Limburgish
Limburgish is the collective designation for a group of closely related language varieties spoken in most of Belgian and Dutch Limburg and in the adjacent areas of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The Limburgish dialects lack a standardized form and instead comprise multiple varieties, each with its own distinctive features. A characteristic feature of many dialects of Limburgish is the occurrence of a lexical pitch accent, which these dialects adopted from and share with the adjacent Central Franconian dialects of German.
In the Netherlands, Limburgish has been officially recognized as a regional language by the Dutch government since 1997. In Belgium and Germany, Limburgish dialects have no formal legal status.
Etymology
The name Limburgish derives only indirectly from the now Belgian town of Limbourg, which was the capital of the Duchy of Limburg during the Middle Ages. More directly it is derived from the more modern name of the Province of Limburg in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which has been split today into a Belgian Limburg and a Dutch Limburg. In the area around the old Duchy of Limburg the main language today is French, but there is also a particular cluster of Limburgish dialects. The use of the word Limburgish is first attested at the close of the 19th century.People from Limburg usually call their language plat, a term also used by speakers of Low Saxon to refer to their respective dialects.
Definition
There are various interpretations of the Limburgish dialect area, and its delineation depends on the definition employed.In everyday usage in the Netherlands and Belgium, the term “Limburgish” generally refers to the endogenous language varieties spoken in the two Limburg provinces. Within Belgian and Dutch Limburg itself, however, a more nuanced socio-linguistic definition prevails. For most Limburgers, “Limburgish” as such does not exist; instead, speakers primarily identify their individual dialect with their town or region or more generally as plat, the colloquial term for “dialect”. For them, the label “Limburgish” is typically applied to those dialects with which mutual communication is possible without substantial adaptation of one’s own variety. This definition covers most, though not all, dialects spoken within the provinces. For instance, the dialects in the North of Dutch Limburg are not necessarily considered Limburgish, and speakers of the Kerkrade dialect — although the speakers themselves classify their dialect as Limburgish — tend to adjust their speech and choice of words when interacting with speakers of the more none-peripheral Limburgish varieties, due to the relatively divergent character of their dialect.
In administrative law, under the provisions of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, “Limburgish” is defined for the purposes of Dutch legislation as “the regional language which, in various forms, is spoken in the Dutch province of Limburg.”
From a linguistic perspective, “Limburgish” has traditionally denoted the Low Franconian varieties spoken between the Benrath Line and the Uerdingen Line. The defining characteristic of these dialects, within this definition, is their partial participation in the Second Germanic consonant shift, which spread concentrically from Cologne northwestwards, diminishing in intensity, as part of the so-called Rhenish fan. A more recent linguistic definition, which overlaps with but does not fully coincide with the traditional one, delineates Limburgish dialects in the stricter sense on the basis of the distribution of tonal accent within the southeastern Low Franconian varieties.
Regardless of the exact definition used, the term Limburgish itself is specific to the Netherlands and Belgium, where it used by linguists and laymen alike and is strongly connected to the cultural and regional identity of the inhabitants of both Belgian and Dutch Limburg. This regional identity is notably absent from the speakers of closely related Low Franconian dialects in adjacent parts of Germany, who do not refer to their local dialects as Limburgish. In German linguistic discourse too, the term is uncommon with German linguists instead tending to use Southern Low Franconian, which, depending on the definition used, can refer to the same dialect grouping.
Status
Netherlands
In the aftermath of the Netherlands’ inclusion of Low Saxon under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in 1996, the Province of Limburg asked the Veldeke dialect association to investigate to what extent Limburgish could claim the same status. In response, Veldeke established a working group, whose primary task was to examine whether Limburgish met the same criteria on which the earlier recognition of Low Saxon had been based.The working group did not assess Limburgish separately against the relatively limited requirements of the Charter, but instead compared its linguistic features with those of Frisian and Low Saxon, both of which had already been recognized. On the basis of attestations by three external experts, the group concluded that Limburgish fulfilled the criteria at least as strongly as Low Saxon and would therefore qualify for inclusion under the Charter. The working group emphasized that recognition of Limburgish should not be regarded as an intervention in scientific terminology or linguistic practice, but rather as a public-law recognition of cultural variation and diversity within the Limburgish dialects and of their position in relation to Standard Dutch. Accordingly, the group’s advice explicitly refrained from making claims about the status of Limburgish as a “language” or a “dialect,” instead defining it as “the regional language which, in various forms, is spoken in the Dutch province of Limburg.”
On 1 March 1996, the working group published its “Advice concerning the recognition of Limburgish as a regional language”, which led the Province of Limburg to request that Limburgish be recognized under the European Charter. This request was subsequently granted by the Dutch government in 1997 without further substantive review. As a result, Limburgish became one of five minority languages in the Netherlands recognized under the Charter, alongside the previously recognized Low Saxon, Yiddish, Sinti-Romani, and Frisian. The dialects and regional languages of Dutch Limburg thus enjoy the same status as Low Saxon, specifically recognition under Part II of the Charter. In contrast to languages recognized under Part III, those under Part II cannot derive specific legal rights from this recognition. However, it is stipulated that their use must be encouraged by the government.
The decision to recognize Limburgish as a regional language, as well as the process leading up to it, was not without controversy. Linguist Johan De Caluwe described the recognition of Limburgish as merely symbolic, while the Dutch Language Union expressed its dissatisfaction with the fact that it had not been consulted in connection with the request by the Province of Limburg for recognition. The then Secretary-General of the Language Union argued that the Union should indeed have been involved, since Limburgish had always at the very least implicitly been regarded as part of Dutch. Consequently, the argument that Limburgish had nothing to do with Dutch and therefore did not fall within the purview of the Language Union was, in its view, invalid. According to the Language Union, the recognition of Limburgish did in fact constitute a decision concerning Dutch, and it should therefore have been consulted.
Two members of the committee which wrote the advice on the basis of which Limburgish gained recognition, J. Leerssen and A. Weijnen, expressed the opinion that the Dutch Language Union was intrinsically opposed to granting special status to regional languages and that its objections to the regional language status of Limburgish in the Netherlands were primarily due to its possible effects on the complicated linguistic divisions and interests in Belgium.
In 2000, the Dutch government acknowledged that it would indeed have been wiser to submit the Province of Limburg’s request for review to the Language Union. As a result, the Committee of Ministers of the Language Union agreed that any future requests of this nature would be referred to the Union. A subsequent request to include Zeelandic as a recognized regional language under the Charter was, as an indirect consequence of this agreement, rejected.
Belgium
Since 24 December 1990, the French Community of Belgium has recognized all indigenous minority dialects that, alongside French, originated within the territory of Brussels and Wallonia as “indigenous regional languages.” This decree covers both Romance and Germanic varieties, which means that Limburgish dialects, although not explicitly mentioned in the legal text, also fall under this recognition within the region.In the Flemish Community, where the debate gained momentum following the recognition of Limburgish in the Netherlands, the government sought linguistic advice from, among others, the Dutch Language Union. The request to recognize Limburgish there as well was ultimately rejected in 2000.
Classification
The Limburgish dialects are classified as part of Low Franconian, together with the Hollandic, Brabantian, Zeelandic, Flemish, and Kleverlandish dialects. The varieties of Dutch South and Central Limburg are traditionally regarded as Low Franconian dialects with a gradual Middle German influence, or alternatively as a group of transitional dialects between Low and Middle Franconian.In historical linguistics, the Limburgish dialects are included within Old Dutch and Middle Dutch. Within the latter, Limburgish is grouped together with Flemish, Brabantian, Hollandic, and eastern Dutch dialects. Linguistic features in historical Dutch texts that are considered characteristic of Limburgish are referred to as Limburgisms. This term should not be confused with an alternative definition of Limburgism, in which it denotes interference phenomena between dialect and the Dutch standard language.
The linguistic diversity within the Dutch province of Limburg is considerable, since the varieties spoken in North Limburg share many features with Brabantian and Kleverlandish dialects and differ markedly from those of South and Central Limburg. In Belgian Limburg, with the exception of part of the Voeren region, East Limburgish is not spoken; instead, West and Central Limburgish varieties are found. The dialect group spoken in the central part of the province of Limburg represents the transition toward South Brabantian.
The Limburgish dialects are intersected by various isoglosses, both in east–west and north–south directions, and therefore constitute only a limited linguistic unity. One of the most significant of these isoglosses is the Panningen Line, which roughly separates the western and eastern Limburgish dialects. These Limburgish dialects represent the southeasternmost varieties of the Dutch language area.
Because of the adoption of some features associated with the Second Germanic consonant shift, the Limburgish varieties were sometimes seen as West Central German, and as such, as part of High German. This difference is caused by 19th and early 20th century German linguists defining a High German variety as one that has taken part in any of the first three phases of the High German consonant shift.
The traditional terminology can be confusing as the differences between the historical groupings Old West Franconian and Old East Franconian is different from the modern modern dialectal dichotomy between Western and Eastern Low Franconian, which is based on the presence or absence of High German features in Low Franconian, which did not occur until the advent of the Middle Dutch period.