Talk:Zeelandic

The spellings Zeeland and Zeelandic are not the proper traditional English spellings. These should be Zealand and Zealandic. These misspellings, like Friesian for Frisian, which is also current in Wikipedia, arise from lack of knowledge of English orthographic tradition by Dutch speakers. That there exists a Zealand in Denmark is not relevent to this argument, because the country New Zealand is named after Zealand in The Netherlands, and using Zeeland for the Dutch province will only confuse people into thinking that New Zealand is named after a Danish island. Traditionally, both are spelt Zealand in English, but if one should have to choose which of the two has more right to the spelling Zealand, it would be the Dutch province. -AvL 15 January 2006

Er... I started with the spelling "Zealandic" and I'm a Dutch speaker. But maybe I'm wrong but I thought Zee/aland was in the Netherlands, not in the UK, so the historical Zealand could as well be considered a misspelling in English. Caesarion 17:42, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

With all due respect: a ridiculous argument! Just as Dutch people historically refer to England as Engeland, so English people have referred to the Dutch Zeeland as Zealand. Not a misspelling, but the English name for a foreign place. Do you then also consider The Netherlands an incorrect rendition of Nederland, and should English speakers also use Nederland to refer to The Netherlands?! I am not a linguistic puritan, but please let's use the proper accepted (that is to say, traditional) English forms of place names! -AvL 16 january 2006

For the second time: I did, at first, but someone else changed it to Zeelandic. When an exonym or specific spelling falls out of use, it is replaced, it's that simple. I will never refer to Canterbury as "Kantelberg", even though it was called so for centuries in the Netherlands. Likewise, the spelling Zeeland (pronounced in English in the very same way as "Zealand"!) seems to be more common these days than Zealand. If you really mind, look up in the history of this page who did this modification and address him/her on his talk page. Maybe s/he'll be able to tell you more about Wikipedia's policy in cases like this. Caesarion 15:19, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

This wasn't directed at you personally! I have previously changed names to their proper forms in Wikipedia, only to have them ruthlessly changed back by people who often don't understand why one spells the words as one does in English (like the person who thinks that we should spell "Friesian" because the name of the province in Dutch is "Friesland"! -Friesland in English is Frisia-). The only reason that the spelling Zeeland is more common, is because the only people writing about Zealand now are Dutch speakers. Several centuries ago, Zealand was still an important trading partner for England and Scotland as well as a more or less autonomous region, and therefore a well-known name in Britain. After its economic decline in the 18th century it has been all but forgotten abroad. Incidentally, I then wonder which spelling the British press used when covering the storm surge of 1953?! Anyway, what a bunch of to do about a single letter! I am no longer going to waste any energy on this though, because any corrections will be eradicated anyway! The bitter price of democracy! -AvL, 17 January 2006

That's exactly what I thought when I saw the title of this article had been changed... Caesarion 10:15, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Attencion Zealandic speakers!

If you are fluent in Zealandic, please go to the following page: Talk:Dutch_language#Requested_help_from_Dutch_and_Flemish_people_from_all_Dutch_speaking_regions and help complete a project concerning all Dutch dialects.  Rex  13:02, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Question on references

Hi.

As a native speaker of one of the dialects (Zeeuws-Vlaams with Walcheren influences), I must take a minor issues with the 'dropped h' statement. As far as I know, the rule is that the 'h' coming before a vowel is not dropped, but becomes a weak glottal stop.

Another point that is missed is the fact that what would be a 'g' before a vowel in normal Dutch ortography becomes instead an aspirated vowel. For example, "Goed" (Good) becomes "'oed", sometimes almost "hoed" (pronounced 'hood' with a very weak 'h', or even an aspirated 'oo').

Now, the only reference I have is the direct experience of the dialect as spoken by my family (strong Zealandic-Flemish by my mother, whereas I myself have some Walcheren influences), so I have no links to studies confirming my observation. Is, however, an observation by a native speaker a valid reference to mention this in the article? Mvdwege 20:57, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi Mvdwege. While they say that speakers are knowers, Wikipedia demands citeable sources, that is, references to written works. All material I ever came across does not mention the glottal stop as a phoneme, the h simply disappears. That's also what I have always observed: I never heard a native or near native speaker talk like that. You should not be mistaken either by the fact that the Dictionary of Zeelandic Dialects and many dialect authors do write an apostrophe at places where Standard Dutch has an h: 'uus "house". If your observation is right, however, there must be some literature that mentions this phaenomenon. When time permits, I will consult the Utrecht academic library on this topic; being a student does have some advantages indeed.

Now the pronunciation of the g phoneme. Indeed it is pronounced weaker than in Standard Dutch in most dialects, but the extent to which this happens varies greatly from region to region, place to place and even from speaker to speaker. It can be very h-like indeed. However, both the Dictionary of Zeelandic Dialects and the Noe magazine prescribe a g in all cases. Individual authors often ignore these guidelines. Anyway, while this phaenomenon is not mentioned in the article - when I wrote it I thought it was relatively unimportant compared to other characteristics - it's certainly worth mentioning.

I did not add any sources to the article because it hardly contains any "strong" claims. Most of what the article says can be easily checked in any work on Zeelandic, the information is undisputed and can be found in various sources. However, I can add as many sources as you wish, to make this article even more easily verifiable. This also requires an excursion to the library, by the way... Steinbach (fka Caesarion) 13:43, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, when I say that the 'h' before a vowel becomes a weak glottal stop, I may be fudging a bit, as I haven't boned up on correct linguistic terminology for ages. From what I personally use when dropping back into accent, and what I observed in my family around me, it is somewhere between a glottal stop and an aspiration. Perhaps linguistically speaking, that is merely aspirating the vowel. I have no clue, to be honest. I do know that Mom strictly refers to 'uus when she means home, and there is definitely no 'h' there.

The 'g' is weird. In some cases it is a normal 'g', although slightly weaker than Standard, but the dialect I am familiar with (FYI: the family originates from the Terneuzen/Zaamslag region) does mangle the g almost down to an aspirated vowel. I am not able to ascertain though if there is any rule for when to do a 'normal' g and when to weaken it. Mvdwege 19:03, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Unmotivated tag

As far as I can see, there is no contradiction whatsoever between the content of this article and that of nl:Nederlandse dialecten, let alone a serious one. Who is responsible for this tag and on what grounds could it have been assigned? I am very curious to hear which reservations on whose side there possibly could be here. It looks like some unexplicable mystery. -- Ad43 (talk) 15:08, 31 December 2008 (UTC)