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171. the Low Countries/Niederlande I 758 IX. Regional Overview Trudgill, Peteq ed., (1984) Language in the British - (1999) The Dialects of England,2nd edition, Ox- Isles, Cambridge. ford. (1984) "standard English in England", in'- Lan- - Newcastle upon Tyne guage in the British /s/er, Trudgill, P., ed., Cam- Li Wei, bridge,3244. (Great Britain) 171. The Low Countries/Niederlande 1. Introduction victoriously and as an independent nation 2. The Dutch language area from the war against the Spanish rulers. The 3. Flanders large number of (mostly wealthy and in- 4. The Netherlands fluential) southern immigrants accounted 5. Linguisticintegration for a permanent live contact with Southern 6. German speaking Belgium Dutch, which was, at lhat moment, still the 7. Literature(selected) prestige variety of the language. Yet, it was gradually ruled out as far as its influence on of Standard Dutch was con- l. Introduction the evolution cerned. Holland's lTth century is known as Although the name is occasionally used, The Golden Age, reflecting both economic there is no political entity called The Low and cultural prosperity. Influential writers Countries.In unoflicial usage it may refer to as Vondel, Hooft, Bredero, Cats coined various regions but when the focus is on lan- the writing standard for ages to come in guage and culture it usually refers to the a Republic that had developed into one of Dutch language territory in Belgium and the super powers of that time. In the l7th, The Netherlands. The latter is also what the but mainly in the lSth century efforts were editors of this volume had in mind' The made to regulate and uniform the language main focus of the article will be on the multi- by means of dictionaries and grammars, a lingual situation, i. e. the contact of different tradition started previously by the southern languages as well as of varieties of the same spraeckconsteneers of the I 6tt century. From language. a contemporary point of view it was defi- nitely Lambert ten Kate (the first com- parative linguist in the Low Countries) who language arca 2. The Dutch proved to have the best insight in languagrc From the very beginning of the Middle change and linguistic evolution in general. It Dutch writing tradition a linguistic contrast were less gifted colleagues of his, though, between an easternly and a westerly shaped who were the most successful and influen- variety can be witnessed. The overwhelming tial. They deepened the gap between the majority of all texts displayed decidedly spoken and the (over formalized) written western language features and the written language and their linguistic views came to language of the Middle Dutch period was be designated as 'language despotism'. Yet, firmly western (specifically Flemish) in at the dawn of the l gtn century the northern its roots even in the non-Flemish parts of written language could boast a complete set the language territory. In the 16th century, of 'standardization instruments' : Weiland's though, the economic and political center of grammar (1805) and Siegenbeek's ortho- gravity of the Dutch language area shifted to graphy (1804) were there for the use of all Brabant. During this period a standard var- who wanted to write standard, 'cultivated' iety of the written language was gradually Dutch (De VriesAMillemyns/Burger 1995, taking shape. After the political split of the 99ff). Meanwhile, and as a result of the Dutch language territory during the last Spanish War of Succession (1702-1713), quarter of the l6th century the center of the southern, 'Belgian' territories were pass- gravity of standardization passed from the ed on from the Spanish to the Austrian South to the North (more or less the pres- Habsburgs. Throughout the 18tn century the ent-day Netherlands) which had come out consolidation of French as the more socially 171. The Low Countries 1759 acceptable tongue continued and Dutch had munity of Brussels (9.5%). Since regional little official status, except at a local level. governments have legislative power the fron- Yet, during the lTth and lSth centuries the tiers of their jurisdiction, being language unity ofthe northern and southern language borders, are defined in the constitution. varieties was not challenged by anyone and 3.1.2. The 'language struggle' which was the great poets of Holland's Golden Age were going to dominate Belgian political life the important role models, highly recom- started in 1830. Although the new constitu- mended - yet much less complied with - by tion provided for 'linguistic freedom', it was 18th - century Flemish grammarians and obvious that this 'freedom' was only profit- poets alike. The language situation deterio- able to the rich and the powerful, i. e. the rated considerably when, in 1794,the South- bourgeoisie from Wallonia and Flanders, all ern Netherlands were annexed by France: of whom were French speakers. Hence, des- for the lirst time in history there was a mass- pite the fact that Dutch speakers constituted ive oflicial attempt to change the linguistic the majority of the population, no legal habits of the masses by suppressing the use means was provided for their language. A of the Dutch language. The shortJived reun- so-called Flemish Movement started up al- ion of Belgium and Holland as one United most immediately and fought a long lasting Kingdom of the Netherlands (1814-1830) was battle for cultural and linguistic rights for of the utmost importance to the Flemings, Dutch speakers. It took until 1889 for the who suddenly rediscovered their language gelijkheidswel to declare Dutch and French for administration, politics, the courts, and the two official languages of the country. higher education, areas where it had hardly It took a complete century to finally achieve been used for almost two centuries. A small the so-called Dutchification of the university group of cultural leaders and intellectuals of Ghent (in 1930), meaning that at last were strongly influenced by both the Dutch Dutch speaking university students were standard language and the new linguistic taught in their own language. Afterwards opportunities. In this way the short period things developed considerably faster: two ofreunion was decisive for the success ofthe sets of laws in 1932 and 1963 guaranteed Flemish Movement which would gradually what had been the ultimate goal of the Flem- succeed in turning the linguistic make-up of ish Movement i. e. the official and complete Flanders and Belgium upside down. By 1830 Dutchification of Flanders. The Walloons Belgium had become an independent consti- having been opposed to widespread bilin- tutional monarchy with a parliamentary sys- gualism throughout the country, Belgium tem dominated by the bourgeois elite, which gradually turned to the territoriality prin- secured its position by adopting a poll-tax ciple model to accommodate the various lin- system (out of 3.5 million peoplg only guistic groups. It officialized the language 46000 had the right to vote). For this bour- frontier as a domestic administrative border, geoisie, French was a natural choice as the made it virtually unchangeable and accom- language of the state. The government ap- plished the linguistic homogeneity of the pointed only French-speaking civil servants language groups and regions. Revisions of and the discrimination of Dutch throughout the constitution in 1970 and 1980 provided the l9th century was general and very delib- for cultural autonomy and a considerable erate (Willemyns 2003, l85ff.). amount of self-determination for the lin- guistically divided parts of the country. Sub- sequent constitutional 1988 Flanders changes in and 3. 1993 finally turned Belgium into the federal country it is now (Coudenberg 1989; Alen/ 3.1. Social and political aspects of Suetens 1993). multilingualism The most important exception to the ter- 3.1.1. Belgium (+10 million inhabitants) is ritoriality rule is Brussels, where there is no a trilingual and federal country, consisting geographical demarcation of Dutch and of 4 different entities constituted on the French speakers and, consequently, the per- basis of language: the Dutch speaking com- sonality principle is the only possible one. munity (called Flanders; 58oh of the popu- The case of the capital is rather special lation), the French speaking one (called in that it had turned into a bilingual city, Wallonia; 32o/o),the small German speaking although it is located entirely within the community (0.6%) and the bilingual com- Flemish region. The Frenchification of the 1760 IX. Regional Overview capital started in the 18th century and devel- of the industrial gross added value was gen- oped considerably during the l9tn century erated in the Flemish region (58% of Bel- (Witte and Baetens Beardsmore 1987). Im- gium's population). Consequently, the cul- migration of Walloons and French certainly tural and linguistic balance of power shifted played a part in this but the decisive factor towards Flanders. The present-day social has been the Frenchification of considerable and economic unbalance between Flanders, parts of the indigenous population and of Brussels and Wallonia is to be considered Flemish immigrants, due to the fact that up- potentially disruptive for the continuation ward social mobility seemed hardly possible of Belgium's existence, since it requires a without shifting to French (Demetsenaere considerable amount of so-called 'solidarity 1988). It was only after World War II that transfers' from Flanders to Wallonia (for serious efforts were made to safeguard Brus- 80%) and to Brussels (tor 20%). Most of sels' bilingual status and to secure the rights these transfers occur in the field of social se- of the Dutch speaking population which curity financing. had become a minority by then. Measures to slow down Frenchification started in the 3.2. Linguistic varieties early sixties not so much through local regu- 3.2.1. Flanders is characterized by a rather lations but mainly by extensive linguistic complicated use of several codes.
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