Flemish (linguistics)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
An official standard Flemish language as such does not exist: there are however variants of the Dutch language spoken in Belgium; and these are, mainly for political reasons, sometimes referred to as "Flemish".
One of these variants is the standard Dutch spoken in Belgium, which is slightly different from the standard in The Netherlands in vocabulary and idiom. This southern standard is largely of Brabantic origin. The Flemish people themselves often note the difference between standard Dutch, as spoken in The Netherlands, and "Flemish". This distinction is also recognised outside Flanders, as can be seen by the fact that companies, such as Microsoft, have a setting for 'Dutch (The Netherlands)' and 'Dutch (Belgium)'. Belgians speak Dutch (at least the Flemish part; Walloons do not natively speak Dutch) with a softer accent, not using an unvoiced g, v or z at the beginning of a word as a growing majority in the north of The Netherlands does. Their language thus reflects the original written Dutch standard derived from the Brabantic urban dialect of Antwerp. Belgian television networks often feel obliged to add Dutch subtitles to programming from Holland proper, so that viewers can fully understand what is being said, especially when the speaker has a heavy Randstad accent. This is often compared to the relationship between Americans and Britons (see American and British English differences), but the differences are rather more important though: a better comparison could be made by referring to the difference between the standard of London and that of Scotland. These differences in part originated and are kept due to historical political divisions. In some areas even this southern standard is rarely spoken, only the local dialect being used, and only known by many from written texts.
Another category of variants consists of the Dutch dialects spoken in Belgium. These "Flemish dialects", as they are often called by the layman, 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. The main dividing lines between the Dutch dialects run from north to south, not from west to east as the state border does.
Finally there are among these Belgian Dutch dialects also real 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 is West Flemish, which is also spoken in the Zeeland province of The Netherlands.
