Dutch. A linguistic history of Holland and Belgium

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11 The Middle Dutch Period: 1100-1500

The written sources of mediaeval Dutch that have been preserved from the ravages of time tell us much, but they also present many problems for the historical linguist. Firstly, whereas the student of English or German has texts available in those languages from as early as the eighth century, i.e. from soon after the conversion to Christianity and thus the introduction of writing, the oldest preserved running text emanating from the Low Countries dates from the hand of the Limburger Hendrik van Veldeke. But precisely because his native tongue was Limburgs, that being a transitional dialect between Low and High Franconian (i.e. between Dutch and German), and because so much of his work has come down to us in ‘germanised’ form, there has always been a tug-o'-war between neerlandici and Germanists as to whether he belongs to Dutch or German linguistic and literary history. Be that as it may, from the end of the twelfth century a number of texts have been preserved which are recognised in Dutch linguistic circles as the oldest examples of writing in Dutch i.e. which can be termed Middle Dutch for the sake of convenience and thus texts which are considerably younger than the earliest preserved sources of English and German.

From ± 1200 more and more texts have survived, although these can only be a small proportion of what must have been written at the time. Of course this was a period in time before printing and the wide-spread use of paper - every document had to be painstakingly written out by hand on expensive parchment. It was also a time when few could write and when writing was a prerogative of the clergy on the whole.

The sources of Middle Dutch are of two kinds - official documents and literary texts. Both have their uses, but also their limitations for the historical linguist. Firstly the official documents, although not quite as old as the oldest literary sources because of the early (and even later) mediaeval practive of using Latin for such purposes, are usually dated and the place of origin is usually known. One can then, with much more certainty than is the case with literary texts, ascertain what the Dutch of a particular place at a particular point in time was like. On the other hand a considerable handicap in such research can be the unnaturalness of the language due to conservative written style or even documentary jargon such as is still often employed today in official writings. There are also various other factors which can affect the reliability of those sources: the scribe is seldom known, the scribe and dictator of a particular document are not necessarily one and the same person and thus an unnatural mixture of linguistic forms can occur. The difficulties the non-standardised spelling present are valid for the literary texts too.

On the other hand, the original version of the literary text is seldom preserved. Usually what has come down to us is a copy, or a copy of a copy (of a copy) where

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The importance of the invention of the printing press to the standardisation of Dutch is discussed on p. 96. The Plantin Museum in Antwerp is devoted to the history of printing in the Netherlands.
Taken from J. and C. Luiken, 100 Ambachten, Amsterdam, 1694.

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such copies are often much younger and often contain inconsistencies in language due to the differences in dialect between the writer of the original and the copyist(s). It is also often impossible to determine the precise date and place of compilation and even the author is commonly anonymous. The rhyme in such texts can, however, be a reasonably reliable guide to how certain sounds were pronounced at the time i.e. words that rhymed then but don't now or vice versa. The word order is not generally as reliable a guide to the natural word order of the time as it is in the official documents due to the contraints of rhyme.

Although the earliest literary texts are Limburgs in origin, the Limburgs dialect is of less importance for the later development of ABN than the other two southern dialects, Flemish and Brabants. As far as the recorded written word is concerned, the Middle Dutch Period is represented overwhelmingly by texts of southern (i.e. Flemish and Brabants) origin. From the thirteenth century it is texts of predominantly Flemish origin which have come down to us, from the fourteenth a combination of Flemish and Brabants texts, whereas by the fifteenth century a clearly Brabants hegemony can be ascertained. This situation corresponds with the economic properity of the areas concerned, with the predominance of Flemish texts occurring simultaneously with the hey-day of Bruges and Ghent, while the increased frequency of Brabants from the mid-fourteenth century corresponds with the shift in economic fortune from the cities of Flanders to those of Brabant, Brussels and Antwerp in particular. This is one of the many examples of the indivisability of Belgium and Holland when it comes to historical issues. The fortunes of the county of Holland also began to improve in the fifteenth and sixteenth century, due to increased trade, and this too is reflected in the frequency of texts in the dialect of Holland.

The difficulties the spelling of Middle Dutch presents are the difficulties that all languages experience when one attempts to put down in writing the sounds of one language with the alphabet of another. In other words, the beginnings of the written word in the Low Countries, as in the rest of western and northern Europe, were an attempt to record a Germanic language with the letters of the Latin alphabet which was one of the most important legacies of the Roman Catholic church. Both the consonants and particularly the vowels presented difficulties for the scribes as there were originally only 23 letters in the Latin alphabet at their disposal. Thus the following letters alternate in Middle Dutch for example: c/k/ck, i/j, u/v, s/z; [u], spelt oe in modern Dutch, could be written as u/oe/ue while [ø], spelt eu in modern Dutch, appeared as ue/oe/eu.

Trading links between the cities of the northern and southern Netherlands and between these and the Hansa cities of the north of Germany and the Baltic must already have contributed in the Middle Ages to exchange of vocabulary and to a certain standardisation in language, at least in the towns. The creation of a truly standardised Dutch was still a long way off, however.

The development of the towns, based on trade, and consequently the ever increasing role of the bourgeoisie, was of utmost importance to the cultivation of the vernacular as a written, as well as a spoken language for official transactions. Latin, the language of the church and thus of education, had been employed in administration too because it had already enjoyed the status of a written language for many centuries. But a knowledge of Latin was a prerogative of the clergy chiefly

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and also to a lesser extent of the aristocracy. But with the growth of the towns and the wealth, and consequently the importance, of the third estate, this class too needed to master the skills of reading and writing for the recording of business transactions etc. Not having a knowledge of Latin at their disposal, however, the bourgeoisie was compelled to conduct its affairs in the vernacular. Having learnt to read and write, the burghers were in a position to desire and require texts on every possible topic in their mother tongue, thus giving rise to a supply and demand situation which would become common place from the end of the fifteenth century after the invention of the printing press. With Dutch, or Diets as it was commonly called at that time (see p. 4), having attained the status of an administrative and business language, non-literary, lay documents became even more frequent from about 1250. Latin was not completely replaced in this regard for a long time to come, however. In the south, French also began to compete with Dutch in this capacity as Latin was gradually abandoned in favour of the vernacular (see p. 21).

Even in the religious sphere Dutch began to be used to a degree for the benefit of the bourgeoisie although on the whole the church and the universities were to remain the last bastions of Latin in Europe. The writings of Erasmus of Rotterdam, the well-known Dutch humanist who lived from 1469 to 1536, were entirely in Latin. The long written tradition of Latin was also reflected in the written style of the vernacular in that Latin constructions were often employed and otherwise extinct case forms in Dutch were retained in imitation of Latin. This phenomenon is found to a greater extent in Renaissance writings and is one of several reasons why those texts are often less intelligible to the modern reader than many Middle Dutch texts written centuries earlier.

Throughout the above descriptions of the development of Dutch as well as throughout what follows, it should be remembered that at any given time in history the majority of Dutch speakers were the peasants, living on the land and often isolated from developments taking place in the cities. A spread in the skills of writing and reading, the adoption of foreign loan words due to international contacts, attempts to standardise the language etc., all passed the peasant by. As the majority of the people were not literate until the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and were thus unable to record their thoughts and speech, the linguistic historian, like the socio-political historian until recently, often tends to ignore them. But this attitude is determined by what is available in writing.

The first lay schools where writing in the vernacular was taught, but even then only to very few privileged middle class children, appeared in the late thirteenth century as a result of the demand emanating from the newly important position of that class. The education was undoubtedly very basic - the position of schoolmeester was regarded as a trade. Meanwhile, however, Latin schools which were run by the church, continued to flourish and out of these the first universities would emerge in the humanist period, the first being the Catholic University of Louvain which was founded in 1425.

The importance of the printing press to the development of the vernacular as a fully fledged tool of cultural expression and the role printing played in the standardisation of the written word cannot be overestimated. Whether it was Johannes Gutenberg of Mainz or Laurens Coster of Haarlem who first developed a printing press with movable letters, is a long-standing debate that is of little

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concern here. It is certain, however, that the Netherlands were well to the fore at a very early date in exploiting the potential of the new invention. Particularly the cities of the north, such as Delft, Utrecht, Leiden and Haarlem, were quick off the mark. In the south the main centres were Leuven and above all Antwerp.

The role which the printers played in standardisation was as follows. No longer was a text painstakingly copied by a scribe for the exclusive use of the person who commissioned the work and thus books had been beyond the financial means of most. With the arrival of the printing press, many copies of a given book could be produced and reproduced and circulation over large areas was possible. This was not only important for the spread of knowledge, but if a book was now to be read in areas as far apart as Antwerp, Amsterdam and Zwolle, there was a practical need to attempt to standardise the language and of course the spelling. Such standardisation was often applied by the printer to a work another had written. As Brabant, particularly Antwerp, gradually emerged as the capital of printing in the Low Countries after 1500, Brabants forms became so commonplace in printed texts that many are still with us today and are regarded as so-called schrijftaal (see p. 103). The earliest books are either Brabants or Brabants-Hollands. Amsterdam soon began to take over as the most important centre of printing in the north; even in the east of the country, i.e. by the printers of Zwolle and Deventer, attempts were made to follow the west in the printed word. This meant that the Saxon dialects of the east were never to enjoy a written status, unlike Frisian in the north. Antwerp, boasting names like Plantin and Mercator in the sixteenth century, was to remain Europe's capital of printing until its fortunes declined during the Eighty Years' War and much of its importance in this, as well as in many other fields, shifted to the north. Even today there is a disproportionate number of important international publishing houses based in Holland e.g. Martinus Nijhoff, Brill, Mouton.

The printed book, above all that in the vernacular, brought a knowledge and enjoyment of the written word within reach of everyone - and demand created supply. Herewith a new age in the development of all the vernaculars of Europe had dawned.

Bibliography

VOOYS, C.G.N. de Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse Taal. Wolters-Noordhoff, Groningen, 1970. Chapter 2 of this book deals with the Middle Dutch period.

KOELMANS, L. ‘Middelnederlands’. In Inleiding tot de historische taalkunde van het Nederlands (chapter 10). Bohn, Scheltema & Holkema, Utrecht, 1979.

KETTERIJ, C. van de Grammaticale interpretatie van Middelnederlandse teksten. Wolters-Noordhoff, Groningen, 1980. A good, practical guide to the reading of Middle Dutch texts. It has appeared in two parts, the first containing a grammar and the other containing passages for translation with word lists. A cheap, modern, constructive approach to the subject.

LOEY, A. van ‘Altniederländisch und Mittelniederländisch’, in Kurzer Grundriss der Germanischen Philologie bis 1500, Band I. L.E. Schmitt (ed.) De Gruyter, Berlin, 1970.

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LE ROUX, T.H. & J.J. Middelnederlandse grammatica. Van Schaik, Pretoria, 1967. Although written in Afrikaans, that causes little impediment. This book contains just the right amount of detail for the newcomer to Middle Dutch.

LOEY, A. van Middelnederlandse spraakkunst (2 vols.) Wolters, Groningen, 1966. An excellent treatment of the subject. Volume one is devoted to morphology and volume two to phonology. Regarded as a standard textbook in Holland and Belgium.

BOUMAN, A.C. Middelnederlandse bloemlezing. Thieme, Zutphen, 1948. Although this is predominantly an anthology of Middle Dutch literature, it contains a very good simple synopsis of the grammar as well.

VERDAM, J. Middelnederlandsch handwoordenboek. Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1932 (reprinted 1956). This is the abbreviated version of the larger dictionary by Verdam and Verwijs (see below). It is to Middle Dutch what the Shorter Oxford is to Modern English.

VOORT VAN DER KLEIJ, J.J. VAN DER, Verdam Middelnederlandsch Handwoordenboek. Supplement. Martinus Nijhoff, Leiden/Antwerpen, 1983.

VERWIJS, E. & VERDAM, J. Middelnederlandsch woordenboek. Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1885 - 1941. (Volumes I-XI). (reprinted in 1969) This is the standard complete dictionary of Middle Dutch.

MEIJER, R.P. Literature of the Low Countries. Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1978. Those interested in reading a palatable synopsis of Middle Dutch literature in English are referred to chapters 1-3 in this book.