Transcript Language Shaping a Nation. The case of Belgium.

Languages Shaping a Nation
Belgium is known for
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‘Belgian’ chocolate:
http://users.skynet.be/chocolat/uk/index.html
‘Belgian’ beers: http://www.dma.be/p/bier/beer.htm
‘Belgian’ fries: http://www.belgianfries.com/
‘Belgian’ waffles
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/2830/bbwaff.html
Tin Tin: http://www.tintin.com/
Jacques Brel http://www.jacquesbrel.be/
– ‘Marieke’: is there anyhting like a ‘Belgian’ language? Or
Belgians?
What’s in a name?
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the name of a country ~ the name of a
language
 French is the language of France, English that of England,
German that of Germany.
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reflects a rather simplisic view of the relation
between the languages and nations of Europe:
the name of a country ≠ the name of the
language or languages spoken in that country
 there is no such thing as a Belgian language, nor does Swiss
exist.
“Do they speak any Swiss there?”
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what do they speak?
 Belgium and Switzerland have no language of their own, French is
spoken in both countries BUT in Belgium the Dutch-speakers and in
Switzerland the German-speakers constitute the majority of the
population (i.e. 60% or more of the population).
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what do tems like majority and minority language mean
in a European context?
there is no majority language in Europe: max. 15% of
native speakers.
a language which is a minority language in one country
may well be the language of the majority across the
border.
 French in Belgium and in Switzerland, or German in Belgium and
Italy
In dealing with the languages of Europe one
crucial point should never be overlooked
“national frontiers and language
frontiers do not always coincide”
Outline
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The situation in Belgium
 Dutch vs French (vs German)
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The situation in the Low Countries
 Dutch vs Dutch (vs Dialect)
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The situation in the rest of the world
 Dutch vs (non) European languages
Belgium
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Belgium has
 +/- 10 000 000 inhabitants
 30 000 km² (one fourth of North Carolina)
 3 official languages: Dutch (+/- 60%), French (+/- 40%), German
(70 000 speakers)
How did this come to be?
a language border divides Belgium in two major
language regions: a Dutch speaking and a
French speaking.
 it is assumed that the border has been there for
over 1500 years (since the collapse of the
Roman Empire) and has barely moved over that
period of time.
! This language border is no ethnical border: it is
not the case that speakers of Dutch descend
from Germanic tribes whereas speaker of French
are related to Romance or Celtic tribes.
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Latin vs Vernacular
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For centuries this border barely played any role.
 Middle Ages: Latin was used in church, in (inter)national
administrative affairs and in science.
! The people used their own language: Walloon-French dialects in
the South and Flemish-Dutch dialects in the North.
- language for everyday communication
- also used for ruling (Flemish) cities: from the 13th century
onwards the economical and political importance of Ypres, Ghent
and Bruges made these northern Flemish dialects leading
dialects.
~ the silting up of the Zwin: the role of Bruges and Ghent was
taken over by Central Flemish cities such as Antwerp, Brussels
and Louvain and their dialects.
‘Netherlandic’
1549: Habsburg emperor Charles V forms the 17
provinces of the Netherlands into a single
territorial entity
= the entire Dutch-speaking area, a substantial
part of what is now Northern France and some
French speaking parts of what is now Belgium.
 they had their own legal and judicial system.
 stress the differences between them and the
rest of the empire by referring to their language
as “Lower” or “Nether” Dutch or “Netherlandic”
(‘Low-Landic’) as opposed to the ‘High-landic’ or
German (Dutch ~ Deutsch).
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The Rise of French
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Religious upheavels of the 16th century:
consequences for the Low Countries and their
language:
 1566: the Calvinist inspired Iconoclastic Fury broke out in
Steenvoorde  the revolt fanned out across the Netherlands.
 Philip II dispatched the Duke of Alva to the Low Countries:
Alva’s repression of the Protestants  fled
 elite troops reconquered the South but the Northern
provinces held out.
they blocked the Scheldt and Antwerp (and the south) fell
into Spanish hands in 1585.
1648 (Treaty of Munster): Spain recognized the
independence of the (northern) Dutch republic.
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Austrian rule (1713-1792)
= foreign dominations: the role of Latin as the
official national and supra-national language
gradually taken over by French.
 the Flemish-speaking population had to acquire
excellent skills in French in order to be able to
function in official bureaucracies, the educational
system, non-local commerce and various other
public domains.
 ° social gap or language barrier between the
higher and the lower strata of the population.
French = power and prestige
Flemish = poverty, underdevelopment
 amalgam of purely local forms.
French tendency reinforced in 1795:
Belgium was annexed by the French
Republic.
 French = the only official language
administration, education, press, etc. were
used to promote this.
! 1815: Napoleon defeated by Waterloo
 Congress of Vienna: assigns Belgium to
the Netherlands = the northern and
southern Netherlands united under Dutch
king Willem the first.
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1823: radical language policy introduced in the
Flemish speaking areas of Belgium = Dutch the
one official language of administration,
education and the legal system.
! resistance:
– the northern Dutch variant had developed for
over two centuries (1585) with virtually no
input form the southern vernaculars.
– there were important social and religious
differences between the Protestant North and
the Catholic South.
 Apparently, the social and religious differences
between the North and South proved to be more
important than the awareness of a linguistic
bond.
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Open revolt in the South
repartition of the Netherlands in 1830
creation of the kingdom of Belgium with it’s
capital Brussels
! de jure freedom of speech
- the official language of the state and of the
political and economical elite = French 
status symbol.
+ Flanders: economic decline (famine!) during
the 19th century  no money for culture,
education  Flemish became socially
associated with poverty, analphabetism and
underdevelopment.
° the Flemish movement = the struggle of the
Flemish people as a whole for recognition of
their language and cultural aspirations.
 by the end of the 19th century it had acquired a
social and economic dimension  foreshadowed
the major role that language policy would play in
shaping modern Belgium.
 The ‘Equality Law’ of 1898 recognized Dutch as
one of the two official languages of Belgium, on
a par with French. Flanders became bilingual
French and Dutch
! Wallonia as well as the army and the diplomacy
remained monolingual French.
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gradual socio-economic and political
emancipation of the Flemings  far-reaching
legislation, granting the Dutch language in the
Flemish provinces exclusive rights in the judicial,
administrative and educational sphere and in the
army.
! Important was WWI: massive losses suffered by
Flemish units commanded by French speaking
officers
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“Et pour les flamands la même chose” (‘and for the Flemish the
same thing’)
 introduction of the principle: ‘one man one vote’
in 1919: no more way to stop laws that
promoted the use of Flemish as an official
language.
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reaction to the growing Flemish nationalism: Wallonian
Movement demands official monolingualism for the
provinces of Wallonia.
goals in line with those of the Flemish speakers, i.e.
territorially based monolingualism for Wallonia and
Flanders.
1921: Belgium divided in two monolingual areas, a
French and a Flemish one, and bilingual Brussels.
!The rights of French minorities in Flanders were
protected and the demarcation line could be
moved every tenth year, depending on the
results of the so-called ‘language counts’.
– 1930: state university of Ghent adopted Dutch
as its language of instruction (! University of
Leuven: 1968)
– 1932 primary and secondary education in
Flanders became exclusively Dutch speaking.
 the administrative and education laws of the
beginning of the century set the stage for the
eventual tripartite federalism.
WWII: Flanders translates its demographical
predominance into political power
 1962: language border definitively established
 3 monolingual regions: a Flemish one, a French
one and a German one plus bilingual Brussels.
! the rights of French-speaking minorities in certain parts of
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Flanders and Flemish speaking minorities in specific
parts of Wallonia are protected.
This did not solve all the problems: the
‘one state’ principle was not able to satisfy
the different needs of the four regions.
 between 1970 and 1993 the ‘one state’
was federalized and divided into
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3 Regions: Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels.
each Region has the power to take decisions
concerning economy employment, infrastructure,
environment etc.
 3 (language) Communities: Flemish, French and
German
the Communities are responsible for language,
culture, education etc.
! Only in the Flemish part, the government and parliament of
community and region coincide.
“There is no such thing as a Belgian”
Bilingual Brussels
Dutch vs Dutch (vs Dialect)
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“The fact that one particular dialect becomes the basis of
the standard language has nothing to do with the
linguistic merits of that dialect, but is simply a
consequence of its happening to be the medium of the
centralizing power or of the region which calls the tune
in political and economic matters. The rulers and, more
generally, the inhabitants of the dominant region are
imitated, and the imitation extends to their speech. The
other dialects consequently lose prestige, and are able to
contribute little more than some words and turns of
phrase to the emerging standard language.”
Standardization in the North
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standardization process in Dutch is, to an extent,
independent of the development of a national
consciousness
can be seen to be crucially dependent on economic and
demographic factors: urbanization, i.e. the growth of
interdependent cities, and the emergence of large,
relatively literate, politically and economically powerful
urban middle and upper classes provided the impetus for
the development of a super-regional standard.
the mobility of the population and the intensifying
commercial and cultural interaction between cities
heightened awareness of different dialectal variants and
underlined the need for a more universally accessible
written language.
the Dutch linguistic area has not had a
permanent center of cultural and economic
influence such as Paris in France and London in
England.
 the centre of Dutch culture passes from Bruges
in North Flanders in the late 14th century to
Antwerp in the Central part of Flanders to
Amsterdam in the province of Holland.
 this shift of the economic and cultural center of
gravity in the Low Countries has meant that all
of these dialectically diverse areas have made a
major contribution to the development of Dutch.
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after the southern part had been conquered by the
Spanish in 1585  the economic and cultural center of
gravity and with it tens of thousands of southerners fled
to the North
= to the province of Holland where Amsterdam had already
emerged as a leading city  in Amsterdam modern
Standard Dutch, the official language of the newly
created independent state, took its final shape.
 ! economic and cultural influence of the South during the
previous centuries and the presence of the southerners
in and around Amsterdam at the time of standardization
standardization includes southern linguistic features in
the standard language of the northern Netherlands,
especially in its written form.
made the eventual adoption of the northern Dutch
standard in Belgium more feasible.
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Standardization in the South
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In Belgium, the standardization of the language of the
north had to wait until the 19th century.
Flemish radicals did not agree on exactly what idiom was
eventually to be the official language of Flanders, side by
side or in the place of French.
– The so-called localists advocated a specifically Flemish standard
language (oa Guide Gezelle).
– Others (like Jan Frans willems) took a different view: the shortlived union of Belgium and the Netherlands under Willem the
first had left them acutely aware of the (distant) common past
and the close linguistic affinity between Flanders and the
Netherlands.
 After years of debate, the integrationist view finally prevailed.
How Dutch is Dutch?
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From 1849 onwards linguists from the Netherlands and
Flanders
– held joint conferences.
– planned the publication of a monumental Dictionary
of the Dutch Language.
 required a uniform spelling and the system designed by
Dutchmen was officially adopted in Belgium in 1864 and in
the Netherlands in 1883. The simplifications of 1946 and
1995 were the result of joint consultation.
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Since 1946: the cultural integration of the Netherlands
and Flanders has been actively promoted by various
official and private initiatives
September 9th 1980: the Netherlands and Flanders
signed the articles of the “Dutch Language Union”, which
is founded on the unity of the language spoken and
written in the Netherlands and Flanders.
 the publication of the Algemene Nederlandse Spraakkunst
(1984), an extensive reference grammar written jointly by
Flemish and Dutch linguists.
Two Standards
official recognition that Dutch is the common language
of the Netherlands and Flanders ≠ all linguistic
differences within the Dutch language area have been
completely erased.
! Even standard Dutch as it is spoken in the Netherlands
does not sound quite the same as the standard Dutch
spoke in Flanders.
 3 centuries of political and cultural separation have
inevitably left their mark.
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 In the North, standard Dutch has enjoyed a steady development
from the 17th century onwards, in close relation with the local
dialects.
 In Flanders, until well into the 20th century the Dutch dialects
led a fragmented and isolated existence while the standard
language was a foreign tongue, French.
 the dialects of Flanders borrowed liberally from that foreign
tongue, and even today standard Dutch spoken and written in
Flanders has not yet entirely shaken off the effects of inference
from French: 2 varieties of the same language
And a Substandard
‘Belgian’ substandard of standard Dutch
≠ an informal variant of standard Dutch, as there exists in
the Netherlands: although it is relatively homogeneous,
it is too different from standard Dutch (in pronunciation,
lexicon, morphology and syntax) to be considered its
informal variant.
 This substandard is mainly used in everyday informal
communication, whereas the standard language is
reserved for official situations and written language.
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– ‘news’-Dutch compared to ‘soap’-Dutch: Flemish news is not
subtitled in the Netherlands, soaps are!
This substandard is the topic of much discussion
nowadays: people say things they would never write.
 Tolerate this or try to eradicate it?
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And Dialects
even within one country, the language differs: the
Bruges accent differs from Hasselt or Antwerp speech.
> a natural consequence of the fact that various local
dialects coexist within the language.
 Dutch has a great many local dialects, but the can be
subsumed under a few main groups :
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– 1. the West Flemish and Zeeland dialects,
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2. the Brabant or southern central dialects
3. the Holland or northern dialects
4. the Limburg or south eastern dialects
5. the Saxon or north eastern dialects
6. the Frisian dialects (no Dutch dialects: historically closer to
English than to either Dutch or German.)
these local dialects are fading away and are being
replaced by ‘regiolects’ that only preserve the main
dialectal characteristics.
A Dutch dialect can be defined as a ‘natural
language system’ (not standardized by means of
writing/education) that is being passed on orally
and is a continuation of Middle Dutch.
These dialects are geographically marked. Every
local dialect is a complete language, that has a
‘grammar’, but often it is not exhaustively
studied. Every dialectal characteristics is spread
out over a specific geographical area.
In other words, a local dialect is a kind of cocktail
of characteristics, each of which occupies a
different geographical area.
http://fuzzy.arts.kuleuven.ac.be/rewo/Sprek_kaart/
Vlinder/vlinderned.htm
Dutch in the world
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Dutch is spoken in
 Belgium (6 000 000), the Netherlands (14 000 000)
 it is also an official language of the Dutch Antilles (still part
of the Kingdom of the Netherlands) and of Surinam (an
independent country since 1975). In both coutries there is a
literature in Dutch.
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Dutch is related to Afrikaans
 1652: three ships belonging to the Dutch East India
Company cast anchor near the Cape of Good Hope.
 Task: the establishment and manning of a supply station for
ships on their way to the Indies and back.
 Their 17th century dialects formed the basis of he present
Afrikaans language.
Dutch in the world
 the Boers had very little contact with the spoken Dutch of
the mother country: kept in touch with written Dutch only
through the 17th century text of the States Bible.
In the course of the 19th century the gap between the
Boers’ everyday speech and the written Dutch coming to
them from Europe had become unbridgeable.
 recognition of the popular speech of the Boers as a written
language: also the only way to resist the growing pressure of
English.
 Afrikaans was recognized in 1925 as one of the two official
languages of the country: today, Afrikaans is the native
language of almost 6 million in a total population of about 30
million.
Dutch in the world
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Dutch has influenced
– Other European languages
 French ~ Italian, Spanish
 German
 English
– Non-European languages: trading and colonies (from
the 17th century on)
 Russian [Czar Peter the Great (Zaandam 1697)]
 Japanese
 Sinhalese (Sri Lanka) & Indonesian [Dutch colonies]
Dutch and English
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to beleaguer ~ belegeren
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a boor ~ een boer
a boss ~ een baas
Brandy ~ brandewijn
a bulwark ~ een bolwerk
a bundle ~ een bundel
a buoy ~ een boei
(ca)boodle ~boedel
to crimp ~ krimpen
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Etc.
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a landscape ~ een
landschap
a sketch ~ een schets
a snack ~ snacken (old)
a splinter ~ een splinter
a spook ~ een spook
a yacht ~ een jacht
a dock ~ een dok
to drill ~ drillen
a freight ~ een vracht
Links
History of the Dutch language
http://www.ned.univie.ac.at/publicaties/taal
geschiedenis/en/
 Belgium: languages and dialects
http://www.eurosupport.be/langbel/langbel.htm
http://home-13.tiscalibusiness.nl/%7Etpm09245/lang/langbel.ht
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Questions
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