   #copyright

Flemish (linguistics)

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Linguistics

   The term Flemish, besides an adjective referring to an attribute of any
   circumscription of an area named Flanders or its people and culture,
   can be a linguistic one, referring to the speech of the Flemings,
   inhabitants of Flanders, though Algemeen Nederlands (Common Dutch) is
   the name of their official standard language. 'Flemish' is used to
   describe certain non-standardized dialects spoken in Flanders, and
   sometimes to Dutch as spoken in Belgium. The latter usage, though
   widespread, is not considered correct by some linguists: boundaries
   between areas of distinct groups of historical Dutch dialects do not
   coincide with the national borders.

   These multiple definitions are used many times and can result in
   confusion. One might expect that Flemish would be an official term for
   the language of politics and education in Flanders, but there is no
   standardized language of culture by this name. In Belgium the official
   languages according to the constitution are French, German and Dutch.

   In contrast to countries where the names of languages may have a more
   purely descriptive significance, in Belgium language is at the basis of
   a long political emancipation struggle, which accounts for the weight
   being put on the use of correct terminology, as well as the involvement
   of government in determining and defining standard languages.

Different linguistic meanings of Flemish

   To the term Flemish, as a linguistic notion, several meanings can be
   given:
     * The variants of standard Dutch as generally perceived from speakers
       or writers of ' Common Dutch' that are native to the Belgian
       regions Flanders or Brussels-Capital;
     * The non-standardized dialects as spoken in the present region
       Flanders, often perceived as related;

          Note: for linguists however, these are part of three distinct
          groups:

         1. the dialects of the separate language of Limburg, at present
            roughly covering the provinces Limburg (the Netherlands) and
            Limburg (present region Flanders, in Belgium),
         2. the dialects of the former duchy of Brabant which once covered
            the provinces North Brabant (the Netherlands), Antwerp and
            Flemish Brabant (present region Flanders), the
            Brussels-Capital region, and – historically, the now
            officially French speaking (original dialects [all but?]
            extinct) province Walloon Brabant (present region Wallonia),
         3. the dialects of the former countship of Flanders, which once
            covered most of the provinces of West-Vlaanderen,
            Oost-Vlaanderen (present region Flanders), Zeeuws-Vlaanderen
            (the Netherlands) and the northern French region of French
            Flanders;

     * The non-standardized dialects of the former countship of Flanders
       (see here above);
     * The non-standardized dialects of the provinces of West-Vlaanderen,
       Zeeuws-Vlaanderen and French Flanders;
     * A range of mixes of Standard Dutch with non-standardized dialect as
       individuals may tend to speak outside the most formal and their
       most familiar local environments, or in a familiar local
       environment while addressing an audience; or as in particular
       younger people who may not master a dialect tend to speak in any
       but the more formal environments.
     * Any combination of the above.

   Depending on the definition used, Flemish shows more or less
   differences with the Standard Dutch, as officially determined by the
   Nederlandse Taalunie. Some usages that are common in Belgium, but not
   in the Netherlands, are recognized as being interchangeably correct,
   and are therefore correct Dutch, while others are rejected in Flanders
   as dialectisms.

Other Dialects

   Another category of variants consists of the Dutch dialects spoken in
   Belgium. These "Flemish dialects", as they are often called by the
   layperson, do not form a unity however: i.e. they are not more closely
   related to each other than to the dialects spoken in the Netherlands,
   instead there are several groups, rather corresponding to the feudal
   principalities; some are strictly cross-border, especially in the
   provinces that were created by separating the historical duchy of
   Brabant ( North Brabant is Dutch, Antwerp and Vlaams-Brabant are
   Belgian) and the region of Limburg (both states have a homonymous
   province). The main dividing lines between the Dutch dialects run from
   north to south, not from west to east as the Belgian-Dutch state border
   does. Of course centuries of separate political life did generate quite
   some idiomatic differences in official language and various jargons,
   but hardly anything grammatical and not significantly more even in
   vocabulary than between say Austria, Switzerland and Germany (even
   within this federal country there are very distinct northern and
   southern groups, pre-Luther without a common standard even in writing).
   The idea that 'Flemish' was a 'language without a literature' separate
   from Dutch was maintained by Belgium's francophone ruling class to
   fence off any threat from growing cries for recognition among the
   Dutch-speaking majority.

   Finally there are among these Dutch dialects also strictly Flemish
   dialects in the linguistic sense, that are spoken in the old county of
   Flanders (about a third of the Dutch-speaking region in Belgium), among
   which the most deviant subset is West Flemish, which is also spoken in
   Zeeuws Vlaanderen situated in Zeeland a province of The Netherlands
   alongside Zeeuws which can be seen as the link between Hollandic and
   West Flemish.

Language history

Classification

   Flemish can be classified as followed:
     * Indo-European
          + Germanic
               o West Germanic
                    # Low Franconian
                         @ Dutch
                              - Flemish varieties

   Retrieved from "
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flemish_%28linguistics%29"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
