Nivel intertextual y significativo

At this point, it should be noted that the region classified as the Achterhoek (as seen in Figure 1 in Section 1) is technically home to two regional dialects: Achterhoeks and Liemers. These dialects are often spoken of in conjunction with one another when describing regional and dialectal boundaries, so it is necessary to include this section in order to detail how they will be approached throughout this thesis, which is dealing with the speech of the area categorised simply as “Achterhoeks”.

There is controversy as to the position of the boundaries of the two areas, as reported in the regional newspaper “De Gelderlander” (2011, 2015), and a study by Schut (2012) showed that many residents of the region had differing opinions about where the Achterhoek area begins and ends. What is commonly reported, although not necessarily by those who live

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there, is that the boundary of the Liemers area begins south west of the River Oude IJssel in the municipality of Oude IJsselstreek, whereas north east of the river is considered to be the Achterhoek (Bloemhoff et al., 2008). This means that, under this definition, four of the towns studied in this research – Etten, Veldhunten, Gendringen and Ulft (points 1, 2, 3 and 4 on the map in Figure 10) – could technically fall into the Liemers dialect category, rather than Achterhoeks, as they are located right on the boundary and immediately south west of the river. As the town of Ulft in particular features quite heavily in the 2015 corpus, it is important to address these facts. Silvolde and Terborg, labelled as points 5 and 6 in Figure 10, lie on the other side of the river, and so would be considered in the Achterhoek. Point 7, the town of ‘s-Heerenberg, is not included in this study’s data, but is located further from the river’s boundary, and is more often regarded as being part of the Liemers area.

Figure 10: Map of towns bordering the Achterhoeks and Liemers dialect areas. The towns which are numbered and circled are those which are important to the discussion of what constitutes Achterhoeks or Liemers. (Map data: Google, n.d).

These towns will be considered to belong to the broader area of “Achterhoeks”, and will not necessarily be discussed separately due to the reasons outlined below.

These regional, non-political boundaries are subject to change, and the proximity of the towns in question to the given suggested boundary (Bloemhoff et al., 2008) is too close for speakers from these places to be discounted. Additionally, dialect boundaries are not necessarily fixed, and we cannot expect that because the River Oude IJssel has been chosen as the area (but not necessarily dialect) boundary, nearby towns on either side will differ

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markedly. My own examination of Schaars’ Woordenboek (1987) found that the Oude IJssel marked only a tentative isogloss for lexical items, with the same forms being used on both sides, and different forms beginning much further away from it (see some examples in Figures 11 and 12), while in other cases a pattern was not evident at all. Furthermore,

differences between north and south Achterhoek regions are also seen, yet there is no isogloss boundary for these areas posited by Schaars. The examples in Figures 11 and 12 for laag (‘low’) and starre (‘rigid’) reproduced from Schaars (1987) show pronunciation differences within the region. For laag (Standard Dutch spelling), we see that variation starts to occur considerably further north of the Oude IJssel border. For starre, there is more variation, yet there tends to be the same pronunciation along both sides of the Oude IJssel, which suggests it is an indication of a boundary only, and not necessarily secure as such. But perhaps what is most interesting about these maps is that what they indicate overall is what many people from the area have been informally saying (throughout the course of this research): that there will be variation within the entire region despite the fact they are said to speak the same dialect. It should be accepted, then, throughout this research, that the earlier dialectal pronunciations of vowels may vary slightly (and furthermore, the underlying interest of this thesis lies in whether the modern vowels have converged on the Standard Dutch variety).

Figure 11: Map reproduced and modified from Schaars (1987, p.25) showing dialectal pronunciations of "laag" within the region. The Achterhoek area (above and below the River Berkel) is coloured in green, with the Liemers area (south-west of

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the River Oude-IJssel) coloured in red. Above the Achterhoek is the province of Overijssel. The squares show “laag” as

“laeg” (phonetically similar to /ae/, while the circles show “laag” as “leeg”, phonetically similar to /e:/..

Figure 12: Map reproduced and modified from Schaars (1987, p.108) showing dialectal pronunciations of "starre" within the region (as outlined in Figure 11).

What creates a difficulty in determining where to locate the cut-off between dialects is that a lot of the controversy stems from the boundary of the region, but not necessarily the

boundary of the dialect: regarding dialect boundaries, according to Rensink (1999), maps with “fixed, sharp boundaries create the wrong impression” (p. 4). To use his dialect perception map of the Netherlands (Figure 13), we can see that according to participants, a dialect of Overijssel extends into Gelderland, and the Achterhoeks dialect itself can be noted to cover a small corner of Overijssel. This indicates then that those localities which lie along the boundary should not be discounted, as they are not likely to be vastly different. In his participant-informed map, the Liemers dialect boundary is indicated at the exact point where the region is said to separate: along the Oude IJssel, while the west of the region is separated along the IJssel, also traditionally said to be where the Veluwe region (and its dialect of Veluws) begins. The towns in question lie along that boundary, not far enough away for their inhabitants to definitively be regarded as speakers of a different dialect. And yet, today’s

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participants from that area indicate they are speakers of Achterhoeks, not Liemers. So perhaps it would be more accurate to formulate a dialect boundary based on the isoglosses that occur around Nijmegen (much further to the south-west), those of the alt-oud [ɔlt]-[ɑud]-and ies-ijs [i:s]-[εis] isoglosses (Van den Berg & Van Oostendorp, 2012), where the marked pronunciations of East Gelderland begin to sound more like Standard Dutch or Low

Franconian forms. It is at the dialect border with the Veluwe region (and Veluws dialect) where a huus-huis [hy:s]-[hœys] isogloss begins, so for the purpose of consistency as well as relevance to the current study, the boundary should be placed along another phonological isogloss.

Figure 13: Map of dialect areas in the Netherlands, reproduced from Rensink (1999, p.6). The area of interest is indicated in green.

Additionally, Rensink’s map can be compared with a dialect perception map (see Figure 14) by Daan and Blok (1969), and reproduced from Spruit, Heeringa and Nerbonne (2009). This map depicts dialect similarities on horizontal and vertical levels, comparing dialect distance, yet there are different demarcations within the Achterhoek area from those on Rensink’s map in Figure 13. What this indicates is that the dialect boundaries are subjective, and likely to vary, so when we talk of the Achterhoeks dialect, it is important to remember these

variations. It has already been mentioned that differences do occur within the dialect as one

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travels even from town to town, and so we can only reference the wider area with knowledge of these differences.

Figure 14: Perception map from Daan and Blok (1969) of dialect area judgments. Reproduced from Spruit, Heeringa and Nerbonne (2009). The Achterhoek area is indicated with a circle.

As reported in the regional newspaper “De Gelderlander” (2011), residents of towns along the border are being told they are in the Liemers region as indicated by council authorities, yet they themselves consider themselves to be “Achterhoekers”, and there is, of course, no political border as with Germany or the other Dutch provinces. Another article from “De Gelderlander” in 2014 reports that having the River Oude IJssel as the place of the unofficial border (as well as in dialect maps such as Rensink’s, reproduced in Figure 13) does not satisfy all residents of the area – certainly, while many inhabitants of towns further west consider themselves to be residents and speakers of Liemers (as it is generally accepted that the more western municipality of Montferland falls within Liemers territory) rather than Achterhoeks, the same is not necessarily said of those who reside closer to the Oude IJssel.

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As the later results of this study will show, we see that the dialect in Ulft in particular shares similarities with the neighbouring towns of Silvolde and Terborg (labelled as 5 and 6 on the map in Figure 10) north east of the river. In addition, the participants interviewed in that town classified themselves as speakers of Achterhoeks. Perhaps more tellingly, the results also showed the tendency of the speakers to use the grammatical forms common to Achterhoeks (and the other Low Saxon dialect areas), rather than Liemers. These forms are discussed in more detail below.

Thus, I am confident in including these towns under the broad descriptive label of

“Achterhoeks” in a way that I would not be for a town such as ‘s-Heerenberg (point 7 on the map in Figure 10), which is located in the municipality of Montferland, further from the boundary, and mentioned by participants as the location of a vastly different dialect from the one they themselves speak. Their assertions here would bear scrutiny, as Montferland is located more centrally within the Liemers dialect territory than the area immediately south west of the Oude IJssel. Consequently, while the towns such as Ulft may technically belong to the Liemers dialect area if the Oude IJssel is considered to be the border, the East

Gelderland dialect areas are commonly grouped together (Schaars, 1987; Van Prooije, 2011).

Thus, all could be included under the “Achterhoeks” label as they lie within the region of the

“Achterhoek”, as it is perceived by many to encompass the Liemers area as well. However, for the purposes of this research only those towns that lie close to the current suggested boundary will be included, as those that lie further west under this division (for example, ‘s-Heerenberg) do seem to be regarded differently by the participants in the study (M52Ulft and M59Ulft, who claim it is home to a “completely different” language and people). For this reason, I am including all municipalities in eastern Gelderland aside from the Veluwe and west of the Oude IJsselstreek municipality (beginning at Montferland) as the Achterhoek, in order to provide a more well-defined area in which to analyse data. Furthermore, there is less controversy over the Liemers status of residents of these municipalities beginning at

Montferland (Schut, 2012; De Gelderlander, 2015).

Additionally, and as mentioned above, it is notable that during the course of the data

collection in 2015 and the perception study in 2016, the participants from Ulft all identified themselves as Achterhoeks, rather than Liemers, speakers. In including these towns under the broad description of “Achterhoeks”, it is not in any way an attempt to ignore the identities of other residents who may consider themselves Liemers rather than Achterhoeks speakers, but

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instead to use (and provide a justification for doing so) the term that popularly encompasses more of the area as well as participants’ own interpretations of the dialect that they

themselves speak. It is not a judgment on where the region itself should lie, as that is a question for the municipalities themselves, but rather what I am including within a dialect boundary. Therefore, any mention of the terms “Achterhoek” or “Achterhoeks” throughout this research can be assumed to encompass the towns and speakers situated along the River Oude IJssel, unless stated otherwise.

It is still, however, necessary to detail some of the differences between Achterhoeks and Liemers. Historically, the Liemers dialect is a Low Franconian, rather than Low Saxon, dialect, yet as it lies in a transition area, there are elements of both Low Franconian and Low Saxon in the dialect today. As a Low Franconian dialect, there is more structural similarity in Liemers to Standard Dutch, although perhaps less so than the Franconian dialects located further west. Nevertheless, a significant difference between the Low Franconian and Low Saxon dialects is found in the conjugation of verbs in their morphological structure. While Liemers speakers tend to use the same conventions as Standard Dutch, Achterhoeks speakers follow the subject-verb conventions of a number of Low Saxon dialects, in which, if we were to follow Standard prescriptions, we could say there is an absence of agreement (See Section 2.5).

It is notable that inhabitants along the River Oude IJssel do tend to use the Low Saxon structure when they are consciously speaking in dialect, and so it is reasonable to suggest (although it is not yet tested) that the Low Franconian structure does not start to be used until the municipality of Montferland, where residents more strongly identify as belonging to Liemers, is reached.

Bloemhoff et al (2013a) note some similarities to Low Saxon in the phonology and lexicon of Liemers, which could perhaps be attributed to its transition area status. Most notable is the use of the monophthongs [i] and [y], which have not diphthongised to the Standard Dutch [εi]

and [œy], and the fact that the dialect exhibits the results of Westphalian breaking (see Sections 2.3.2, 6.3 and 7.1). This places Liemers slightly apart from the other Low

Franconian dialects such as Brabants and Limburgs, as it exhibits variants not found in these dialects. Lexically, Bloemhoff et al. (2013a) cite the examples of the pronunciation and orthographic representations of gras (‘grass’) as gres, and dorp (‘village’) as darp, which are Low Saxon in origin.

76 2.7. Summary

This chapter has introduced some previous research on Dutch dialectology, and provided an overview of the history of the Dutch language and its relationship with the Low Saxon

dialects of the Netherlands. As stated, the Standard Dutch language today did not grow out of influence from the eastern dialects, and so dialectal differences are noticeable to speakers.

Many Achterhoeks speakers include both Achterhoeks and a version of Standard Dutch in their repertoires, and domains of use of the dialect have decreased over time. Nevertheless, there remains to be a sense of dialect pride amongst Achterhoeks speakers, and the dialect is routinely celebrated throughout festivals in the regions.

Achterhoeks differs from Standard Dutch in a number of ways. Perhaps the most notable difference between Achterhoeks and Standard Dutch, and the focus of this thesis, is the pronunciation of vowels. Kloeke’s Hollandse Expansie theory (1927), although disputed in more recent times, attempts to explain the diphthongisation of the HUIS and KIJK vowels in Standard Dutch to /œy/ and /εi/ respectively, while they remained as monophthongs in the eastern dialects. Other notable vowels include the PRAAT vowel which is realised as /a:/ in Standard Dutch, but as the back vowel /ɔ:/ in Achterhoeks, and the PAARD vowel, where /a:/

appears before /r/ and is raised and diphthongised to /iə/ in Achterhoeks. Differences from Standard Dutch in the orthography are also noticed, a potential result of the schrijf zoals je spreekt (‘write as you speak’) movement which occurred during the 19^th century (Willemyns, 2013). Morphologically, within this area, dialects also use the –t ending for plural forms, which differs from the –en ending of Standard Dutch (refer to Table 7 on page 67).

The possible influence of the rhotic consonant has been briefly discussed. Section 2.4.

Throughout the Netherlands, /r/ pronunciations vary considerably; studies have suggested that uvular pronunciations are common in the province of Gelderland, where the Achterhoek region is located (Collins & Mees, 2003; Goeman & Van de Velde, 2001; Van Reenen, 1994). However, alveolar pronunciations have also been found to occur in this area (Verstraeten & Van de Velde, 2001; Gussenhoven, 1999).

Finally, this chapter provided a discussion on distinguishing between Achterhoeks and the nearby Liemers dialect. It was important to consider this differentiation due to the fact that some of the towns included in this research lie along the River Oude IJssel, which is said to form the regional boundary between the Achterhoek and Liemers areas (Bloemhoff et al.,

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2008). However, residents of this area have been found to differ in their opinions as to where the boundary should really begin and end (Schut, 2012). For the purpose of this research, the towns which lay along the River Oude IJssel were deemed to belong to the Achterhoeks-speaking area, due to speakers’ propensities to use the Low Saxon grammatical forms and their own self-identification of being “Achterhoekers”.

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3. Literature Review: Concepts in Dialectology and Language