Dutch. A linguistic history of Holland and Belgium

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Map 2: Dutch dialects (in detail). Adapted from a map by Jo Daan in the ‘Atlas of the Netherlands’, plate x-2, 1968.

1	South Hollands
2	Kennemerlands
3	Waterlands
4	Zaans
5	West Frisian - North Holland
6	Utrechts
7	Zeeuws
8	Westhoeks
9	West Flemish and Zeeuws Flemish
10	Dialect of the area between West and East Flemish
11	East Flemish
12	Dialect of the area between East Flemish and Brabants
13	South Gelders
14	North Brabant and North Limburgs
15	Brabants
16	Dialect of the area between Brabants and Limburgs
17	Limburgs
18	Veluws
19	Gelders-Overijssels
20	Twents (former county)
21	Twents
22	Stellingwerfs
23	South Drents
24	Central Drents
25	Kollumerlands
26	Gronings and North Drents
27	Frisian
28	Bildts, Town Frisian, Midlands, Amelands

N.B. Very generally speaking, the higher the number, the greater the distance from standard Dutch.

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2 Dialects and Standard Dutch

The previous chapter, which attempted to define the various names by which the language is called in Dutch and English, already inevitably touched on dialectal issues. Dialectology is a field which has attracted much attention in Holland and Belgium since its foundation as a recognized scientific pursuit in the nineteenth century. Many volumes have been and still are being written on this inexhaustible aspect of the Dutch language. My aim here is a modest one. I intend simply to define what is generally regarded to be a dialect in the Netherlands and to comment on the relative importance and main features of the various dialects.

The Oxford Dictionary's definition of a dialect is a convenient starting point for discussion of this complicated aspect of Dutch studies: ‘One of the subordinate forms or varieties of a language arising from local peculiarities of vocabulary, pronunciation and idiom. In relation to modern languages usually specifically a variety of speech differing from the standard or literary “language”.... Also in a wider sense applied to a particular language in its relation to the family of languages to which it belongs.’ Starting with the latter part of the definition this is what one means when one talks of Dutch being a ‘Germanic dialect’. If one hears Dutch being referred to as a German dialect, either the speaker is using the word German as a synonym for Continental West Germanic, as is sometimes done, or he is mistaken - the relationship of Dutch to German is fraternal, not filial.

But now to return to the main part of the definition of a dialect. As the dictionary defines a dialect here in general terms, so this definition applies in specific terms quite neatly to the situation in Holland and Belgium too, with certain qualifications. Not every regional variant of Dutch is necessarily considered to be dialect - it usually depends on the degree to which the various aspects of the language mentioned in the above definition (i.e. vocabulary, pronunciation etc.) diverge from the standard.¹ It is in fact impossible to draw definite lines between certain dialects and then in turn between certain dialects and the standard language. One is, in effect, faced with a continuum of local speech as one travels from region to region. One good example of this is the continuum that exists between Zeeland, Zeeuws-Flanders and West Flanders and yet one talks in dialect circles of Zeeuws and West Flemish as seperate entities.² For this reason Van den Toorn, in his

1 It is common in Dutch linguistic circles to replace the word dialect with streektaal - regional language. Any sociologically negative connotations of the word dialect are then avoided and the term can also have a broader application i.e. it can refer to standard Dutch which contains just a little local colour, or even Frisian, usually regarded as a separate language, can be referred to as a streektaal and thus one avoids the argument of whether Frisian is or isn't a dialect of Dutch.

2 The two most characteristic features of Zeeuws/West Flemish are the confusion of g and h and the lack of diphthongisation in words containing ij and ui e.g. ies and muus where the standard language says ijs (ice) and muis (mouse).

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Map 3: Dutch dialects (in general). Taken from ‘Dutch: the language of twenty million Dutch and Flemish people’, Stichting Ons Erfdeel, 1981.

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excellent little introduction to Dutch linguistics, maintains that it is safer to talk of the dialect of Enschede, for instance, or the Drents of Ruinen i.e. of specific towns or villages.³ By so doing one avoids creating the impression, which so many dialect maps based on clusters of isoglosses give, that a certain unity and delimitation exist which in reality are not present.

Dialects don't observe provincial or even national borders. Leaving Frisian aside because of its somewhat unique status as a separate written language, I shall confine myself here to the Saxon and Franconian based dialects. Those dialects spoken along the Dutch-German border are regarded as either Dutch or German dialects according to which of those two languages the speakers of those dialects regard as their standard written language or cultuurtaal. The farmers on either side of the border in any given area speak virtually the same dialect in accordance with tribal settlement in the Dark Ages (see p. 85), but when they go to read a book or write a letter, the Dutch farmer will read and write standard Dutch, based on the language of the west of Holland, whereas the German farmer will read and write standard or so-called High German, based on the language of central Germany. Were they to exchange books or letters, they could not understand the other's language and yet in practice they speak the same dialect.

If one accepts the demarcation of Dutch dialects along the eastern border based on the above socio-political criterion, the dialects of Dutch can be broadly classified as follows:⁴

a. The Saxon based dialects of Groningen, Drenthe, Overijssel and part of Friesland and Gelderland. One talks of Gronings, Drents and Stellingwerfs (in Friesland) but Overijssel and the Saxon-speaking areas of Gelderland are divided into smaller units and here one talks, for example, of Sallands and Twents in Overijssel and Achterhoeks and Veluws in Gelderland.

Broadly speaking the river IJssel is the traditional border between the Saxon-speaking and the Franconian-speaking regions (see map 3), but the Veluwe, whose dialect is Saxon, lies west of the IJssel and reaches almost to Amersfoort.

b. The sociologically and historically more important Franconian based dialects: Hollands (with numerous sub-divisions such as Westfries, Amsterdams, Rotterdams and even Utrechts), Zeeuws, Flemish, Brabants and Limburgs.

Demarcation of Dutch dialects in the south is not as difficult as in the east due to the clearly defined language border with French that runs through Belgium (see map 7). Generally speaking it is also impossible to draw lines between the (Zeeuws-) Flemish, Brabants and Limburgs dialects of the Netherlands and those of the same name on the Belgian side of the border: the dialects are of course much older than the separation of Holland and Belgium which occurred in the late sixteenth century (see p. 24).

It would go beyond the scope of this book to start listing the characteristics of the various dialects mentioned above. Anyone interested in detailed information on

3 Toorn, M.C. van den, Nederlandse Taalkunde. Spectrum, Utrecht 1973, p. 68.

4 For a very detailed definition of what constitutes a dialect of Dutch, see Goossens, J. Inleiding tot de Nederlandse Dialectologie. Michiels, Tongeren 1972. pp. 11-30. A definitive classification of Dutch dialects is impossible because of the difficulty in drawing lines but J. Daan's map (map 2) gives a reasonably clear picture of the main divisions.

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Map 4: The Netherlands and Belgium showing significant rivers, swamps, polders and dykes.

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the topic can consult the texts recommended in the bibliography at the end of this chapter. It is perhaps useful, however, to mention some of the striking regional differences which are known to, and easily recognised by all Dutchmen.

In the dialect of Groningen there is a certain Frisian substrate (see map 9 for the historical reasons) which is, for instance, reflected in the frequency of family names ending in -inga, -stra and -ma, endings that are otherwise regarded as typically Frisian.⁵ But Gronings and the other Saxon based dialects are most characterised by the fact that they consistently pronounce the final -en in the many words that have this ending in Dutch as a syllabic n (see p. 55); after bilabial consonants the n is even pronounced as a syllabic m e.g. loopm (<lopen), krabm (<krabben). It is usual in the Franconian based dialects to drop this final n in natural speech.

Hollands, the basis of the standard language (see p. 17), knows regional varieties but none of these diverges so much from the standard that it is no longer intelligible to speakers of ABN. Westfries, the rather confusing name given to the Hollands dialect spoken in the area north and east of Alkmaar which was formerly enclosed by the Westfriese omringdijk bears, like Gronings, signs of Frisian substrate (see map 9). Actually this is the case to a certain extent with all the Hollands dialects. Well-known characteristics of Hollands include:

1	devoicing of initial v and z - the former is now accepted in ABN but the latter is not (yet?). e.g. voeten (pron. foete), zeven (pron. seve).
2	a tendency to diphthongise long o and e as in brood (bread) and weten (to know) to [o.ә] and [ε.i] respectively.
3	in Noordhollands (Westfries) the fricative gutteral in the combination sch- is pronounced as a stop e.g. school > skool.
4	the ABN diminutive ending -(p/t)je becomes -ie e.g. huisje > huisie, boompje > boompie.

The dialect of the city of Utrecht, an area that has traditionally been closely identified with Holland, is particularly noted for its tendency to drop final t's e.g. Utrecht > Uterech, gepost > gepos (posted).

Although Zeeuws shares certain important features with West Flemish, notably those mentioned in footnote 2 on page 9, it does not share other typically southern features and is not generally regarded as a southern dialect. The status of this dialect is similar to that of the province of Zeeland itself i.e. lying on the coast and having thus been closely involved with Holland in maritime ventures through the ages, Zeeland has always been regarded as part of the prosperous north, as has Utrecht. The social connotations of the Zeeuws dialect are thus different from those of the true southern dialects.

Daily one hears in Holland the expression ten zuiden van de grote rivieren (south of the great rivers); a synonym thereof is beneden de Moerdijk (under/south of the Moer Dyke), that being the dyke that traditionally ran westwards from the confluence of the Meuse and the Waal to Hollandsch Diep (see map 4). The river complex that runs east-west through the centre of the Netherlands consists, in

5 -inga (pron. inxa) is an old genitive plural e.g. Kruisinga, Huizinga; -stra, a contraction of sitter (inhabitant) e.g. Dijkstra, Heemstra, Steegstra formed from the nouns dijk (dyke), heem (home) and steeg (lane); -ma, formed from a contraction of the genitive ending -a added to a dative plural place name ending -um e.g. Miedema, Abma.

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Map 5: The High German Sound Shift in Limburg. Line 1 - the Uerdinger Line between ABN ik/ook/-lijk and High German ich/auch/-lich. Line 2 - the Panninger Line between ABN sl/sm/sn/sp/st/zw and High German schl/schm/schn/schp/scht/schw (NB: according to the rules of German orthography [ʃp] and [ʃt] are written sp and st). Line 3 - The Benrather Line between ABN maken and High German machen. Adapted from A. Weijnen, Nederlandse Dialectkunde, Assen, 1966.

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order from north to south, of the Lek (in fact the main bed of the Rhine under another name), the Waal (an arm of the Rhine that breaks away soon after the river crosses the border into Holland from Germany) and the Meuse, called the Maas in Dutch.⁶ The Meuse forms the border between Dutch and Belgian Limburg for quite a distance as it flows north from France, but it then turns west and runs parallel with the Rhine/Lek and the Waal to the important delta south of Rotterdam. These rivers have played a unique role in the history of Holland, often forming a last line of defence against attack from the south or, as in the winter of 1944, acting as a barrier to liberation by the Allies. The rivers form a rough border between the Catholic south and the Protestant north, although there are notable Catholic enclaves north of the rivers too. Geographical factors such as mountains, lakes and rivers commonly form barriers between individual languages or dialects of a particular language - the river complex of the Netherlands is a classic example of this phenomenon. What is commonly referred to as southern Dutch (Zuidnederlands) in Holland includes Brabants and Limburgs. In a broader sense it also includes the Brabants and Limburgs of Belgium as well as Flemish; however, the average Dutchman, and even Belgians for that matter, refers to all the dialects on the Belgian side of the border collectively as Flemish.

Brabants is an historically important dialect which has contributed considerably to the vocabulary and pronunciation of the standard language (see p. 101). It is usually immediately evident from his pronunciation whether a speaker hails from Brabant or Limburg, even though his Dutch may be pure ABN otherwise. There is one sound in particular which betrays a southern origin, namely g (also ch).⁷ The Dutch refer to the southern g as a zachte gee (soft g i.e. more palatal) by which they mean that the sound resembles that in German ich and thus differs distinctly from the northern g which is considerably more gutteral than even the sound in German ach. The uvular pronunciation of r is traditionally somewhat more common in the south and the trill is often more exaggerated than north of the rivers (see p. 54). The Dutch even have a verb to describe the sound - they often say of a southerner hij brouwt zo verschrikkelijk (he trills his throaty r so much).

North of the rivers there is a tendency to devoice initial v and z; this is not the case in the south. Southerners always clearly distinguish between initial f and v on the one hand and s and z on the other.

Although the beschaafd southern speaker uses it less, southern dialects are also typified by a particular form of the diminutive which is so ubiquitous in Dutch. Rather than adding -(p/t)je to the noun, they use -(s)ke e.g. huiske, boomke, kopske. In addition, southerners often use gij/ge instead of jij/je as the second person form of address (see p. 171).

Limburg is one of the few corners of Holland where true dialect is spoken even by the many town dwellers. There is even a great regional pride in the dialect. The

6 The Land van Maas en Waal, part of the province of Gelderland and the area where the city of Nijmegen is situated, belongs linguistically and sociologically to the south, unlike the rest of Gelderland.

7 In some southern dialects the original distinction between g and ch, now both pronounced unvoiced in ABN, is still preserved i.e. g is pronounced as a voiced and ch as an unvoiced fricative.

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somewhat wider gap than usual between Limburgs and the standard is due largely to the fact that this dialect shares several features with High German (see map 5 and p. 123). One small corner of Limburg, notably the towns of Kerkrade and Vaals, even lies south of the Benrather Line (i.e. the maken/machen line) which is generally accepted in linguistic circles as the border between Low and High German.⁸ However, the Uerdinger Line (i.e. the ik/ich line) runs even further north and takes in nearly all of Limburg.⁹ Also the transition from High German [ʃ] to Dutch [sX] occurs in Limburg, most of the province retaining the German sound (see map 5). The overall effect of these factors is that Limburgs sounds more like German. It is, in fact, a good example of a border dialect being considered a dialect of Dutch because its speakers, for socio-political reasons, recognise ABN as their cultuurtaal. Applying purely linguistic criteria, one could probably more correctly classify it as a dialect of German (see p. 93).

The everyday speech of the cities, particularly the Randstad, cannot be termed dialect. It is close to the standard in most respects, the cities always having acted as linguistic melting pots. In the Randstad it is more common to draw social distinctions and to call the language of the lower classes volkstaal. The degree to which one's speech can betray one's position in the social order is quite marked in Holland.¹⁰ What I have called volkstaal here is a classification commonly used by dialectologists to designate what the layman colloquially refers to as plat.¹¹

The body that deals with dialect research in Holland is the P.J. Meertens Instituut voor Dialectologie, Volkskunde en Naamkunde, Keizersgracht 596-571 in Amsterdam. The Taalatlas van Noord- en Zuidnederland (i.e. for all of Holland and Belgium) is housed here.¹² In Groningen there is also a separate body that deals with the Taalatlas van Oost-Nederland - the Nedersaksisch Instituut, a department of the State University of Groningen. The main periodical for articles on dialectological problems is Taal en Tongval, a Belgian publication with regular contributions from Holland, which was founded in 1947.

The dialect situation in Belgium is much more complex than in Holland as most of the Dutch-speaking population learns a dialect at home before progressing to

8 The Benrather Line is regarded as the main line of division because, although it is not the northernmost extremity of the High German Sound Shift in the west, it is in the east i.e. near Berlin, which lies just south of the line.

9 In the north of Limburg the Uerdinger Line corresponds with both a provincial and a natural border, namely De Peel, a large swamp area which formed a barrier in earlier times (see map 4).

10 ‘Everybody can immediately hear a tendency towards the vulgar and prevent it if he has inherited the tendency from his home environment. The astute observer can easily perceive the degrees of vulgarity and can hear in a slight slip towards the vulgar - when the speaker is excited or feels particularly at ease - whether cultivated speech has become second nature to him in his home environment, or whether he is a parvenu in this respect’. Translated from Haeringen, C.B. van, ‘Eenheid en nuance in beschaafd-nederlandse uitspraak’, in Schippers, B.W. Taal en spraak in stad en streek, Wolters-Noordhoff, Groningen 1968 pp. 34-5.

11 In German, Platt (or Plattdeutsch) is synonymous with Niederdeutsch i.e. Low German as spoken in northern Germany; it is a regional designation. In Dutch, however, the word is loaded with social connotations; Wat spreekt hij plat (he speaks so plat) is a derogatory statement.

12 In 1981 the atlas received a new name: Taalatlas van het Nederlands en het Fries.

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the standard which is also a concept not as easily defined as in Holland. Broadly speaking there are four main dialects in Belgium which correspond roughly to provincial divisions: West Flemish, East Flemish, Brabants and Limburgs. It is as difficult to draw lines between them individually as it is to draw lines between them collectively and the dialects spoken on the Dutch side of the border. They too form a continuum. The very real existence of true dialect speech throughout Flanders has been part cause of the considerable difficulties which Belgium has been confronted with since the early nineteenth century. But the situation in Belgium is so complex and so important that it warrants a separate chapter (see p. 20).

The future of dialect speech in both Holland and Belgium is difficult to speculate on. There is no doubt, particularly in Holland and to an ever increasing degree in Belgium, that communications, education and the modern media are contributing to a certain levelling-out in language and that more people are abandoning their dialect in favour of the standard, often because of social pressure. At the same time there has been an obvious increase in regional consciousness and regional pride in Europe during the last decade or so. This is all the more remarkable because of the simultaneous decrease in national awareness due to the Common Market and Nato. This curious phenomenon is being reflected in a renewed interest in regional speech as well as in other aspects of local culture. Articles in dialect in local newspapers are now common-place in many areas in Holland, for example.

The increased mobility of people, with more people than ever before shifting to live and work in areas other than those where they were born and bred, as well as the concept of commuting to work, are also having an effect on the spread of the standard language at the cost of the dialects.¹³

Before looking in detail at what is understood to be standard Dutch, one is reminded that the dialects as described above are not deviations from the standard language, as is commonly believed by the layman, but that the standard is in fact the product of those dialectal variations.

13 A good example of this are the reclaimed areas of the IJsselmeer, the so-called IJsselmeerpolders; although contiguous with the Saxon-speaking east of the country, they have been populated chiefly by Hollanders from the west (see map 2).

Standard Dutch - Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands (ABN)

The equivalent of so-called Oxford English or the King's English in the Netherlands is Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands (General Cultured Dutch), usually referred to by its initials ABN or, particularly in Belgium, simply AN. When talking of such a concept in either Dutch or English circles, one often feels compelled to add ‘so-called’ because in the case of both languages, it is difficult to define exactly what we mean, and yet in a general sense we all know what we mean. The term ABN is frequently used to designate this rather abstract concept; its use is often criticised but its critics offer no better substitute. In addition, Dutch and Belgian opinions of what is and isn't ABN often differ. Nevertheless some sort of positive definition must be attempted. One can say that what the average speaker of Dutch in the Netherlands regards as ABN is the language of the provinces of North and South

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Holland with Utrecht - in other words the language of the Randstad. The exact reasons for why the speech of this area emerged as the basis of the standard are discussed in chapter 12. But although ABN originated in this area, this does not mean it is spoken by all who live in the region, nor that it is not used outside the said area. Equally one can speak Dutch with a clearly Brabants or Gronings accent, for example, without being accused of not speaking ABN. Quite obviously then, pronunciation in itself is not a determining factor although one could argue that it depends to what degree the accent is Brabants, Gronings etc.¹⁴

A definition of ABN that was formerly commonly cited but which is clearly invalid for the reasons given above was: the best Dutch is that which does not betray in any way the region from which the speaker hails. Van den Toorn offers the following definition of ABN: ‘One can assert that an ABN speaker is one who generally accepts the vocabulary of a normal school dictionary as his own and one who actively uses it’.¹⁵ Van den Toorn offers this definition with certain reservations as nearly everyone does that attempts to define the concept. Koelmans says of ABN (in translation): ‘ABN may one day become an entity but certainly is not that at the moment. Actually it is an abstract which becomes evident if one attempts to formulate a conclusive definition’.¹⁶ Van Haeringen draws interesting comparisons and contrasts between the position of standard Dutch in Holland and that of standard English in England on the one hand, and that of High German in Germany on the other; he concludes, as the title of the book suggests, that the position of the standard is weaker than in England but stronger than in Germany.¹⁷

But what is the position of the standard in Belgium? There is no doubt that there are distinct differences in pronunciation, vocabulary and even syntax between beschaafd speakers in Holland and Belgium and yet one must concede that a Flemish professor or lawyer for example speaks ABN. A common name for their Dutch in linguistic circles is Algemeen Beschaafd Zuidnederlands. Van Dale, the authoritative dictionary in Holland and Belgium, classifies words used by Belgians which they consider not to be dialect but AN, as Zuidnederlands. He passes no further judgement. The reaction of the average Dutchman to such zuidnederlandismen is often one of disdain. The general adoption of a standard form of the language by all speakers of Flemish dialects is going on at present. Van Coetsem describes the language of beschaafd Flemings as ‘oscillating between a sort of purified dialect and, in a few cases, a Dutch that is to all intents and purposes pure “northern” Dutch’.¹⁸

14 Dutch also knows a la-di-da pronunciation of ABN, but even this, as Jo Daan points out, is in fact the accent of a given area within the Randstad, namely The Hague - Leiden. (Daan, J., Van Randstad tot landrand, Noordhollandse Uitgeversmij. A'dam 1969. p. 15.)

15 Toorn, M.C. van den, op. cit. p. 64, where he himself falls back on an earlier definition formulated by Kloeke.

16 Koelmans, L., Inleiding tot de historische taalkunde van het Nederlands. Bohn, Scheltema en Holkema Utrecht, 1979, p. 36.

17 Haeringen, C.B. van, Nederlands tussen Duits en Engels. Servire, The Hague p. 11.

18 Coetsem, F. van, ‘De rijksgrens tussen Nederland en België als taalgrens in de Algemene Taal’, in Schippers, B.W., op. cit. p. 103.

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Bibliography

TOORN, M.C. van den Nederlandse taalkunde. Spectrum, Utrecht, 1973. (Aula 499) This very useful little book, written in simple Dutch, deals with many different aspects of linguistics in general terms, as well as with reference to Dutch; dialects and ABN are two such subjects dealt with. It contains good basic bibliographies with commentary.

KOELMANS, L. Inleiding tot de historische taalkunde van het Nederlands. Bohn, Scheltema & Holkema, Utrecht 1979. A clear, total introduction to the topic with a good chapter on ABN and written in simple Dutch.

WEIJNEN, A.A. Het Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands historisch beschouwd. Van Gorcum, Assen, 1974. A reasonably technical, but good account of the topic.

GOOSSENS, J. Inleiding tot de Nederlandse dialectologie. Michiels, Tongeren, 1972. (reprinted by Wolters Noordhoff, Groningen, 1977) An excellent basic handbook on the principles of dialectology in general, as well as how they apply to Dutch in particular.

ENTJES, H. Dialecten in Nederland. Knoop & Niemeijer, Haren, 1974. A simple book written for the layman.

DAAN, J. & BLOK, D.P. Van Randstad tot landrand. Noord-Hollandsche Uitgevers Mij, Amsterdam, 1969. This contains map 2 and elaborates further on that map as well as providing a small grammophone record.

WEIJNEN, A.A. Nederlandse dialectkunde. Van Gorcum, Assen, 1958. The definitive work on Dutch dialects. Only for the specialist.