In Bilt, you say: “She reads the newspaper.” But how long will it take?

It’s not often that an entire book is devoted to the grammar of a Dutch dialect. But Bildts, for which a grammar description was released this spring, is an outlier. It’s a dialect, or if you prefer, a regional language, with Dutch and Frisian elements. Bildts is also only 500 years old, which is pretty young for a Dutch dialect.

The Bildt family was born in 1508 after a large area on the coast of the Wadden Sea in the northwest corner of Friesland was reclaimed: 166 square kilometers, six villages and today 10,000 inhabitants. The area was named Het Bildt, from the word “opgebild”, meaning “siltation”. The polder was created by the South Dutch, and the people who lived and worked there were mainly from Holland, Zeeland, Brabant, but also from Friesland.

The languages ​​brought by the immigrants and the bilingualism that emerged in that corner of Friesland led to the development of a distinct dialect, with the majority speaking Dutch and a minority speaking Frisian. A poem in Bildt from 1884 reads: “We are not of Frisian descent/One can hear that clearly in our language/Even if the Frisians walk behind us/Holland is our cradle.” You can hear the Frisian influence in some sounds (lots of f’s and s’s and typical “Frisian” vowels) and in some words.

The grammar also has a Frisian feel. You’ll see this immediately when you read an article by Bildts in your local door-to-door newspaper. Bildt.nuwritten in part with Bildts. Columnist Dewey Zwart Written this summer”, on Donald Trump and his plan to replace all senior US officials with ultra-conservatives: “I don’t know that anyone knew that this project would be developed in 2023 by the ingenuity of senior officials, dinks, and others unfamiliar with the fire of the United States of America. ” Two things stand out here. It’s not “taken,” it’s “nomen.” Because Bildts don’t do “ge-.” It’s “diet” (short for “die dat”) not “die.”

Thanks to Butcher Bijlsma

Sytse Buwalda, a retired physics teacher and Bildt expert, wrote the grammar. He was assisted by professional linguists from the Frisian scientific research institute Fryske Akademy. The book also states that the publication of the book was made possible by the Bijlsma butcher shop in Sint Annaparochie, one of the six villages.

Buwalda sees the Birtes language as a product of immigration and mixing. “I always tell outsiders: it’s a hybrid language. It emerged because the Dutch were responsible for reclaiming the land here, and because surrounding areas saw its value and came to live here too.”

“Nommen” or “nomen” instead of “genommen” or “taken” is common in more Dutch dialects. You’ll also encounter it in Low Saxon dialects such as Groningen and Drenthe. But Buwalda thinks it’s unlikely to have come from there. Because the Lower Saxons played no role in this remote corner of Friesland. So the Frisian influence seems obvious to him.

Dou is still you

What does a Dutch dialect that has been in close contact with Frisian for five centuries look like grammatically? It has many plural forms ending in -s: teachers, kalves (calves), kines (children), intentions, measures, negotiations. It has two infinitive forms: lope and lopen (pronounced loopn). Which form you use depends on the grammatical context. You say: “I want to run”, but “walking really bothers me”.

Just like in Frisian, you can sometimes attach a direct object to the verb: “He tannepoetst” (He brushes his teeth), “Sij newsleest” (She reads the newspaper), “I climb the stairs all day” (I walk up and down the stairs all day).

If you use more than one verb in a row, something different happens than in Dutch. “It is wandering” (wandering; literally: wandering). “I’ve seen her walk” (I’ve seen her walk; literally: seen her walk). It is common among the Bilts to say “That room can hold thousands of people.” instead of “That room can hold thousands of people.”

Then there is the use of “dou”, which means both “you” and “thou” (something like “you”). Buwalda: “The separation between you and you is completely different from the separation between you and you. In Bild, I used the polite “jou” for a long time, and in Dutch I quickly switched to the more informal “you”. “Between “dou” and “jou” there is often a third form used: the first or last name of the conversation partner. Like this: “For me, would you do this for me tomorrow?” (Fok, would you do this for me tomorrow?).

Once the child arrives at the daycare center, the Bilt family disappears within fourteen days.

More Dutch

Buwalda has discovered that the Bildts are slowly disappearing. “My children speak Bildt perfectly. My 20-year-old grandchildren still speak it perfectly. But I have two grandchildren, aged seven and 11, who don’t speak Bildt anymore. Nothing. Once the children come to the daycare centre, the Bildts leave within fourteen days. Then it’s just Dutch.”

When Buwalda asks twenty-somethings if they can speak Bild, “eight out of ten say yes. But when I hear them speak, the quality is only 50 percent.” For example, they say “interesting” instead of “interesting.” Or they no longer say “the person I talked to,” but “the person I talked to.” So it all becomes a little Dutch again.

Does Sytse Buwalda find this shameful? “Oh, well,” he says, “you’ll die of some disease, my girlfriend says… OK. But having your own language does add colour, doesn’t it? That’s gone. The colour, the brightness, the variety in life.”

share





Email the Editor