Netherlandic language research

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Chapter One
The Netherlands and Netherlandic.

Definitions and Terminology

English and American readers are accustomed to use the term ‘Dutch’ for the language of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. In this book, however, we propose to avoid using that term and to substitute for it, as we mentioned in the Introduction, the term ‘Netherlandic’. Now, this may seem a completely unnecessary complication designed for the sole purpose of baffling the English-speaking reader. But the fact is that the language we are considering is not confined to the Kingdom of the Netherlands but is spoken and written in the northern part of the Kingdom of Belgium as well. And the farther back we go in history the more impracticable it becomes to use the term ‘Dutch’, associated as it is with a political situation of comparatively recent birth.

The area where Netherlandic is spoken as the mother tongue can be seen in the map (Fig. 1). The southern limit is sharply defined and is formed by the boundary between Netherlandic and French in Belgium. In the east the language boundary follows the political frontier, but the popular dialects on either side of the line merge. The official language of church and school is in the Netherlands, Standard Netherlandic, in Germany, High German. Most of the province of Friesland forms an exception, for there Frisian is not only the language of colloquial intercourse but also that in which, to an ever increasing extent, higher intellectual discussion is carried on.

We explained in the Introduction how the term ‘Holland’ for the Kingdom of the Netherlands and ‘Hollandic’ for its language came into widespread use. In linguistic publications, however, ‘Hollandic’ is strictly limited to the dialect of Holland, which was formerly one province but is nowadays divided into South- and North-Holland.

In Belgium the present situation is more complicated than the map suggests. The treaty of Munster (1648) established a strict line of demarcation between the northern and the southern provinces, and in the latter French became more and more the dominant language in the higher social circles and the native language was restricted to the lower classes. During the years of French domination from 1795

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to 1814 the position of French was strengthened still more. From 1815 to 1830 the Netherlands and Belgium were united in one kingdom, and in the Belgian part Netherlandic had a status equal to that of French. After the Belgian revolt of 1830 and the foundation of the Kingdom of Belgium, French regained its privileged position and it was only very gradually that Netherlandic freed itself from the

Fig. 1. Survey map. Scale 1:2 000 000.

neglect into which it had fallen. The Language Act of 1938 made Netherlandic the only official language in the northern part of Belgium but in reality its position is not at all the same as that of French. The form in which it is spoken all over the country is one of local dialects; civilized Netherlandic, phonetically based on ‘Hollandic’, is in use only among relatively small groups of philologists and better-

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educated people, and even the latter often handle it rather clumsily.

The term ‘Hollandic’, which is somewhat ambiguous in general usage, is clear-cut in linguistic terminology. The same cannot be said of the names Flanders and Flemish, especially where the latter is concerned. ‘Flanders’ (Nthl. Vlaanderen) is sometimes used to indicate

Fig. 2. The Netherlands in the 16th century.

the whole northern part of Belgium that has Netherlandic as its native tongue; in a narrower sense it is the name given to the provinces of Flanders (in the Middle Ages a county). Similarly, ‘Flemish’ can signify broadly ‘Netherlandic in Belgium’ or, more narrowly, ‘the dialect of the provinces of Flanders’. Another term in fairly wide-

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spread use at present, in linguistic literature as well as elsewhere, is ‘Flemish Belgium’ (Vlaams-België) for the Netherlandic-speaking part of Belgium. In linguistic matters, especially where older periods are concerned, we usually draw the line more sharply and denote by ‘Flemish’ (if necessary West- and East-Flemish) the dialect of Flanders in the narrow sense. In that case Flemish is opposed to Brabantic, the dialect of the area occupied by the mediaeval duchy of Brabant, a much larger region than that covered by the present-day Belgian province of the name. In the duchy of Brabant were situated, among other towns, Brussels, Antwerp, Louvain, Breda and Bois-le-Duc. To the east of Brabant in the wider sense lay the duchy of Limburg, occupying roughly the same territory as is now formed by the present Belgian province of Limburg and the southern part of Dutch Limburg. This political division provides the basis for distinguishing between three linguistic groups in Southern Netherlandic: Flemish, Brabantic and Limburgic.

As we have seen, the development of Common Standard Netherlandic is justification enough for the practice of calling that language ‘Hollandic’. But we should not overlook the fact that in former times it was the southern provinces, first Flanders and then Brabant, that were culturally and economically in the forefront. It is in these provinces for example, that the oldest and most important documents in Netherlandic originated. In the 15th century Brabant was without a rival to the title of the most important region in the Low Countries and it was highly probable that the dialect of Brabant would eventually become the basis of the supra-dialectal common language. In the event, things took a different course, but down to our own days written. Netherlandic exhibits many peculiarities, strange to spoken Hollandic, that serve to remind us of the time when Brabantic was looked upon as a model worth imitation. An example of the strength of this Brabantic influence on the written language is to be found in the 2nd person of the personal pronoun, where gij (you) was used almost exclusively in the written language until the second half of the 19th century whereas in Holland, now the Netherlandic cultural centre, it hardly occurs in the spoken language at all.

In contrast to the relatively weak position of cultivated Netherlandic in Belgium, the popular dialects have maintained themselves vigorously. This makes the Southern Netherlands of great importance for dialectological investigations and the historical studies associated with them

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because, generally speaking, the southern dialects have remained more archaic than the northern ones and have been less levelled down by the influence of a superior standard language.

Until the 19th century the name ‘Nederduits’ was often given to Netherlandic, Duits (or the dialectal variant Diets) being the old designation of the national language, the ‘language of the people’ as opposed to Latin, the language of culture and scholarship. Nowadays ‘Nederduits’ is applied in linguistic works only to the language spoken in the northern part of Germany; thus it corresponds exactly to the English term ‘Low German’. In this particular case linguistic terminololy has been determined by political frontiers, and it cannot be denied that there has been a certain amount of nationalistic feeling involved here, for the frontiers are of comparatively recent date and the dialects on both sides merge without any sharp contrasts. For practical reasons, however, the distinction between ‘Nederlands’ and ‘Nederduits’ is necessary and is accepted by Germanists in Germany and elsewhere.