Roland Willemyns Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Dutch Roland Willemyns Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium 1. Introduction Even as of today the famous medieval animal epic Van den Vos Reynaerde (‘Reynard the Fox’) is still considered by many critics to be the most outstanding piece of literature ever written in Dutch. It was originally created during the thirteenth century in the County of Flanders, the southwestern part of the language territory, and consequently, it was written in Flemish, the then most prestigious variety of Dutch. In present day Standard Dutch, though, Flemish is not the most prominent component anymore. Yet, it certainly has contributed massively to the codiªcation and elaboration of the Dutch language. In the present article I will analyze the (extra-)linguistic factors that account for this evolution. Dutch is the/an o¹cial language of three countries: Belgium, The Netherlands and Surinam. As far as the standardization process is concerned, the evolution in the latter country is not relevant and will, consequently, not be discussed here. For the same reason I will not go into the situation in the Dutch overseas territories known as The Antilles (i.e. Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao and some smaller islands in the Caribbean). The Kingdom of Belgium (10 million inhabitants) is a trilingual and federal country, consisting of four diŸerent language areas: the Dutch speaking commu- nity (called Flanders; 58% of the population), the French speaking one (called Wallonia; 32%), the small German speaking community (0.6%) and the Dutch- French bilingual community of Brussels (9.5%). Since regional governments have legislative powers the frontiers of their jurisdiction, being language borders, are deªned in the constitution (TreŸers and Willemyns 2002).
[Show full text]