Dutch is spoken in the Netherlands and the northern part of Belgium (Flanders). Traces of it can still be found in French Flanders. In the Netherlands it is the only national language; in Belgium one of the three national languages. In the Middle Ages, Dutch was preferably called Diets [diet, people] or Duuts (cf. Eng.: Dutch); it was not until the 16th century that the name ‘Dutch’ appeared, which had to endure competition from ‘Low German’ for a long time to come. From the beginning of the 19th century, the name Dutch was generally introduced in the official language.
The language of the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium is often called Flemish, but is officially also called Dutch. In the east of the Netherlands, the border with Germany forms the official border between the Ned. and the German language area; however, the dialects from the border region gradually merge into one another. In the south, the language border does not coincide with the national border, but runs straight through Belgium and cuts off the Westhoek from the northwest of France, the area between Leie and Grevelingse Aa. This boundary has changed little since about 1200; only in French Flanders has French continuously gained more ground, so that Dutch seems doomed to disappear completely there.
HISTORY
Among the Germanic languages, Dutch belongs to the West Germanic language group. From about the 5th century, this divides into an Anglo-Frisian and a continental-Germanic group. The second (High German) sound shift splits the last (ca.500-700) into the High German and Low German dialects. The Low German group can in turn be subdivided into a Saxon and an Old Low Franconian. Dutch mainly arose from a dialect of the latter, West Nerd Frankish.
The West Low Franconian language derives its name from the Franks, a West Germanic people who crossed the Lower Rhine around the middle of the 3rd century and in the following centuries penetrated further and further south into Belgium and Gaul, where they learned from the language of the country (which to them was France). hot) has had great influence (later pushed back). The language of two other West Germanic tribes, Frisians and Saxons, also influenced Dutch. In the Dutch. language area has undergone a gradual franking process from the southeast to the southwest and northeast. In contrast, the northwestern coastal area and to a lesser extent the coastal area in general exhibit a number of language features traditionally referred to as ingveonisms [Ingvaeones, a tribe that probably lived along the coast]. Examples of ingveonisms are: the form muide(n) = monde(n) in place names like Muiden, Arnemuiden, Diksmuide etc.; the ie instead of onion in people; the merging of the male and female gender, etc. Specifically Frisian (Frisian also belongs to the Ingveon dialects) are eg ft instead of cht (graft = canal), words with the sound connection sj (sjokken, shuffleboard) and tj (tjalk, tjotter).
Specifically Saxon are the eu in words like beech, sneu, bleu and de ee instead of ie (humility, actually: serving heart). The area of the West Low Franconian dialects still occupies the largest part of Ned. language area in, viz. Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, most of Gelderland, Brabant, Limburg and the Netherlands. speaking area of Belgium. A small part of Ned. dialects (the east of Noord-Brabant, Dutch and Belgian Limburg and the northeast of the province of Liège) belongs to East Low Franconian; here one says ao ich, mich etc. instead of I, me etc.
The Saxon dialects can be found in Groningen, Drenthe, Overijssel and the county of Zutphen, while Frisian with its dialects in the prov. Friesland is spoken. A number of differences in the field of sound, word formation, deflection and word stock show the independence of Dutch from other Germanic languages such as High German and English. Three phases can be distinguished in the development from Dutch in its oldest forms to that of today: Old Dutch, Middle Dutch and New Dutch. There are few sources for Old Dutch, the language spoken here until about the 12th century. About 1170 (Hendrik van Veldekes Sint Servaes) the Middle Dutch period begins, which runs until the middle of the 16th century.
Today, there is no generally accepted colloquial language; each author wrote in his own dialect, although the desire to make himself understood outside the dialect area forced many to avoid the dialect’s most striking features. While Flemish was at the top of the literature in the 14th century (Maerlant), in the 15th and 1st half of the 16th century, Brabantian (Ruusbroec) was especially influential, partly due to the flourishing of the Brabant cities (particularly Antwerp). Probably via ‘s-Hertogenbosch and Utrecht this must have had an early influence on the language of Holland south of the IJ. The beginning of the New Netherlandish period, characterized by the emergence of a common colloquial language, coincided with the Habsburgs’ pursuit of centralization of the Ned. regions.
Plantin’s Antwerp printing house also produced a number of dictionaries, which were based on the native language of Brabant and which acquired great authority. When, especially after the fall of Antwerp (1585), a large number of mainly intellectual people from Brabant settled in the cities of the north, the center of gravity of the Ned shifted. culture spread to the Dutch cities, especially to Amsterdam, where the people of Brabant soon set the tone. It can be ascribed to their influence, among other things, that the i and the u were diphthongized into ij and ui, either because they introduced this Brabant pronunciation, or because they followed the process that was already taking place in the Dutch cities at the time. have hastened. In the meantime, Spieghel and Coornhert had laid the foundations for a generally civilized pronunciation of Dutch in Amsterdam in the Twespraack van de Nederduitse letterkunst (1584). The astonishingly rapid boom of Amsterdam boosted the self-confidence of its inhabitants; after 1600, typical Amsterdam-Dutch shapes become more and more the rule when you and you. Many 17th-century writers tried to approach the vernacular in their work, especially in plays.
The civilized colloquial language, which began to form in the course of the 17th century among the wealthy and intellectual bourgeoisie of the Dutch cities and which could therefore rightly be called Dutch, also exerted influence in the other provinces. This influence and the inclusion of the eastern regions in the Ned. The national government has prevented the formation of a general eastern literary language, which reformed authors such as Jan Utenhove laid the foundation for in the 16th century, and has relegated the language, as spoken in the eastern provinces from Groningen to Gelderland, to a dialect. Throughout the 17th century, numerous speech artists struggled to establish rules for written language, they strived for artificial distinctions as much as possible and took little or no account of the spoken language. The influence of the language of the Statenbijbel (1637) has also made itself felt, at least in Protestant circles. In the 18th century the authority of grammar became more and more binding; the grammaire raisonnée, especially advocated by Balthasar Huydecoper (16951778), was imposed on almost all writers. Poetry societies such as Nil Volentibus Arduum (1669) fostered this speech and stylistic tyranny; nevertheless, writers such as J.van Effen, Betje Wolff and Aagje Deken went their own way and tried to reproduce the spoken language of their time as much as possible in their work. The contradiction arose in the struggle for spelling,
Modern Dutch
Modern Dutch, as it is spoken in the Netherlands, can best be characterized as originally the language of the civilized circles in the Dutch cities. For a long time this has been no more than a standard to which only a relatively few have adhered; the vast majority, especially of the petty bourgeoisie, until recently undoubtedly spoke almost exclusively local dialect, as the rural population still predominantly does. But while the spelling-Siegenbeek already brought unity to the spelling of Dutch around 1800, the spoken language has only followed this unity at a distance, and there is still no unity in this sense, that all Dutch would use the same pronunciation. talk. However, the ever-increasing mutual traffic, the influence of school and mass communication contributed much to this unity, but at first hearing the place of residence or origin of a large part of the population can still be recognized by certain dialectical idiosyncrasies. In the Southern Netherlands, after the separation of the northern regions, no general Ned. colloquial language, because no city was so dominant that it could use its dialect as the norm.
In the 18th century, Jan des Roches (1740-87) made an attempt to convert Antwerp into general Zuidned. written language, but despite government support, this ended in failure. Meanwhile, the influence of French increased more and more, first among the upper classes, later also among the bourgeoisie. The reunification with the Netherlands (1815-30) only temporarily improved the position of Dutch in Flanders and after the separation the chances of French in Flanders were better than ever before. In the newly founded kingdom of Belgium, all government bodies were systematically Frenchified, and French also became the official language in education. The Flemish Movement was created in response to this. After a fierce struggle, this resulted in the establishment of a definitive language border.
In French Flanders, Dutch no longer had any viability, since this area was definitively included in the French Empire in 1678 and the use of the Flemish language, contrary to the provisions of the peace treaty of Nijmegen, was banned. It is remarkable that up to this day in the cities as well as in the countryside West Flemish is still spoken sporadically, albeit also strongly Frenchified. The number of Dutch speakers here in 1930 was still about 200,000, but has declined sharply since then.
In different periods it has Ned. be influenced by other languages, in particular in terms of word stock. To a large extent it has this in common with other Germanic languages. In the first centuries of the Christian era, the Germans borrowed hundreds of words from the Romans from various areas of culture (animal names such as lion, peacock, oyster; fruit names such as cherry, pear, fig; tree and plant names such as lily, elm, rose). names of materials and metals such as copper, marble, pitch; names of household goods such as dish, table, mirror; of food and drink such as butter, cheese, wine, etc.). After the introduction of Christianity many Latin words have been added to the Ned. language adopted (altar, cross, devil, angel, preaching). Historical and political causes led to, that after Latin, French has had the greatest influence on Dutch. This influence, which dates from before or from the 12th century and which of course first made itself felt in the Flemish regions, is apparent from both the loanwords (carpet, purple, pie, fine) and word formation (endings such as -age, -ier, -aard, -teit, -eren).
This influence lasted a very long time (after the Second World War, the influence of the English language increased strongly). Incidentally, it was considerably stronger in the written language than in the spoken language. At the beginning of the 15th century, under the influence of the Bavarian house, High German had a short-lived influence on the literary language, especially in Holland, while in the regions bordering on Germany throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, the chancellery language was strongly Germanic. In the 19th century many German words were adopted mainly in the scientific language. Many international words have also been borrowed from other, even exotic languages, such as Italian (porto, franco), Spanish (cocoa, regalia, cigar), the Slavic languages (dagger, steppe), Turkish (karwats, turban). , Arabic (alcohol, coffee), Malay (banjir, orangutan),
This influence mainly relates to a number of words and terms from shipping and marine life. Furthermore, in many places in East Friesland, the county of Bentheim and the area of Lingen and Cleves, Dutch continued to be used as the school language of the Reformed and Mennonite congregations until the 20th century. A large number of Ned. words has been adopted into the Indonesian languages, the Negro Spanish or Papiamentu of Curaijao, the Negeren English of Suriname and the language of Ceylon and Nework. The Ned is on the Afrikaans. at the basis; this Ned. dialect has, however, developed into an independent language, [dr JJAvan Bakel].
List of Acronyms Related to Dutch
