‘The Flemish Parliament should reprimand the VRT for Tom Waes’ intermediate language’, says European Parliament member Geert Bourgeois (N-VA). “I find this really saddening.”
‘Very glad that you are paying attention to this,’ said MEP and former Flemish Prime Minister Geert Bourgeois on the phone. Bourgeois, known as a champion of Standard Dutch, says he is ‘excessively annoyed’ by the intermediate language of presenter and actor Tom Waes in The story of Flanders, the very expensive and praise-filled documentary series about the history of Flanders on the VRT. ‘Many think that interlanguage brings them closer to the viewer. But Flemish people look up to someone who expresses himself in the standard language. The story of Flanders is our story and must therefore be told in our common language, not in an intermediate language, a kind of general Antwaarpsmet bye bye, bye bye in wa is dees. No, I find that really sad.’
What you don’t cherish is lost – and that also applies to the standard language, Bourgeois believes. ‘The VRT is the largest carrier of culture in Flanders and receives a lot of public money for this. It just has to promote the default language. If the VRT distances itself from this, it falls short of its mission. The public broadcaster should use General Dutch (AN) in all programs and by that I certainly mean talk shows. Take someone like presenter Sven De Leijer. I also hear an intermediate language with him that is not mine, nor the language of most Flemings.’
VRT checkout
The heart of cultural flamingist Bourgeois bleeds when he sees how informal Flemish colloquial language is advancing on public broadcasting, news and interpretation programs aside. ‘In the 19th century, Flemish nationalists fought a difficult battle for Dutch. The French speakers finally agreed, but said: it must be Flemish, a kind of Flemish intermediate language, and not the Standard Dutch that was already firmly established in the Netherlands. The cultural Flemish people eventually won the battle for Standard Dutch. I would hate it if we let that go now.’
‘I grew up with the ABN cores. Perhaps that approach was too artificial and too pedantic, but we did learn to use Dutch smoothly. Knowledge of the standard language has an emancipating effect. This certainly applies to children who do not inherit language wealth from home. Or for newcomers: they make great efforts to master Dutch and are then confronted on the VRT with a language they have not learned and often do not understand.’
The cultural Flemish people eventually won the battle for Standard Dutch. I would hate it if we let that go now.
Nevertheless, Geert Bourgeois’ party is generally very pleased with The story of Flanders. Current Flemish Prime Minister Jan Jambon was particularly enthusiastic, he sees The story of Flanders as an effective means to strengthen the Flemish identity. And fellow party member and Flemish Minister of Education Ben Weyts also saw nothing wrong with Waes’ language.
According to its management agreement, the VRT may only use intermediate language in exceptional cases and Standard Dutch is the norm. But today the reverse seems to be happening, now that intermediate language is also used in a historical documentary series. Bourgeois thinks that the Flemish Parliament should reprimand the VRT for this The story of Flanders. ‘I hope that there will be many questions about this in the Flemish Parliament and that the VRT will be held to account when evaluating the implementation of its management agreement. The VRT is not doing what the democratic representation in Flanders expects of the public broadcaster.’
Beer quay
Also the poet Stijn De Paepe, who died last year, is known as the house poet of The morning, cherished a great love for the AN and made no secret of his aversion to intermediate languages. ‘Just a little longer and we’ll all clap the same kind of broken intermediate language’, he wrote in a daily verse for the newspaper. After which he sang the praises of both dialect and raft AN: ‘If only it isn’t the language/that plagues TV and radio/ and is neither mussel nor fish.’
Newcomers make great efforts to master Dutch and are then confronted with a language on the VRT that they have not learned.
In a column samples also broke education specialist Dirk Van Damme recently advocated the ‘revaluation of Standard Dutch’ in education: ‘A great deal of tolerance for all kinds of errors, including language errors, has crept into our education, but correct use of language is precisely one of the crucial objectives of education.’
There is also writer Geert van Istendael, who coined the pejorative term Verkavelingsvlaams for intermediate language. But otherwise principled defenders of Standard Dutch seem to be under pressure, and more often belong to older generations. The acceptance of and tolerance for a Flemish intermediate language, which is a cross between dialect and AN, and which is strongly influenced by Brabant and Antwerp colloquial languages, has only gone crescendo in recent years. In other words, the advance of the Verkavelingsvlaams seems to be unstoppable, and the battle for Standard Dutch in Flanders is fighting a dead end.
Shame
More than ten years ago, Professor of Dutch Linguistics Jürgen Jaspers (ULB) contributed to the book together with Kevin Absillis (UA) and Sarah Van Hoof (UGent). The lame usurper. In it, a group of young linguists and literati studied the often denounced Verkavelingsvlaams.
‘I do not agree that intermediate language is necessarily poorer, sloppy or of lesser quality than Standard Dutch,’ says Jürgen Jaspers. ‘Of course there is no formal version of that typical Flemish colloquial language, but nothing is stopping the Flemish from making it – the Dutch have done that themselves. Maybe then we’ll finally be rid of all that swearing and kicking down, and attacking people for using an adverb wrong.’
By opting for a standard language ideal from the outside, Flemings have started to nag each other’s language super loudly to avoid shame.
Ironically enough, by opting for an external, imported standard language at the time, the cultural Flemish people exchanged one inferiority complex (compared to the French speakers in Belgium) for another (compared to the Dutch), says Jaspers. Although the many efforts to teach Flemish people Standard Dutch have had an effect.
‘But the ideal that some had in mind has not been achieved in Flanders. If Geert Bourgeois hears unclean language from Tom Waes in his eyes and chokes on his coffee as a result, it is also because very old feelings of shame come to the fore. Such reactions have deep historical roots. By opting for a standard language ideal from the outside, Flemings have started to nag each other’s language super loudly to avoid shame. The taunts that Flemish people used to receive from French speakers and sometimes also from the Dutch, they now give to each other.’
Today, Flemish people are much more relaxed and ‘without complexes’ with their own intermediate language, which Jaspers sometimes simply calls ‘Flemish’. But lovers of the standard language need not fear that everything is gone. ‘Flemish people still find Standard Dutch or a form of formal Dutch very important,’ says Jaspers.
Diphthongization
In the language of Tom Waes in The story of Flanders – ‘Incidentally, I am charmed by the programme, with the lifelike historical scenes, as well as by the presentation and the acting talent of Waes’ – the professor of Dutch linguistics hears ‘nothing really surprising’.
‘There is a clear balance in the programme. If you listen carefully, you will hear that Waes uses Dutch both informally and formally. In the voice-overs you can hear him pronounce final t’s, (laughs) and sometimes even a real diphthongization of “egg” and “onion”, albeit also with a light Antwerp accent. But that’s not very different from the numerous experts who speak in the program, and whoever you hear where they come from. When Waes is on the battlefield, visiting someone or breaking the fourth wall and addressing the viewer directly, he speaks an intermediate language – not full-blooded Antwerp, but informal Dutch.’
The taunts that Flemings used to receive from French speakers and sometimes also from Dutch people, Flemings now give to each other.
According to Jaspers, Tom Waes, like most Flemings, engages in ‘code switching’, he alternates between an informal and formal register, adapted to the situation. Although quite a few language professionals will also call Waes’ so-called formal Dutch a ramshackle version of the standard language.
‘Of course it depends on how far you want to go,’ says Jaspers. ‘If you set the bar for Standard Dutch as a small group of insiders talks, the percentage of Flemish people who meet that standard is half a percent or so. But what I want to say is: Tom Waes speaks at times The story of Flanders something of which you can say: this is meant to be formal Dutch.’
Tower of Babel
These are arguments and reasonings that may not convince someone like Geert Bourgeois. ‘I hear many people say that the battle for Standard Dutch has been lost’, says Bourgeois. “But I think we should continue to resist that. And that the VRT has a major role, if not the largest role, to play in this. The helm has to change, because what is the alternative? When I watch French television, I naturally also hear whether someone is from the Languedoc. But that’s not the point, because that man or woman speaks French and can express himself in a smooth, rich, agile way. Where does this downward movement end anyway? At the Tower of Babel? We don’t want that in Flanders, do we, that we no longer understand each other in the long run?’
