by H. Heestermans
On language and culture of the Netherlands and Belgium
Introduction
When someone says he is a garagist , we are almost certain he is a Fleming. We are completely sure of his origins when he speaks of thumb nail (“thumbtack”), nail (“nail”) or when he adds to us that we can kiss his bones (boots). With the latter he indicates that he does not wish to have anything to do with us.
The Dutchman and the Fleming speak one and the same language, but clearly regional variations in that language have developed over the centuries.
Sometimes the Fleming uses the same word, but in a different sense. To us, a brush is a hard-haired object used to clean. To a Fleming, it is a paintbrush or even a brush.
“Our dad … then had him paint with real brushes, real oil paints, on a real small canvas.”
Lia Timmermans remembers her father Felix, the author of the overly famous “Pallieter,” among other works.
Another time in Flanders one knows a word completely unknown in the North. Hubert Lampo writes in his book “The Prince of Magonia” (1976):
“The other boys in the class sat silently chuckling. For them, there was no question that he was being called to the mat for a bulb wash.”
It is clear from the context that a bolwassing is a stand, a scolding, a reprimand, but no Dutchman will ever actively use this surely not unkind word. The same goes for bibbergeld which occurs before “danger money.”
Even more often it happens that the Fleming uses a good Dutch word, where we unconcernedly dare to use the French synonym. If anything gets knocked out in Flemish schools, it is French words or gallicisms. Years ago I led the Vacation Course for Belgian teachers and principals and at one point I let slip that I found something a salient detail. This was blamed on me, a northerner and, moreover, the editor of Van Dale. Couldn’t I have used the common Dutch equivalent (there you have it again) for it? – By the way, what should that be: a salient detail?
The Fleming is keen on avoiding French words or words forged on French example, the gallicisms, because French is the threatening monster to his language. That is why he uses betoelaging for “subsidy,” destination for “addressee,” luggage carrier for “imperial.” On the other hand, it is of course explicable that so much French has penetrated into Flemish. Seventy years ago, only dialect was spoken in Flanders; the standard language was not Dutch, but French. That explains words such as agglomeration for “built-up area, residential neighborhood,” ajusteur for “bench worker,” amateur for “enthusiast” (he is an amateur of good cigars), ambetant for “annoying, nasty, unpleasant or bothersome” (from the French embêtant, which itself is composed of en- and bête, “beast”).
In all kinds of stores, billboards can be seen advertising that there are sales “bargains” (i.e., “clearance sales”) and that something can be “obtained” at 50 frs, i.e., it can be obtained “for” 50 frs. The gallicism to for the French “à” seems to be ineradicable.
In short, the differences between Flemish and Dutch are obvious, if only because official Belgium has very different institutions than the Netherlands. The assize court is completely unknown in our country. It is the court (with jury), sitting in the main city of each province, charged with sentencing serious crimes, as well as political and press offenses. Attaché is the official name in Belgium for an official in a (ministerial) department who advises the minister as a specialist in a particular field, and an executive attaché is the common word for “executive secretary.”
There are so many distinctive variants south of the national border that a “Southern Dutch Dictionary has even been compiled (1) from which I have borrowed all the above examples.
Three questions can be asked. First: how can the difference Flemish-Dutch be explained historically? Second, is Flanders entitled to its own variants? Third, does 1992 pose a threat to Dutch?
History
Already at the beginning of the 80-year war, many reformers fled from the Flemish regions to stay out of the hands of the hated Romanist Spaniards. The big influx, however, came after the fall of Antwerp in 1585. The southern defectors were generally not those low on the social ladder. They were the wealthy merchants, the artists, the intelligentsia. Thus the Netherlands welcomed such scholars as Simon Stevin and Daniél Heinsius, the book printer Christopher Plantijn and the mayor of Antwerp and probable poet of the Wilhelmus, Marmix van St. Aldegonde. Exactly how many there were we do not know. We do know other figures that appeal to the imagination and from which we can infer the numbers involved. For example, around 1620, so 35 years after the fall of Antwerp and 52 years after the start of the 80-year war, 67% of the total population of Leiden consisted of fugitives from the Southern Netherlands. Therefore, of the 44,745 inhabitants of that city, almost 30,000 were from Antwerp, Brabant or Flanders. (2)
In Haarlem, the number was a bit less, but still 51%; that means that among the 39,455 residents of Haarlem, about 20,000 were indigenes.
Some other “salient” figures. In Amsterdam, Flemish people made up 33.4% of the total population, i.e. 35,000 out of 104,932. The average number of Flemings in 9 major cities (Alkmaar, Amsterdam, Delft, Dordrecht, Gouda, Haarlem, Leiden, Middelburg and Rotterdam) was 42.4% of the total population. Almost half. And it is obvious that these wealthy, learned and artistic Flemings exerted great influence on Dutch culture. The Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie would never have achieved such prosperity without the efforts of the expatriates; a chamber of rhetoric such as ‘t Wit Lavendel is inconceivable without the southern input. In short: trade and industry, statecraft and city government, army and culture fared very well with the arrival of the refugiés.
It is well known that the language spoken by people with prestige, influence, power and wealth has a high status. That language, its accent and words and turns of phrase are considered the norm and they are adopted by others. The same happened with the language of the Flemings. The 17th-century Amsterdam merchant and poet Roemer Visscher wrote about this. He reproached the posh, somewhat nuffy Amsterdam girls of his time for finding the Brabant pronunciation more decent and deferential than the Amsterdam one.
“On Brabants speak sy alle gaer:
Op Brabants singhese haren sangh:
On Brabants makense haren gangh:
Amsterdams Dochters does my bescheyt,
Schaemt ghy u of the Hollantsche botticheyt.”
Jonker Jan van der Noot, author of “Het Bosken” (1567) waxes lyrical about the “Brabantish” language: the language spoken in the provinces of Antwerp, Brabant and Flanders; “Brabantish” is as much an umbrella term here as “Dutch” is for “Dutch” and “Flemish” is for everything Dutch spoken south of the national border:
“Alzoo is in Brabant with d’allersuetste voys Gesproken en ghe-bruyct het alderbeste duyts.”
The prestige of the language of the South is strongly evidenced in “Het Bancket-werck van goede gedachten” (1657) by the Zeeuw Johan de Brune:
“It is said that a beautiful woman must have a Dutch body, an English aenghezicht, a Brabands tongh and a Dutch hert.”
It is notable in 1992 that a variety of words adopted from Flemish in the 17th century still count as the dignified variant. For example, gaarne, zenden, gij, nu, werpen and huwen sound more formal, archaic than the traditionally Dutch variant: graag, sturen, jij, nou, gooien and trouwen.
While the consequence of Flemish immigration for the Netherlands was positive, the consequences for Flanders were disastrous. The merchant spirit was gone, industries no longer had competent administrators, science disappeared and culture dropped to zero. Towns and villages impoverished.
The consequences for the language were also great. In the North, from the seventeenth century onward, and certainly since 1637, the year in which the States Bible appeared, a uniform Dutch, a standard language, emerged that everyone used. In the South, the standard language intended for the West Fleming who wanted to speak or write with a Limburger was French. At home, in his village or town, the West Fleming spoke West Flemish and the Limburger spoke Limburgish. That situation remained that way until the beginning of this century. After that, a lot changed. Certainly after the Dutchification of Ghent University, there arose a desire to align with the Dutch standard language, but that standard language was determined by the Northern Netherlands, and even more precisely by the Randstad. After all, the language is determined by the speech community, by the writers, the artists, the media, the politicians, and all those members of that community traditionally sit in the Randstad.
Flemish
In Flanders, with regard to the standard language, based on the Northern Dutch, there are two polar movements: the proponents and the hardliners. The journalist and BRT employee E. Berode belongs to the hardliners. He believes that the Flemish should conform to the Northern Dutch standard language. Infamous and famous are the “blue bills.”
Any radio or t.v. employee who dared to speak of “garagist” could find a blue-colored note on his or her desk the next day pointing out this sin. He or she was requested or almost commanded not to commit this crime again and to replace garagist with garage owner. The moderates believe that while the Northern Dutch standard language should be the standard to which one is directed, that standard should allow for variants.
Why not billpost next to poster (French!) or billpost (partly French)? Why not sell someone apples for lemons next to sell someone turnips for lemons? Why not use the old words achternoen, noen, kuisen, clean, aflijvig, alaam, baktand and bamis in addition to afternoon, noon, clean, beautiful, died, tool, molar and autumn? And why not ape years next to puberty, embarrassed next to shy and relations next to sex act?
This brings me to my second question, which I can answer briefly. Is Flanders entitled to its own variants? The stronger the standard language is, the longer it has existed and the more proven it is stable, the more resistant it is to variants.
Recently, the Amsterdam linguist Dr. J. Stroop has shown that the typical dialects of villages and cities in the Netherlands are on their way out, that there is an increasing prevalence of regiolects (more or less uniform “languages” spread over a fairly large area, e.g., Hollands or Utrechts). Conversely, the standard language speaker is increasingly tolerant of variants from dialect or regiolect. As an aside, several words from Flemish have penetrated into Dutch in recent years. I am not referring now to cycling terms such as afzien, but to common words such as uitbater for “operator” and verwittigen for “inform, notify”.
It is with language as with man: the stronger he feels physically or mentally, the less easily he feels attacked and threatened.
There will come in not too long time-or perhaps the time is there-a time when the Northern Dutch norm in Flanders will be so strong that variants will not pose any threat to the standard language. The proof that such a peaceful coexistence of two variant languages is possible is clearly to be found in the German language area, where, in addition to High German, there is North German, Bavarian German, Austrian German and Swiss German. In each of these languages, deviations in vocabulary, grammar, syntax and pronunciation exist, and these deviations are tolerated.
Europe ’92
Little can be said with certainty about the future of Dutch in a Europe whose borders have been thrown open. That Dutch (and I mean the language of the North as well as the South) is threatened, I do not believe. After all, our language is spoken by 20 million people; that’s more than Danish and Norwegian and those languages, despite the fact that English is widely spoken, have survived as well.
That said, there may still be a threat. Not so much because the “official” European working language (i.e., the language the European Union will use) is likely to become English – in any case, that is more likely than French or German. The danger lies rather in economic measures that may disadvantage culture.
“Particularly in the field of literature, the market expansion brought about by the completion of the European market carries the danger of impoverishment of the Dutch-language supply. Abolition of fixed book prices would accelerate this process.”(3)
Good Dutch literature would become a rarity. That is the specter: a language without literature is seriously threatened. Literature is the binding agent of the language. That is why a Foreign Cultural Policy Committee was established in 1990, which believes that the EC should enshrine in a treaty text “that culture belongs to the sovereign competence of the member states and is and will therefore have to remain exempt from central regulation by European Community bodies.”
This is also why it is important for the Northern Dutchman to accept that there are Southern Dutch variants of the language, just as the Southern Dutchman has long accepted that there are Northern Dutch words he will never use (most Flemish people laugh at a word like nice).
Therefore, it is important for the North and South Dutch to understand that we live in one culture, albeit with different variants.
It is no time for bickering or even chuckling about each other’s different language behavior or different culture.
“If the Netherlands wants its own voice to be heard in the future Europe, strengthening its ties with Flanders externally seems to be a not insignificant tool. “*
- Walter de Clerck, Southern Dutch Dictionary, The Hague 1981.
- J.G.C.A. Briels, The Southern Dutch immigration in Amsterdam and Haarlem 1572-1630, Z.pl. 1976.
- B. Tromp, Dutch cultural policy and the European Communities, Kerkebosch 1989.
- H.W. von der Dunk, “The question of Dutch identity,” In: H.C. Cassee, D.J. van de Kaa (ed.). Cultural Alpha Betaism in the Netherlands, Amsterdam/Lisse 1989, p. 77.
