Talk:Flemish dialects

Flemish as an autonomous language

1. Flanders is one of Belgium's three administrative regions, with its own Parliament and significant autonomy. It has declared Flemish is it's official language, NOT Dutch.

2. According to the late Jean Schoysman, a fully qualified Flemish legal interpreter (in fact, for a long while Head of Legal Services of the Belgian Army), Flemish has remained fairly frozen from its separation from the Dutch language in the early years of the 20th Century. Because Dutch is both the official language of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and has developed both as a language and in accent, I'd urge you to cease this attempt to merge them, because it's not representative of the reality on the ground. I came across this researching the Liege syrup page, which imposed a wholly incorrect Dutch translation, using the word stroop, whereas the Flemish label on the principal retail product uses Siroop.

Therefore, I'd urge you to stop the appropriation of one culture by another. In 1830, the Flemish decided by revolution NOT to remain part of the Netherlands, and seems still to be so minded. It is not for Wikipedia to know better than the people themselves. -- unsigned comment added 24 July 2020‎ by 90.213.9.109

In the future, my London IP friend, sign your comments with four tildas (~) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.111.8.23 (talk) 15:57, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

I am sorry, but in Flanders the Belgians commonly refer to their language as "Nederlands" (Dutch). The spelling is coordinated by the "Nederlandse Taalunie" (Dutch Language Union). Standard Flemish (as spoken for instance in television news shows) is hardly distinguishable from Dutch from the Netherlands. Perhaps there are emotional reservations for Belgians to name their language after a neighbouring country, but that does no alter the fact that it is virtually the same language. Rbakels (talk) 19:38, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

We go round this loop every few years it seems. The Belgian Constitution refers to a Vlaamse Gewest in territorial terms but a Nederlandse taalgebied in purely linguistic ones. The official language in Flanders is accordingly Dutch, not Flemish. —Brigade Piron (talk) 20:06, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

In addition, the local Standard Dutch varieties (not the ones used in the mainstream media) spoken just on the other side of the border are basically the same, maybe save for some bigger cities on the Dutch side of the border (Maastricht, perhaps?) where the Polder Dutch vowel shift may be in effect for some young speakers. Other than that, the accent is largely if not completely the same. The Belgian-Dutch border seems to be irrelevant in Limburgish dialectology: w:nl:Limburgs#Taxonomie, w:nl:Panninger zijlinie, w:nl:Uerdinger Linie, making the classification of Limburgish as a "Flemish dialect" a joke. It's either a separate language or a Dutch dialect spoken on both sides of the border (and a small part of Germany, too!). I mean, how do you explain the fact that the dialects of Maastricht and Weert, which are spoken in the Netherlands and are major dialects of Limburgish (spoken by a total of 8% of native speakers of Limburgish) belong to the Central Limburgish dialect group along with roughly one third of the Limburgish-speaking territory in Belgium? (I know that this one third of Limburgish-speaking territory in Belgium doesn't necessarily correspond with the number of speakers. It may or may not be roughly 30% of speakers of Limburgish who live in Belgium. I can't prove that it is or is not true, but I'm sure someone can come up with a RS that clarifies the issue).

Not only that, the dialects of Sittard and Kerkrade (both easily recognizable by all native speakers of Limburgish) both belong to dialect groups that are spoken in the Netherlands and Germany, namely w:nl:Oost-Limburgs (East Limburgish) in the first case and West Ripuarian or Southeast Limburgish in the latter case. A Ripuarian dialect (or perhaps several mutually intelligible dialects) is also spoken in the Belgian province of Liege, where it is classified as a German dialect (much like Kölsch and other Ripuarian dialects spoken in Germany), which itself is a bit silly (I mean, why classify it as such when the Kerkrade dialect and the neighboring few other dialects are a "statutory provincial language" [called "Limburgish"] in the Netherlands? Surely the self-identification of its speakers as "German" in Belgium and Germany or "Dutch" in the Netherlands doesn't magically change the linguistic classifcation of the language variety they speak? Do speakers of the Kerkrade dialect from Kerkrade speak a "language" and the people from Herzogenrath a "German dialect"?).

I don't know about Brabantian, but w:nl:Zuid-Brabants tells us that Jo Daan noemt in haar indeling van de Nederlandse en Vlaamse dialecten alle Brabantse dialecten gesproken in België "Zuid-Brabants". De rijksgrens tussen Nederland en België is echter lang geen taalgrens van grote betekenis. w:nl:Oost-Vlaams says this about East Flemish dialects: Het behoort tot de Nederfrankische taalgroep en kent een dialectcontinuüm met zowel het West-Vlaams als het Brabants. Sommigen zien het hele Oost-Vlaams als een overgang tussen West-Vlaams en Brabants.

Also, per w:li:Völzer, In Oche zaat mer dat 't beste Öcher plat jekalld weat i Vols. I think this translates to "In Aachen it is said that the best/purest form of the Aachen dialect is spoken in Vaals". The local dialect, called Kerkrade dialect on Wikipedia, is spoken in both Kerkrade and Herzogenrath and, AFAIK, there are very few, if any, differences between the varieties spoken on both sides of the border (the dialect isn't homogenous in Kerkrade itself, by the way, so that'd be no argument anyway). See also Westphalian language. All this tells us that the border between Belgium and Netherlands as well as the border between Netherlands and Germany has little to do with proper classification of dialects spoken in those areas.

Furthermore, w:nl:West-Vlaams is also spoken in France (but yes, its speakers identify as Flemings) and a small southwestern part of the Dutch province of Zeeland. Dialects (called "Zeelandic") spoken elsewhere in the province are closely related to West Flemish anyway and both could perhaps be classified as one group of mutually intelligible dialects.

Also, the phenomenon of Tussentaal can be found in Belgium as well as the Netherlands (but to a more limited extent), see e.g. w:nl:Gronings#Gronings Nederlands, which is a mix of Standard Dutch and a local Dutch Low Saxon variety influenced by Frisian. Sol505000 (talk) 10:12, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

One of your premises is that having separate countries automatically means one speaks separate languages. The number of countries where the official and primarily spoken language is English, and called English, albeit in many varieties, demonstrates straight out that that premise is false. Therefore, your reasoning that what's spoken in Flanders is a different language from what's spoken in the Netherlands because the two, once united, were politically split from each other is invalid.

Another of your premises is that what a people thinks about itself or calls things related to itself supersedes knowledge based on research and analysis of data. By that reasoning, if people X thinks that plant Y cures disease Z, then plant Y does cure disease Z among them even though researchers have observed that, in reality, the same percentage of X people with disease Z who consume plant Y and recover is the same as the percentage with disease Z who don't consume plant Y and recover. Wikipedia communicates knowledge, as reported in reliable sources, and knowledge supersedes what this or that group of people claim, whether about themselves or anything else. Largoplazo (talk) 12:06, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

Discrepancy between introduction identification of language codes and the Language Codes section

The introduction states: "MultiTree considers Flemish to include the four principal Dutch dialects in the Flemish region (Flanders): Brabantian, East Flemish, West Flemish and Limburgish as well as three other dialects.[13] Glottolog considers Flemish to be a separate (regional) language, which includes the dialects French Flemish and West Flemish.[14] Ethnologue considers Limburgish and West Flemish to be separate (regional) languages.[15][16]", while the Language Codes bar on the right uses nld and dutc1256 as ISO639-3 and Glottolog codes respectively. I would like to update this so that the Language Codes use the Vlaams codes as identified within the introduction text. Is there a reason these are different?PaulSutherland (talk) 13:40, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Issues because of mixing Flemish and Belgian Dutch

Issue 1

You can't link to the German Wikipedia article, because they make, rightly so, a distinction between one of the three official languages spoken in Belgium, which is (Belgian) Dutch, and Flemish. Flemish is a general term of all flemish dialects spoken in Belgium and partially in the North of France. They do not speak the same language though. Flemish in Limburg is quite different from Flemish in West or East Flanders and it is even more different from Flemish spoken in the North of France. It is not true that the official language in Flanders is Flemish. One can just look it up in the Belgian constitution: : Belgium is divided into 4 language regions, i.e. the Dutch region, the French region, the bilingual region Brussels Capital and the German region. Children learn in school in Flanders Dutch and not Flemish. It is true however that Belgians will say that they speak Flemish while in fact they mean (Belgian) Dutch. This has historic reasons (similar to Irish people saying they speak Irish while talking to you in Irish English). The difference between Dutch Dutch (spoken in the Netherlands) and Belgian Dutch is comparable to the difference between US and UK English. Both speak English, both learn English at school (not specified UK or US English) and both understand each other in English most of the time.

Issue 2

If, as is claimed in ths article, Belgian Dutch is the same as Flemish, then this kind of Flemish is not spoken in the North of France, because it's very different from what an average Belgian Flemish speaker would understand.==

Conclusion

It would be better to split this article into Flemish (a heterogeneous language spoken in Flanders and the North of France) and Belgian Dutch (a rather homogeneous language spoken in Flanders). In both articles a remark could be written that the term Flemish is often used, especially by Belgians, when Belgian Dutch is meant. 85.221.148.72 (talk) 17:56, 27 January 2022 (UTC)DD

References

Requested move 12 June 2023

• Flemish → Flemish language
• Flemish (disambiguation) → Flemish

– Similar to English and English language, Russian and Russian language, etc. —Vigilant Cosmic Penguin (talk | contribs) 20:42, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

• Support per nom. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 20:52, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose because Flemish isn't a language. It would be bad to give an article a title that's immediately contradicted by its first sentence ("Flemish (Vlaams) is a Low Franconian dialect cluster of the Dutch language"). Largoplazo (talk) 21:12, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
• Support Flemish people are a thing. This is a clarifying improvement. Walrasiad (talk) 23:56, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
  • How does it clarify anything to call it "Flemish language" when Flemish isn't a language? Largoplazo (talk) 00:04, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Clarifies its not people. Walrasiad (talk) 06:35, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

That seems a rather silly argument... —Brigade Piron (talk) 18:31, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose because it is not a language. The only change I would support is "Flemish (language variety)". The alternative "Flemish (dialect cluster)" would be incorrect as certain dialect groups in Flanders like Brabantian and Limburgish are more related to the dialects across the border in the Netherlands than to other "Flemish dialects". --Glennznl (talk) 08:42, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose - Per Largoplazo. Does not improve understanding. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 08:48, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
• Flemish dialects is already an incoming redirect (since 2003), that can be used instead of 'language'? The idea of clarifying that the adjective is ambiguous while there are clear replacement proper nouns - seems reasonable, it sounds like we could have a lot of ambiguous links as it is now. --Joy (talk) 10:27, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Move to Flemish dialect(s) - Flemish is not a language, rather a dialect of Dutch. But there is still a reasonable case for confusion so the present title is unsustainable. estar8806 (talk) ★ 18:16, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose proposed move, but support "Flemish dialects". —Brigade Piron (talk) 18:28, 14 June 2023 (UTC)