Can Limburgish survive and thrive?

What exactly is Limburgish? And according to whom?

Under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, to which the Dutch government is a signatory, Limburgish is recognised under part II. Frisian, the language of Friesland, is recognised under part III. This might seem like a decidedly less than exciting technicality, but there are serious implications when it comes to financial support as well as rights; for example, in the administrative, judicial, educational or mediatic realm, such minority languages are treated as equal to a country’s official language.

With around 800.000 speakers, Limburgish is one of the bigger minority languages in Europe,” explains Leonie Cornips, Professor of Language Culture in Limburg at FASoS. The province of Limburg is trying to attain a part III recognition from 2030. Together with her colleague Hans Schmeets, Cornips conducted a national survey into multilingualism. “Limburgish is the dominant language in 48% of multilingual households in Limburg; that’s a much higher percentage than in other minority languages in the Netherlands.” While that might sound like the language is in rude health, there is trouble on the horizon.

Why do fewer children speak Limburgish?

“Since the official recognition in 1997, you see that, despite a broad consensus on the importance of Limburgish and many bottom-up initiatives, there has been a failure to develop a real infrastructure to promote the language,” explains Cornips. “You also see that younger people, while usually understanding it perfectly, no longer speak Limburgish at home. Among the youngest, only 10-15% speak it to their Limburgish-speaking parents.”

Cornips’ recent research shows that there is only 25% intergenerational transmission for those children who attend daycare. That means the child returns from a daycare centre staffed with Limburgers speaking Dutch to their Limburgish-speaking parents. She traces the recent development back to the normalisation of two-income households and the resulting need to put children into daycare from age 0, that is to say before they have acquired a grammatical foundation in the dialect.

Can you have more than one native language?

“There was another big reduction in the 60s following the emphasis on social mobility, and the idea that speaking dialect would limit that,” adds Cornips. For a long time, the idea was that knowing any language other than Dutch was detrimental to mastering Dutch, and thus detrimental to national cohesion. “With more linguistic research into multilingual families, that has been exposed as a myth. Children are comfortably capable of acquiring two or three home languages.” 

Frustratingly, the scientific consensus of at least the last thirty years still hasn’t quite percolated through; there’s still a fear that dialect might interfere with Dutch. “That idea persists in daycare centres,” says Esther van Loo, who teaches and campaigns for Limburgish, “but more importantly within the GGD [the Public Health Service which regulates daycare]. There is still this notion that multilingualism – with the exception of English – is detrimental to language acquisition.”

Are certain accents discriminated against?

The real issue when it comes to social and geographic mobility, though, isn’t linguistic but sociocultural. While the dialect is spoken and accepted throughout all socioeconomic strata in Limburg, the accent, i.e. standard Dutch but pronounced in a way that reveals regional extraction, still puts one at an instant disadvantage in the rest of the country. 

Cornips, a Limburger who doesn’t speak dialect, remembers how, “during my first lesson at the University of Amsterdam, the teacher said I couldn’t teach Dutch like this and that I should go to a speech therapist. He threw me out of the class.” In the second year of her studies, she worked for a major bank in Amsterdam and was removed from the counter, because her accent was deemed too much of an imposition on customers.

“Your pronunciation is different from the dominant majority. It’s the same problem as with Antillean accents [Papiamento, a Portuguese-based creole language is recognised under part III of the above-mentioned charter] – it doesn’t matter how faultless and eloquent you are in Dutch – you sound different,” says Esther van Loo. She also knows of many instances where a regional accent was an impediment to advancing professionally. “The stigma persists; my daughters in the Randstad [conurbation which includes Amsterdam, Rotterdam, the Hague and Utrecht among others] are telling the same stories. As a speaker with a non-Randstad accent, you are constantly prone to questions about your background. Many Limburgish students try to hide their accent once they move to there.”

How Frisian embraced early childhood education

“Language policy in daycare centres has kind of been forgotten about here,” says Van Loo. Thus, while dialect wasn’t banned, Dutch became the overwhelming default. “Children pick up on what the dominant language is and just focus on that.” Before the trend towards daycare, Limburgish was the language of home and Dutch that of education. “Limburgish is still spoken in one-on-one situations since almost all of the educators speak the dialect but in an instructional context, it’s always Dutch. This reinforces the notion that Limburgish is of secondary importance.”

That is why Van Loo founded Zjuulke, a bilingual daycare concept in Dutch and Limburgish. “In Friesland, they started bilingual pre-school education in the 90s,” she explains, adding: “with a lot more financial backing because of the part III recognition. Two years ago, we started adapting the concept for Limburg in six locations. In the meantime, some 20 more locations have joined or are willing to join, so Zjuulke clearly meets a need.” Van Loo sees this as a victory for the linguistic potential of Limburg.