| About the Dutch language |
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Stran 1 od 4 Introduction Andragoški zavod Maribor - Ljudska univerza is the author and the coordinator of the Language Festival project. Together with the partners from the Netherlands, Germany, Check Republic, Slovakia and Hungary we applied for financing with EU programme Socrates - Lingua 1. The project received positive feedback and was accepted by European Commission to be implemented between October 2003 and October 2005. In the project we prepared and organised the Language Festival in Maribor from 29th September to 2nd October 2004, held book exhibition of minor European languages, produced a web site and books on chosen languages. The Festival hosted many experts who introduced 24 European languages to general public in 4 days not only at AZM-LU but also at many schools and other institutions. In April 2005 we held book exhibition where we presented books and other materials on 17 minor European languages at Maribor Faculty of Education. We finalised the activities by producing the web site you're using at the moments. Here you can find some information regarding language connected culture, basic characteristics of relevant languages and language survival kits. Website language is Slovenian. Also German and English versions are available. In time we hope to achieve English, German and Esperanto descriptions for all languages. This website is still very much alive and constantly expanding. We plan to add new languages as well. Promotionally the project enjoyed great success. In cooperation with Mediamix we created an innovative way of attracting the public and received many awards at advertising festivals. Socrates Lingua declared the Language Festival project one of 50 best examples of promoting languages. Info regarding promotion of the Festival is available on: http://www.mediamix.si/slo/News/2005junij02.html Melita Cimerman and Zlatko Tišljar. Author: Raf Keunen The history of Dutch Introduction Dutch is, a member of the Germanic language group, is first noted from around 700 AD. Today it is spoken by approximately 20 million people in Europe. Dutch is both the official language of the northern part of Belgium, Flanders, and the official language in The Netherlands. Both are highly developed industrialized countries and two of the countries with the highest living standards in the world. In some respects, the history of the language is, at least for a certain period, one of a success story and much related to the history of both countries that even boasted a world supremacy in certain spheres, albeit for a brief time. For this reason, Dutch can also be found in other countries than Belgium and The Netherlands, namely in Suriname, the Dutch Antilles, Aruba and, in a slightly different form, in South Africa. We will discuss South African as a language and the huge influence Dutch had upon it later, also the often strange influence Dutch has had on other languages, such as English, French, Spanish, Russian, and even on Japanese and other African languages (the so-called Sotho-language group). And of course, Dutch has been heavily influenced by numerous other languages, such as English and French. This is certainly the case in Brussels, where French and Dutch mutually influenced each other. It is therefore interesting to note how the two language groups interacted with each other, both in a linguistic and political way. In Belgium, with three official languages, we cannot say that the “language IS the people” ... Belgium is in some ways a nice example of how language can be the main reason to differ and argue … Germanic and Gothic Dutch is Germanic language. This is most obvious from the vocabulary. The word ‘father’ in respectively Dutch, German, Swedish, Norwegian, and Icelandic are very similar: vader, fater, fader, fader, far and fair. Or take a look at the word ‘house’ in the same languages: huis, haus, hus, hus, hus, and hùs. Those similarities aren’t just a coincidence and originated a long time ago when all these languages were in fact one source language, described as ‘Indo-European (or –German)’. Although it is only hypothetical, and therefore there are no written proofs, there must have once been a common ‘proto-language’. The family of this proto-language where Dutch, English, German and also South-African belong is a proto-German language family. The base words of these languages are extremely close and that is not the case for other language families of the Indo-German proto-language (such as Greek, Gothic, and Slav languages, etc). Of course there was no single event in time, but through the course of many centuries Germanic languages moved further apart with this process ending around 200 BC. After that, there was a second syllable shift around 500-800 AD (for instance, the ‘f’ became a ‘v’ in certain languages: five in English, vijf in Dutch). In the first century in what are today Belgium and the Netherlands, the first German tribes, lived with mostly Celtic tribes. It was during that time – from 57 BC to 500 AD - that this region became part of the Roman Empire. However, Roman culture never exerted a profound influence on the original German tribes in this region. And in the 4th and 5th centuries, numerous other tribes, including Saxons and Franks came. The Gothic language represents the oldest known language of the Germanic language family and is the base for all German languages. It can be considered as a ‘Germanic Latin’. The most notable characteristics are: Gothic has case endings, like Latin.
Here is the prayer 'Our Father' in Gothic and Dutch, literally translated:
The oldest forms of Dutch When does Dutch begin? Usually, we say: at the first appearance of a text in the language. Of course that doesn’t mean that the language was never spoken before. But it is the first written proof of the existence of the language and it provides us with much information about the structure, the words, and so on. The first written text in Dutch is situated in the 11th century, no texts are recorded before this date, although this is also possible. The first written pieces in Dutch aren’t full texts or works in the strict sense of the word. In Medieval times, monks had the habit to ‘test’ their pens (feathers) on a piece of paper in order to check if they work properly. So, the first texts in Dutch are little phrases or fragments out of the bible. The very first text, written in Dutch, was such a little fragment, written by a Flemish monk … in England! In 1932, a researcher found, on the cover of a book in an Oxford library, a little phrase in Latin, and beneath it, the ‘Dutch’ translation. This little phrase, written by a West-Flemish monk around 1100 in the abbey of Rochester, is the first Dutch text we have knowledge of. hebban olla vogala nestas hagunnan hinase hi(c) (e)nda thu uu(at) unbida(n) (uu)e nu In English: Every bird has begun nesting, except me and you. What are we waiting for? In modern Dutch the text reads: "Alle vogels zijn met hun nesten begonnen behalve ik en jij. Waar wachten wij nog op?" So, the history of Dutch begins with a text, written by a monk, about love… The letters between brackets are reconstructions as the text is very old. The author is unknown, but we are certain that he was a West-Flemish monk as he had problems with the ‘h’ - a typical problem for people at that time, and even today. The monk's abbey, Rochester, and West-Flanders had strong relations during that time. There are other ancient texts, but this one became the most famous one, and has a very Dutch feel to it (vogala = vogels, nestas = nest (with a Latin-like end), olla = alle etc) From these short texts, we can reconstruct and learn a lot about how Dutch was constructed and spoken. We can notice a huge influence of French and Latin. This is very important, because at the time of Charles the Great, people spoke more or less same German dialect. On the other hand, Latin, was used in official and clerical matters. In France, people spoke a sort of popular Latin, besides the official Latin. The influence of Latin on the languages spoken by the common people was enormous and began very early (about 5th century and certainly in the period of ‘middle-Dutch’ from the 12th until 16th century). For instance: wijn (vinum), munt (moneta), straat (via strata) are typical loan words. Also French and old-French words still existed in Middle Dutch, before the written texts we have knowledge of. |
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