time there have been attempts to introduce the word Netherlandic into English to render more adequately the feeling behind the Dutch word Nederlands. It was felt, and still is by some academics for example, that English people associate ‘Dutch’ only with Holland whereas the word Nederlands, as mentioned above, also designates the language of northern Belgium, commonly known as Flemish (see below). Particularly after the publication of C.B. van Haeringen's Netherlandic Language Research in 1954, the term enjoyed some currency in certain restricted circles. His aim was to indicate that when studying Dutch language and literature, one was dealing equally with both Holland and Belgium. Fortunately the word seems to have died a natural death and I would like to lay a final sod of earth on its grave in this work.^3. I regard it as one of the tasks of a book such as this

3. Art historians refer to the Flemish and Dutch schools of painting combined as Netherlandish art. This limited use of such a word in such a limited circle seems to me to be legitimate.

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to encourage the general use of the word ‘Dutch’ to indicate the language of both countries. This is in line with official Dutch and Belgian practice and is also in accordance with the desires of the Internationale Vereniging voor Neerlandistiek (International Association for Dutch Studies).

It should be added that in certain official titles in English the word ‘Netherlands’ can be used as an adjective e.g. Royal Netherlands Embassy.^4. In Holland and Belgium it is usual to refer to the study of Dutch language and literature as neerlandistiek (formerly sometimes nederlandistiek) and one who has graduated in same is a neerlandicus (plural neerlandici; the feminine form neerlandica has on the whole ceded to the masculine these days). Neerlandicus competed for some time with neerlandist but now seems to have won the race. Lacking any suitable equivalent in English, those in the field usually employ the Dutch words when the need arises. After all, even Germanists can only call themselves such in initiated circles in English.

4. It is interesting to note that in bilingual South Africa, where the words Dutch and Dutchman have long been derogatory terms used by the English to designate Cape Dutch/Afrikaans and Afrikaners, it is not uncommon to hear the words Nederlands or (Hoog)hollands being used in English to refer to Dutch. A Dutchman too is nearly always called a Hollander to avoid the above unfortunate connotation. Most university departments of Afrikaans are entitled Departement van Afrikaans en Nederlands because of the indivisability of the two in history.

Hollands

It is common over a wide area of the Netherlands, especially in the provinces of North and South Holland and in Utrecht, to use the word Hollands as a synonym for Nederlands. The origin of this very common practice is the same as the English tradition of calling the Netherlands ‘Holland’ i.e. because of the economic might of these two coastal provinces (with which also Utrecht allied itself culturally and linguistically) the rest of the country was, and to a certain degree still is, overshadowed. In English there are no social overtones and in fact to refer consistently to the country as the Netherlands often sounds pedantic or like translated Dutch. Many people living outside the provinces mentioned object to the country being referred to as Holland and the language as Hollands and for this reason the word is never used in official contexts. In linguistic circles it refers to the dialect of North and South Holland (see p. 13).

Flemish

Flemish, the English translation of the Dutch word Vlaams, is a word that has often been used incorrectly in English and has thus been the cause of many misconceptions. If I begin with the various connotations of the word Vlaams, how these misconceptions arose in English will become self evident. Vlaams can have four meanings, depending on the context and who is using the word:

1 First and foremost it designates the Dutch dialects of the two Belgian provinces West and East Flanders, although dialectologists would see only Westvlaams as

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pure Flemish and Oostvlaams as a mixture of Flemish and Brabants (see p. 17). The dialect of the north-west of France, the area known as Frans-Vlaanderen, is also called Flemish. This definition of the meaning of Flemish/Vlaams is one which would be known only to scholars of Dutch on the whole.

2 In the everyday speech of Dutchmen Vlaams is Dutch as spoken in Belgium (see p. 33).

3 In the speech of Belgians the word Vlaams designates Dutch as spoken by them, regardless of which Dutch-speaking province they hail from.

4 Finally, there are many people who live under the misconception that Flemish is a separate, if related language to Dutch. The idea is extremely wide-spread in English-speaking countries and many a linguistic publication will classify Flemish as a separate language in the family of Germanic tongues. Because of Belgium's separate history since the late sixteenth century, it is not surprising that this misconception arose and became so wide-spread. I am sure that many a Frenchman too does not realise that the patois of the hinterland of Dunkirk which he labels as flamand is in fact but a dialect of the fully accepted ‘cultural language’ he calls hollandais or néerlandais.

The historical background of this problem will be looked at in greater detail later in the book (see p. 20). Suffice it to say at this stage that there is no such thing as written Flemish; it is but one of several Dutch dialects and exists only in speech - a literate Fleming writes Dutch.

Bibliography

LOCKWOOD, W.B. An informal history of the German language. André Deutsch, London, 1976. This book contains lucid chapters on Dutch, Frisian and Afrikaans in addition to general information on Germanic which is ultimately relevant to the history of Dutch. It is intended for use by undergraduates and laymen.

VANDEPUTTE, O. (i.a.) Dutch - the language of twenty million Dutch and Flemish people. Ons Erfdeel, 1981. This is an excellent and recent summary of many of the issues dealt with in this book.

HAERINGEN, B.C. van Netherlandic language research. Brill, Leiden, 1960. Although this book does not take into account anything published after 1960, it is a very good bibliography with commentary on all major works relating to all aspects of Dutch studies. In addition it contains an explanation of some of the issues mentioned in this chapter.

There are very few general accounts of Dutch, as mentioned in the preface, and with the exception of Vandeputte's booklet, there are no monographs devoted entirely to the topic.