DOCSLIB.ORG

The 'Limburgian Language Used in the Netherlands' and Its Contribution To

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The 'Limburgian Language Used in the Netherlands' and Its Contribution To The ‘Limburgian language used in the Netherlands’ and its contribution to the regional identity construction in the province of Limburg. Dr. Rob Belemans, Executive FARO (Flemish Interface Centre for Cultural Heritage), Brussel, Belgium ([email protected]) The Limburgian dialects belong to the Oostnederfrankian language family. The historic dialects in this area did not develop an own standard variety. They stayed for a long time the spoken language for common daily use next to the standard Dutch or German that was adopted as the official language. Limburgian is the name of the western part of this language area, that is bordered in the west and the nord by the isoglosse that is called Uerdingerline (ik vs. ich) and by the Benratherline (maken – machen) in the south. The dialects of this Oostnederfrankian region can be recognised by the shibboleth ‘ich maak’. Most of the dialects in this “ich maak”-area are also marked by the typical intonational vowel opposition between the so called stoottoon (that is the only realisation of short and long vowels in all the other dialects of the Dutch language area) and the sleeptoon; as in bein [sleeptoon] (a leg - singular) versus bein [stoottoon] (legs – plural). The dialects in the eastern Germanspeaking part of the Oostnederfrankian area (from the Rhine to Solingen) have these same typical marks. Nevertheless this language area is a continuum of slightly differing local dialects that remain rather similar within a radius of 20 to 30 kilometers. When the geographical distance between two Limburgian or Rhinelandic dialects becomes bigger, the dialect speakers will probably no longer try to speak them with each other but switch to the official language Dutch or German. The historical diverging evolution of the dialects in this Oostnederfrankian language area has been caused by two waves of influence with an opposite direction. The first one had the medieval city of Cologne in the southeast as centre of power and influence, also on the linguistic level. It caused from ca. 800 a.C. and for some centuries a Ripuarian influence on the Oostnederfrankian dialects, especially on the eastern part of them. This influence lasted until the 13th century, when the duces of Brabant at the western side of the Oostnederfrankian area became more powerfull; so from then on the trends to follow were set in Louvain and Brussels. Both of these waves of influence worked more powerfull on the Oostnederfrankian dialects near the centre of power. The Brabantine influence on the dialects in the Belgian part of the Limburgian area is today still going on and increases. The processes of nation building divided this old Oostnederfrankian language area in tree parts, that belong for more than 170 years now to tree different states. In the Rhinelandic part on the territory of the German Republic the influence of the official German language started first. Nowadays the old local dialects with their own typical features are mostly replaced by a common vernacular that is understood in the whole Rhinelandic area with only some regional markers left and a stronger differing position of the city-variaties. In the Belgian province of Limburg, that belongs since 1830 to the state of Belgium, a similar evolution is ongoing yet not finished. In the Dutchspeaking northern part of Belgium it are the Brabantine dialects of the centre (the axes Antwerp – Brussels) that are influencing all other local and regional dialects. In this evolution the traditional dialects of pheriferical regions are changed for a common used ordinary spoken language that can be qualified as Flemish, i.e. Dutch with Brabantine dialect marks. The dialects in the Dutch province of Limburg did suffer only in a mediocre way from both waves of historical influence. Therefore they have keeped there regional division in a northern, a southern and a central regional variant. After the independence of Belgium, it took nine years and a special treaty signed in London before the eastern part of the province of Limburg became officially Dutch territory. Then the river Meus became also a state border with on each side a province with the same name: Limburg. Since that time, 1939, the diverging tendency between the both provinces Limburg goes on and increases, because of the influences from the political, economical and cultural centre areas in both countries. The actual political statues and the use of the dialects on both sides of the Dutch-Belgian border illustrate that very clearly. After the ratification by the Dutch government of the Charta for regional and minority languages (CETS 148) in 1996, the provincial government in Maasticht pleaded successfully for the official recognition of the Limburger dialectgroup as an official regional language. From the 12th February 1997 on the “Limburgian language used in the Netherlands” posesses this official status as a regional language. The Limburgian government in Hasselt, on the Belgian side, asked the national government in Brussels for several years to get this same recognition for their dialects, without succeeding in even launching a discussion in the public opinion about this issue on the national or the Flemish level. This facts concerning the different status of the Limburgian dialects spoken in each of the two Limburgian provinces, reinforce the fore some decades already existing differences in the use of the dialects. In the Dutch province the official status of the dialects as a regional language certainly has a positive influence on the broader use of dialect in almost every context an daily situation, also between people that do not know each other that well. It is used in more official situations as well as in a very informal context. In the Belgian province of Limburg dialect is used mainly as a family language for small talk and communication between good friends and relatives. When it comes to the number of dialect speakers, there are also very clear differences between the two provinces of Limburg. In the Dutch province of Limburg the local dialect is a part of the identity of its speakers. It creates a common feeling of belonging to the same part of the country, that still stands a bit on its own. In the Belgian province of Limburg the local dialects are seen as some heritage of the past, that is not their past for a growing group of national and international immigrants. It is mostly used by the eldest and an elder generation of speakers and is rarely used for official occasions or in written form. .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • FCG Background-Paper
    FINANCE AND THE COMMON GOOD Background paper for the joint Socires & Sustainable Finance Lab programme (2019-2021) April 2019 Abstract In this three-year programme (2019-2021), Socires and the Sustainable Finance Lab (SFL) explore the feasibility of an alternative arrangement for the financial sector; a financial sector that fruitfully interacts with state and society, together setting goals for finance in service of’ the common good. Why is this necessary? In the past few decades, the ‘logic of finance’ has increasingly nestled itself in all domains of modern societies, crowding out other motives and relational modes for interaction; a phenomenon aptly referred to as ‘financialisation’. Now, with the 2008 financial crisis still fresh in our minds, and other crises - ecological, social and (geo-)political - unfolding before our eyes, research into alternative ways of economic and financial organisation is long overdue. We believe that the countries of the former ‘Rhineland’ - Benelux, Germany and France - still stand in a societal tradition that could be the breeding ground for a fruitful new arrangement between finance, state and society, one in which transactions are embedded in relations. As there is no possibility of dictating this kind of change to any one of the actors involved, we aim to generate such commitment by engaging in high-level dialogue with the relevant stakeholders from the Rhinelandic area. This programme has four pillars – 1) Organising for finance for the common good, 2) Young Professionals programme, 3) International conferences and 4) Working tables - in which different activities are developed, involving both experienced decision makers as well as promising young professionals.
    [Show full text]
  • Burghers As Cultural Agents in the Low Countries and the Empire
    Burghers as Cultural Agents in the Low Countries and the Empire VON WIM BLOCKMANS The general theme of this volume, Germany and Western Europe, leaves open the question whether we shall deal with comparisons or with influences. In some cases of particular cul­ tural achievements such as the production of a manuscript or the construction of a major building, it may be possible to identify the intellectual authors and artists, to follow their movements and to compare their products. When we think of more encompassing pro­ cesses such as the dissemination of types of governance or the use of written documents, it becomes much more difficult to point to causes and effects. We will first have to clarify which phenomena we consider to be crucial, to observe the timing of their appearance and impact, before it becomes possible to compare these data and to try and look for influences. Even then, it remains an open question if the phenomena under consideration were really linked, since they might have appeared simultaneously or in succession without any causal relation. If we are looking for cultural transfers through space and time, its general conditions should be kept in mind: we need communication, mobility and the willingness to adopt dif­ ferent practices. None of these preconditions is self­evident; on the other hand, the intens­ ity of communication and mobility, and a tradition of openness enhance the probability of transfers. Adoption mostly requires adaptation in order to incorporate innovations into another cultural universe. This mental attitude presupposes interaction, curiosity and the preparedness to change established traditions.
    [Show full text]
  • SOEP-IS 2018—ILANGUAGE: Variables from Innovative Language Modules
    A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics DIW Berlin / SOEP (Ed.) Research Report SOEP-IS 2018 - ILANGUAGE: Variables from innovative language modules SOEP Survey Papers, No. 851 Provided in Cooperation with: German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) Suggested Citation: DIW Berlin / SOEP (Ed.) (2020) : SOEP-IS 2018 - ILANGUAGE: Variables from innovative language modules, SOEP Survey Papers, No. 851, Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW), Berlin This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/219075 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative
    [Show full text]
  • Uniqueness and Possession: Typological Evidence for Type Shifts in Nominal Determination
    Uniqueness and possession: Typological evidence for type shifts in nominal determination Albert Ortmann University of D¨usseldorf Abstract. This paper highlights the analogy of definiteness and pos- session by utilising the distinction between semantic and pragmatic as outlined in L¨obners(2011) Concept Type and Determination approach. Assuming, on the basis of the features [ unique] and [ relational], a classification into the four logical types sortal, relational, individual, and functional concept, nouns will be used either in congruence with or deviating from their underlying type. I present evidence from Germanic and Mayan languages for the following claims: (1) noun uses that deviate from the underlying type tend to be reflected by overt morphology. (2) In article split languages, phonologically 'strong' forms indicate prag- matic uniqueness, thus, denote a function from [− unique] to [+ unique], whereas `weak' forms tend to be semantically redundant. Regarding pos- session, `alienable' morphology denotes a function from non-relational to relational (pragmatic possession), whereas `inalienable' morphology is re- stricted to semantic possession. Overall, split systems imply a strong cor- relation between conceptual markedness and morphosyntactic marked- ness. Keywords: type shift, definiteness, possession, alienability, definite ar- ticles, typology, compositional semantics 1 Introduction1 In this paper I highlight the analogy of two types of nominal determination, namely definiteness and possession, and their cross-linguistic manifestation. I utilise the distinction between semantic and pragmatic as outlined in the Concept Type and Determination (CTD) approach to definiteness in L¨obner(1985, 2011; cf. also Ortmann 2014). This perspective on determination will be pursued in case-studies from, among others, Mayan and Germanic languages.
    [Show full text]
  • 9-Camiel Hamans
    UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) The minority language debate: the case of Yiddish in the Dutch language landscape Hamans, C.S.J.M. Publication date 2006 Published in Werkwinkel: a journal of Low Countries and South African studies Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Hamans, C. S. J. M. (2006). The minority language debate: the case of Yiddish in the Dutch language landscape. Werkwinkel: a journal of Low Countries and South African studies, 1(1), 225-252. General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:02 Oct 2021 The minority language debate: The case of Yiddish in the Dutch language landscape CAMIEL HAMANS European Parliament, PSE-group Dutch Delegation, Brussels-Strasbourg [email protected] Abstract.
    [Show full text]
  • Scientific Report | Version 30/06/2013
    ESPON TANGO – Territorial Approaches for New Governance Applied Research 2013/1/21 Draft Scientific Report | Version 30/06/2013 ESPON 2013 1 This report presents a more detailed overview of the analytical approach to be applied by the project. This Applied Research Project is conducted within the framework of the ESPON 2013 Programme, partly financed by the European Regional Development Fund. The partnership behind the ESPON Programme consists of the EU Commission and the Member States of the EU27, plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. Each partner is represented in the ESPON Monitoring Committee. This report does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the members of the Monitoring Committee. Information on the ESPON Programme and projects can be found on www.espon.eu The web site provides the possibility to download and examine the most recent documents produced by finalised and ongoing ESPON projects. This basic report exists only in an electronic version. © ESPON & Nordregio 2013 Printing, reproduction or quotation is authorised provided the source is acknowledged and a copy is forwarded to the ESPON Coordination Unit in Luxembourg. ESPON 2013 2 List of authors Nordregio (Lead Partner) Peter Schmitt, Lisa van Well, Stefanie Lange Scherbenske, Mitchell Reardon Delft University of Technology / OTB Research (Partner 2) Dominic Stead, Marjolein Spaans, Wil Zonneveld, Alexander Wandl Politecnico di Torino / POLITO (Partner 3) Umberto Janin Rivolin, Francesca Governa, Marco Santangelo, Giancarlo Cotella, Nadia Caruso, Alberta De Luca University of Newcastle upon Tyne (Partner 4) Simin Davoudi, Paul Cowie, Ali Madanipour, Geoff Vigar, Centre for Regional Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Science (Partner 5) Ilona Pálné Kovács, Cecília Mezei, Zoltán Grünhut University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering (Partner 6) Alma Zavodnik Lamovšek, Nataša Pichler-Milanović, Marko Peterlin, Maja Simoneti 3 Table of contents 1 The ESPON TANGO approach .........................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • 13-Camiel Hamans
    The Minority Language Debate: The Case of Yiddish in the Dutch Language Landscape CAMIEL HAMANS European Parliament, PSE-group Dutch Delegation, Brussels-Strasbourg [email protected] Abstract. Although the description and study of dialects used to be a central issue in traditional linguistics from the last quarter of the 19th century onwards, the protection and promotion of minority and regional languages only became a topic for linguistic research and language policy almost one hundred years later. With the rise of sociolinguistics in the sixties and seventies of the twentieth century and the growing interest in the language use of different social classes, linguists, educators and politicians became interested in non-standard languages. At the political level this led to several international reports, declarations, manifestos and charters, the most important being the Charter of Regional and Minority Languages accepted by the Council of Europe in 1992. In this article the implementation of the Charter in a few European Countries, such as France, Poland, Belgium and the Netherlands, is discussed. From this survey it becomes clear how political and legal factors prevail over linguistic arguments when it comes to the recognition of regional and minority languages. Not only the French unwillingness to recognize other languages in its territory other than standard French, but also the case of the Limburger language in Belgium and the Netherlands and that of Yiddish in the Netherlands and Sweden support this claim. In November 1992 the Council of Europe accepted a Charter of Regional and Minority Languages, in which the countries of Europe promised to recognise, to defend and to support the ‘national’ minority languages in use within their territories.
    [Show full text]
  • Questionnaire for the SOEP Innovation Sample
    The German Socio-Economic Panel 715 SOEP Survey Papers Series A – Survey Instruments (Erhebungsinstrumente) SOEP — The German Socio-Economic Panel at DIW Berlin 2019 SOEP-IS 2017 – Questionnaire for the SOEP Innovation Sample SOEP-IS Group Running since 1984, the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) is a wide-ranging representative lon- gitudinal study of private households, located at the German Institute for Economic Research, DIW Berlin. The aim of the SOEP Survey Papers Series is to thoroughly document the survey’s data collection and data processing. The SOEP Survey Papers is comprised of the following series: Series A – Survey Instruments (Erhebungsinstrumente) Series B – Survey Reports (Methodenberichte) Series C – Data Documentation (Datendokumentationen) Series D – Variable Descriptions and Coding Series E – SOEPmonitors Series F – SOEP Newsletters Series G – General Issues and Teaching Materials The SOEP Survey Papers are available at http://www.diw.de/soepsurveypapers Editors: Dr. Jan Goebel, DIW Berlin Prof. Dr. Stefan Liebig, DIW Berlin and Freie Universität Berlin Dr. David Richter, DIW Berlin Prof. Dr. Carsten Schröder, DIW Berlin and Freie Universität Berlin Prof. Dr. Jürgen Schupp, DIW Berlin and Freie Universität Berlin Dr. Sabine Zinn, DIW Berlin Please cite this paper as follows: SOEP-IS Group, 2019. SOEP-IS 2017 – Questionnaire for the SOEP Innovation Sample. SOEP Survey Papers 715: Series A – Survey Instruments (Erhebungsinstrumente). Berlin: DIW Berlin/SOEP This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. © 2019 by SOEP ISSN: 2193-5580 (online) DIW Berlin German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) Mohrenstr. 58 10117 Berlin Germany [email protected] The German Socio Economic Panel at DIW Berlin SOEP-IS 2017 – Questionnaire for the SOEP Innovation Sample SOEP-IS Group 2019 The variable names mentioned in this document belong to a collection of datasets, which is released with doi:10.5684/soep.is.2017.
    [Show full text]
  • Draft Final Report | Version 30/06/2013
    ESPON TANGO – Territorial Approaches for New Governance Applied Research 2013/1/21 Draft Final Report | Version 30/06/2013 ESPON 2013 1 This report presents a more detailed overview of the analytical approach to be applied by the project. This Applied Research Project is conducted within the framework of the ESPON 2013 Programme, partly financed by the European Regional Development Fund. The partnership behind the ESPON Programme consists of the EU Commission and the Member States of the EU27, plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. Each partner is represented in the ESPON Monitoring Committee. This report does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the members of the Monitoring Committee. Information on the ESPON Programme and projects can be found on www.espon.eu The web site provides the possibility to download and examine the most recent documents produced by finalised and ongoing ESPON projects. This basic report exists only in an electronic version. © ESPON & Nordregio 2013 Printing, reproduction or quotation is authorised provided the source is acknowledged and a copy is forwarded to the ESPON Coordination Unit in Luxembourg. ESPON 2013 2 List of authors Nordregio (Lead Partner) Peter Schmitt, Lisa van Well, Stefanie Lange Scherbenske, Mitchell Reardon Delft University of Technology / OTB Research (Partner 2) Dominic Stead, Marjolein Spaans, Wil Zonneveld, Alexander Wandl Politecnico di Torino / POLITO (Partner 3) Umberto Janin Rivolin, Francesca Governa, Marco Santangelo, Giancarlo Cotella, Nadia Caruso, Alberta De Luca University of Newcastle upon Tyne (Partner 4) Simin Davoudi, Paul Cowie, Ali Madanipour, Geoff Vigar, Centre for Regional Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Science (Partner 5) Ilona Pálné Kovács, Cecília Mezei, Zoltán Grünhut University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering (Partner 6) Alma Zavodnik Lamovšek, Nataša Pichler-Milanović, Marko Peterlin, Maja Simoneti 3 Table of contents 1.
    [Show full text]
  • Recognizing German Dialects by Prosodic Features Alone
    RECOGNIZING GERMAN DIALECTS BY PROSODIC FEATURES ALONE Felix Schaeffler and Robert Summers IPSK - Department of Phonetics and Speech Communication, University of Munich, Germany ABSTRACT German dialects (or, to put the topic less restrictive, German regional The prosodic characteristics of German dialects have seldom been the variants) exist. subject of research. Therefore a perceptual experiment was designed Phonetic investigations of prosody often bear serious problems. to find out whether there are prosodic cues in the speech signal strong Descriptions of prosodic features are seldom based on spontaneous enough to identify the origin of the speaker. Spontaneous monologues speech, and many methodological problems arise when for example from 70 speakers were used as items. 16 subjects participated in the trying to match measurements of F0 on perceptual entities. Therefore experiment. The monologues were taken from the Munich RVG1 it was decided not to start the investigation of prosodic characteristics corpus. A delexicalization procedure was applied to the speech data. of German dialects with measurements of duration, pitch and intensity Seven main regions of German dialects were used as categories. The but to perform a perceptual experiment with delexicalized (filtered) aims of the study were to find out whether there are perceptable speech items. The mentioned previous findings about prosodic differences between the prosodic features of the dialects and whether differences in German dialects as well as everyday experience suggest the dialects differ in the saliency of their prosodic characteristics. The that there are at least some prosodic differences between German results suggest that there are prosodic characteristics for some dialect dialects. To get a first impression of the possibility to recognize groups.
    [Show full text]
  • Front Matter Template
    The Report Committee for Margaret Marie Blevins Certifies that this is the approved version of the following report: Auxiliary tun in Texas German APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE: Hans C. Boas, Supervisor Marc Pierce Auxiliary tun in Texas German by Margaret Marie Blevins, BA Report Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts The University of Texas at Austin August 2014 Abstract Auxiliary tun in Texas German Margaret Marie Blevins, MA The University of Texas at Austin, 2014 Supervisor: Hans C. Boas This report explores the functions of auxiliary tun (‘to do’) in Texas German over the past 40 years using data from Gilbert (1965, 1972), Guion (1996), and the Texas German Dialect Project (Boas et al. 2010). It also compares auxiliary tun’s uses in present-day Texas German with its uses in German dialects spoken in the regions from which the original Texas German settlers emigrated. The findings in this report suggest that auxiliary tun in present-day Texas German is used in many of the ways that it is used in Low and West Central German dialects. The broad use of auxiliary tun in Texas German could be due to the wide variety of uses of auxiliary tun in its donor dialects. Auxiliary tun’s widespread usage may also indicate that Texas German is replacing synthetic with analytic forms as part of language death. The observations in this report can further our understanding of the functions of auxiliary tun in present-day Texas German and contribute to our understanding of language decay and language change within speech islands.
    [Show full text]
  • European Subnational Democracy: Comparative Reflections and Conclusions
    <new recto> <cn>chapter 30 <ct>EUROPEAN SUBNATIONAL DEMOCRACY: COMPARATIVE REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS <au>Frank Hendriks, John Loughlin, and Anders Lidström <h1>Introduction <p>This book has surveyed a wide range of European countries, all twenty-seven members of the European Union as well as Switzerland and Norway. All of these countries are now democracies although they all present a rich and varied experience of democracy. Some of them—mainly the countries of Western Europe—have been democratic from at least the nineteenth century; others—in Central and Southern Europe—have become democratic only after undergoing extended periods of anti- democratic dictatorship as happened in Germany, Italy, Spain, and Greece; the rest— the countries which found themselves under communist dictatorships for shorter or longer periods—have discovered democracy, in many cases for the first time, only since around 1990. We found it useful to position these countries in the first instance within the Loughlin-Peters typology of four distinctive state traditions in Europe and asked our authors to respond to the question as to which state tradition, if any, their country belonged. These so-called state traditions are useful heuristic devices for describing the nature of political and administrative institutions of the state, the values and culture which underlie these, as well as the relationship between the state and society. But it is also possible to create a country typology which might help us to organize their principal democratic features at both national and subnational levels and how these two levels of democracy relate to each other: the Rhinelandic states, the British Isles, the Nordic states, the Southern European states, the Eastern European New Democracies.
    [Show full text]