Dutch Orthography in Lower, Middle and Upper Class Documents in 19Th.Centt.]Ryflanders

DUTCH ORTHOGRAPHY IN LOWER, MIDDLE AND UPPER CLASS DOCUMENTS IN 19TH.CENTT.]RYFLANDERS WIM VANDENBUSSCIIE F.W.O.-Vlaandereru Vrtje UniversiteitBrussel, Belgium 1. Introduction The 19s centurycould be considereda forgottenchapter in the linguistic study of the developmentof Dutch in Flanders. Although many contributions have been publishedon externalaspects of the Flemish languagesituation in the Late Modern period (Witte & Van Velthoven1999 is a standardreference), thereis to dateno comprehensivedescription of the grammaticalfeatures of the languageat that time, nor is anythingknown aboutsocial and stylistic variation in actual languageuse. In most cases,major scientific 'Histories of Dutch' (mostnotably Van denToorn et al. 1997)pay marginalattention to the subject. Similar remarks have recently been made about researchon the history of English (Gdrlach 1999:1)and German(Mattheier 1998:l), but the case of Dutchin Flandersis particularlystriking. It is generallyagreed that the l9'n century was a vital period for the development,standardization and even survival of the Dutch languagein the present day area of Flanders(Van de Craen & Willemyns 1988). Due to tenitorial separationfrom the NorthernDutch provinces(which coincide with the currentterritory of the Netherlands)at the end of the l6to century,and under influenceof the French-favouringpolicies of successiveSpanish (1585-1714), Austrian(I714-1794) and French (1794-1815) rulers, Dutch could not develop towardsa standardprestige language in Flanders.The natureof FlemishDutch around 1800 is usually describedas a collection of dialects, of which the functionswere restrictedto the informal and [-prestige]-areas.Contrary to the situationin Holland, therewas no widely acceptedstandard Dutch which could be used for supraregionalcommunication - in general,French was used for such purposesinstead (De Vries et al: 1994). Common opinion has it that "Flanders'native language was pushed down the socialladder, where the lower 28 WIM VANDENBUSSCHE middle class, farmers and workers mingled" (witte et al. 2000:44); there is evidence,though - as will becomeclear from this article - that the upper classes,too, continuedto use Dutch in everydaywriting (seeVandenbussche forthcoming). Yet, at the end of the century in 1898, Dutch was officially recognized (alongsideFrench) as Belgium's nationallanguage, and today,another hundred yearslater, it is the official fully standardizedlanguage of all Flemings. This phoenix-likerestoration was largely due to the so-called'Flemish Movement', a socio-political and linguistic emancipatorymovement whose actions and merits havealready been described in greathistorical detail (NEVB 1998). However, the purely linguistic aspectsof this evolution 'from rags to riches' and the gradual growth of the languagestandardization process in Flanders,have not yet beendescribed on the basisof original sources,let alone from a historicalsociolinguistic point of view. Over the past five years, our researchteam at the Free University of Brusselshas been working on the first researchproject which does take into accountthese linguistic, social and stylistic aspectsof standardizationin 19th- century Flanders (vandenbussche& willemyns 2000; De Groof in this volume). To this end we collectedan original corpusof handwrittentexts - meeting reports- spanningthe whole period between1800 and 1900and pertainingto f[mistr writers in Bruges from three distinct social classes. For the lower classes we used documents of various assistance companies (onderstandsmaatschappijen)for trade apprentices. These organizationscan be consideredearly precursorsof our presentday social security funds: they guaranteedmembers and their families minimal financial supportin the event of illn"s, invalidity,pension and death (Michiels1978). Our cor?uscontains an extensiveselection of meetingminutes written by apprenticesin the trades of shoemaker,wool weaver,tailor and brush maker. Thesedocuments are all kept in the municipal archive and the folklore museumof Bruges. Similar structuresexisted for the middle classoriented trade masters, and we were able, accordingly,to selecta largesample of meetingreports from the bakermasters' assistancecompany as our middle classcorpus. In orderto compile a database of upper classmeeting reports, finally, we were grantedpermission to consult the ar;hive of the Saint Sebastianarchers' guild, which was (and still is today) one of the most prestigioushigh societycircles in the town (Godar 1947). Each of thesedocuments has been digitalized- manuallytranscribed in word processingformat - and analyzedin searchof standardizationfeatures on the levels of orthography,glammar and style. We have thus been able to describe for the first time the real impact of various language planning DUTCH ORTHOGRAPHY IN I9TT.CENTIJRY FLANDERS 29 measuresthroughout the 19frcentury on actuallanguage users, and the possible differentiationaccording to the writers' social status. The successivemodels for a standardized Dutch spelling certainly ranked among the most controversialof thesemeasures at the time (Couvreur& Willemyns 1998); in this article I will try to illustratethe extentto which thesespelling norms had an effect on the everydaywriter in the practiceof writing meetingreports. One methodologicalcomment should be includedat this point. I am well awareof the fact that the categorizationof writers into various social classesis a highly sensitiveissue, especially when one takesinto accountthat the social and economicstructure in Flanders(but also in the rest or Europe) during the 19thcentury was constantlychanging (Witte et al. 2000). The rise of the middle class, the slow transition from a trade-basedto an industrialized economyand the subsequentchanges in the rel'ativefinancial statusof certain professionsmake it a perilousundertaking to define a clear social structurein 19th-centuryBruges - it shouldbe notedthat this descriptionis not available to date in the secondaryliterature on the history of the town (patial contributionscan be found in Michiels 1978and Van Eenoo 1959). For this research,we have usedthe scribes' relative esteemfor their own and other professions- as expressedin the corpus texts - as the main criterion for our broad three-classcategoization (lower, middle and upper class). The membersof the Sebastianarchers' guild repeatedlyidentified themselvesas the town's socialand financial elite and explicitly cultivatedthis image with, amongstother things,philanthropic actions in favour of the lower classes(bread distributions, for example)(Godar 1947). This prestige-focussed approachon the basisof text internalelements has further proved to be useful to distinguishbetween 'lower class' trade apprenticesand 'middle class' trade masters(who could, alternatively,have been seen as belongingto one and the same 'trade class'). From their written 'behaviouralcode for members' it becomesclear that apprenticesconsidered their mastersto belong to a higher socialclass; the discussionsincluded in the apprentices'meeting repolts further confirm their poor financial statusand their dire needfor financial supportin case of illness and invalidity. The mastersclearly distinguishedthemselves from their subordinateapprentices on moral and/ or financial grounds: they literally stated,for example,that their apprenticeswere not to be allowed in their assistancecompany. 2. Spelling norrns Strippedof all emotional,tactical and political elementsinvolved (seeDe Groof in this volume), the controversyover the spelling of Dutch in Flanders throughoutthe first half of the 19ft centurycame down to the conflict between 30 WIM VANDENBUSSCFIE either adheringto NorthernDutch spellingstandards or introducingspecifically Flemishelements in the writing system. This discussiongained momentumafter the Dutch governmentofficially imposed Siegenbeek'smodel as the spelling standardfor the Netherlandsin 1804. In Flanders(which was subsequentlyunder French rule until 1815 and underDutch rule until 1830,before it becomea part of the independentBelgian state), this decision was favoured by the so-called 'integrationists'. Others choseto defendthe existing Brabantic spelling systemof des Roches,or the newly developedmodel of Behaegel. After Belgian independence,a special spelling commissiondeveloped a new model which very much resembledthe eiisting Siegenbeeknofln, and which was given force of law in Belgium from 1844 on. This rapprochementbetween Flemish and Dutch spelling standards eventuallyled to the acceptanceof a commonnorm designedby de Vries & Te Winkel in 1864. Each of these systemsmay have been influential to some extent in the region of Bruges,either due to its official status(siegenbeek, commission and de Vries-te Winkel), its regionalcharacter (Behaegel) or its relativemonopoly at the time (desRoches). A contrastivelinguistic studyof the different models remainsto be written, however(Molewijk 1992 containsa 'popular-scientific' accountof thesespelling reforms). In Table 1 I havetried to bring togetherthe spellingnorns from the respectivesystems for fifteen distinct phonemes.(The riader will note that thereare sixteenentries; for the [al] phonemea distinction has been made betweenthe spelling in open and closed syllables,since the additional<a> spellingonly occurredin opensyllable position.) This description is tentative and does not aspire to completeness:the phonemeswereielected on the basisof the most frequentexamples of spelling variation which were found in the researchcorpora. It would go beyondthe scopeof

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