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DUTCH ORTHOGRAPHY IN LOWER, MIDDLE AND FLANDERS UPPER CLASS DOCUMENTS IN 19TH.CENTT.]RY WIM VANDENBUSSCIIE F.W.O.-Vlaandereru Vrtje UniversiteitBrussel,Belgium 1. Introduction The 19s centurycould be considereda forgottenchapterin the linguistic study of the developmentof Dutch in Flanders. Although many contributions have been publishedon externalaspectsof the Flemish languagesituation in the Late Modern period(Witte & Van Velthoven1999is a standardreference), descriptionof the grammaticalfeaturesof the thereis to dateno comprehensive languageat that time, nor is anythingknown aboutsocialand stylistic variation in actual languageuse. In most cases,major scientific 'Histories of Dutch' (mostnotablyVan denToorn et al. 1997)pay marginalattentionto the subject. Similar remarks have recently been made about researchon the history of English (Gdrlach 1999:1)and German(Mattheier1998:l), but the case of Dutchin Flandersis particularlystriking. It is generallyagreedthat the l9'n century was a vital period for the development,standardizationand even survival of the Dutch languagein the presentday area of Flanders(Van de Craen & Willemyns 1988). Due to tenitorial separationfrom the NorthernDutch provinces(which coincide with the currentterritory of the Netherlands)at the end of the l6to century,and under policiesof successive Spanish(1585-1714), influenceof the French-favouring Austrian(I714-1794)andFrench(1794-1815)rulers,Dutchcouldnot develop towardsa standardprestigelanguagein Flanders.The natureof FlemishDutch around 1800 is usually describedas a collection of dialects, of which the functionswere restrictedto the informal and [-prestige]-areas.Contraryto the situationin Holland,therewasno widely acceptedstandardDutch which could be used for supraregionalcommunication- in general,French was used for such purposesinstead (De Vries et al: 1994). Common opinion has it that "Flanders'nativelanguagewaspusheddown the socialladder,wherethe lower 28 WIM VANDENBUSSCHE middle class, farmers and workers mingled" (witte et al. 2000:44); there is evidence,though - as will becomeclear from this article - that the upper classes,too, continuedto use Dutch in everydaywriting (seeVandenbussche forthcoming). Yet, at the end of the century in 1898, Dutch was officially recognized (alongsideFrench)as Belgium's nationallanguage,and today,anotherhundred yearslater, it is the official fully standardizedlanguageof all Flemings. This phoenix-likerestorationwas largely due to the so-called'FlemishMovement', a socio-political and linguistic emancipatorymovement whose actions and merits havealreadybeendescribedin greathistoricaldetail (NEVB 1998). However, the purely linguistic aspectsof this evolution 'from rags to riches' and the gradual growth of the languagestandardizationprocessin Flanders,havenot yet beendescribedon the basisof original sources,let alone from a historicalsociolinguisticpoint of view. Over the past five years, our researchteam at the Free University of Brusselshas been working on the first researchproject which does take into accounttheselinguistic, social and stylistic aspectsof standardizationin 19thcentury Flanders (vandenbussche& willemyns 2000; De Groof in this volume). To this end we collectedan original corpusof handwrittentexts- meeting reports- spanningthe whole periodbetween1800and 1900and pertainingto f[mistr writers in Bruges from three distinct social classes. For the lower classes we used documents of various assistance companies for trade apprentices. Theseorganizationscan (onderstandsmaatschappijen) be consideredearly precursorsof our presentday social security funds: they guaranteedmembersand their families minimal financial supportin the event of illn"s, invalidity,pensionand death (Michiels1978). Our cor?uscontains an extensiveselectionof meetingminuteswritten by apprenticesin the trades of shoemaker,wool weaver,tailor and brush maker. Thesedocumentsare all kept in the municipal archive and the folklore museumof Bruges. Similar structuresexistedfor the middle classorientedtrademasters,and we were able, accordingly,to selecta largesampleof meetingreportsfrom the bakermasters' assistancecompanyas our middle classcorpus. In orderto compile a database of upper classmeetingreports,finally, we were grantedpermissionto consult the ar;hive of the Saint Sebastianarchers'guild, which was (and still is today) one of the most prestigioushigh societycirclesin the town (Godar 1947). Each of thesedocumentshas been digitalized- manuallytranscribedin word processingformat - and analyzedin searchof standardizationfeatures on the levels of orthography,glammar and style. We have thus been able to describe for the first time the real impact of various language planning DUTCH ORTHOGRAPHY IN I9TT.CENTIJRY FLANDERS 29 measuresthroughoutthe 19frcenturyon actuallanguageusers,and the possible differentiationaccordingto the writers' social status. The successivemodels for a standardized Dutch spelling certainly ranked among the most controversialof thesemeasuresat the time (Couvreur& Willemyns 1998); in this article I will try to illustratethe extentto which thesespelling norms had an effecton the everydaywriter in the practiceof writing meetingreports. One methodologicalcommentshouldbe includedat this point. I am well awareof the fact that the categorizationof writers into various social classesis a highly sensitiveissue,especiallywhen one takesinto accountthat the social and economicstructurein Flanders(but also in the rest or Europe) during the 19thcentury was constantlychanging (Witte et al. 2000). The rise of the middle class, the slow transition from a trade-basedto an industrialized economyand the subsequentchangesin the rel'ativefinancial statusof certain professionsmake it a perilousundertakingto define a clear social structurein Bruges- it shouldbe notedthat this descriptionis not available 19th-century in the secondaryliterature on the history of the town (patial date to contributionscanbe found in Michiels 1978andVan Eenoo 1959). For this research,we have usedthe scribes'relative esteemfor their own and other professions- as expressedin the corpus texts - as the main criterion for our broad three-classcategoization (lower, middle and upper class). The membersof the Sebastianarchers' guild repeatedlyidentified themselvesas the town's socialand financialelite and explicitly cultivatedthis image with, amongstother things,philanthropicactionsin favour of the lower classes(breaddistributions,for example)(Godar1947). This prestige-focussed approachon the basisof text internalelementshas further proved to be useful to distinguishbetween'lower class' tradeapprenticesand 'middle class' trade masters(who could, alternatively,havebeenseenas belongingto one and the same 'trade class'). From their written 'behaviouralcode for members' it becomesclear that apprenticesconsideredtheir mastersto belong to a higher socialclass;the discussionsincludedin the apprentices'meetingrepolts further confirm their poor financial statusand their dire needfor financial supportin case of illness and invalidity. The mastersclearly distinguishedthemselves from their subordinateapprenticeson moral and/ or financial grounds: they literally stated,for example,that their apprenticeswere not to be allowed in company. their assistance 2. Spelling norrns Strippedof all emotional,tactical and political elementsinvolved (seeDe Groof in this volume), the controversyover the spelling of Dutch in Flanders throughoutthe first half of the 19ft centurycamedown to the conflict between 30 WIM VANDENBUSSCFIE either adheringto NorthernDutch spellingstandardsor introducingspecifically Flemishelementsin the writing system. This discussiongained momentumafter the Dutch governmentofficially imposed Siegenbeek'smodel as the spelling standardfor the Netherlandsin 1804. In Flanders(which was subsequentlyunderFrenchrule until 1815 and underDutch rule until 1830,beforeit becomea part of the independentBelgian state),this decision was favoured by the so-called 'integrationists'. Others choseto defendthe existing Brabanticspelling systemof des Roches,or the newly developedmodel of Behaegel. After Belgian independence,a special spelling commissiondevelopeda new model which very much resembledthe eiisting Siegenbeeknofln, and which was given force of law in Belgium from 1844 on. This rapprochementbetweenFlemish and Dutch spelling standards of a commonnorm designedby de Vries & Te eventuallyled to the acceptance Winkel in 1864. Each of these systemsmay have been influential to some extent in the region of Bruges,either due to its official status(siegenbeek,commission and de Vries-te Winkel), its regionalcharacter(Behaegel)or its relativemonopoly at the time (desRoches). A contrastivelinguistic studyof the different models remainsto be written, however(Molewijk 1992 containsa 'popular-scientific' accountof thesespellingreforms). In Table 1 I havetried to bring togetherthe spellingnorns from the respectivesystemsfor fifteen distinct phonemes.(The riader will note that thereare sixteenentries;for the [al] phonemea distinction has been made betweenthe spelling in open and closed syllables,since the additional spellingonly occurredin opensyllableposition.) This description is tentative and does not aspire to completeness:the phonemeswereielectedon the basisof the most frequentexamplesof spelling variation which were found in the researchcorpora. It would go beyondthe scopeof this paperto discussthe distributionof the spelling variantsfor each phonemein the different models;for now, it may suffice to say that different ipelling forms within one model can only be usedin distinct and well defined and that sharedspellingvariantsacrossdifferent modelsdo not "ir"u*itun""s, necessarilvhavethe samedistributionin eachof thesemodels' DLTTCHORTHOGRAPHY IN I9TT.CENTT]RY FLANDERS 'a:] closed rvllable a:l open ;yllable e:l open ;yllable o:l ope4 iyllable i:l ul al €il DesRoches Siegenreek 1804 t76r Behaegel Commission le Vries & te Winkel1864 1817 1844 <1e>