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Adopted officially
It was in the year 1914 that Afrikaans was first adopted for use
in schools. Five years later, it was adopted for use in the Dutch
Reformed Church. Afrikaans as a literary language, however,
developed only in the twentieth century. The first completed
translation of the Bible in Afrikaans was brought out in the year
1933.
The mother language – Netherlandic
The mother language, Netherlandic is the national language of
The Netherlands. Along with French, it is one of the two official
languages of Belgium. It is a West Germanic language and is also
known as English Dutch or Flemish. There is a tendency among people
to refer to the Netherlandic spoken in The Netherlands as Dutch and
to the Netherlandic spoken in Belgium as Flemish. They are both the
same language. It is used as a language of administration in Surinam
and the Netherlands Antilles.
Mother’s recipe
Netherlandic is derived from the spoken language of the
Western Franks, namely Low Franconian, which was restructured
through contact with speakers of North Sea Germanic along the coast
around AD 700. Some of the earliest documents in the Netherlandic
language date from approximately the end of the 12th century.
Both standard and dialectal forms of the
Netherlandic language are used in most of The Netherlands, northern
Belgium and a small part of France, that lies to the west of
Belgium. There are many varieties of the spoken form of Netherlandic.
Standard Netherlandic is the language for public and official
purposes, such as medium of instruction in schools and colleges.
There are no case endings in the noun in Standard Netherlandic.
The use of Standard Netherlandic, together
with the local dialect, is widely spread of The Netherlands than
among the Belgians. In the areas roughly constituting Amsterdam, The
Hague, and Rotterdam, the local dialect is closer to Standard
Netherlandic, than any other dialect.
Efforts were made to accord Netherlandic a
status to that of French in Belgium. French had assumed cultural
predominance during the period 1795-1814, when the French ruled. In
1938, Netherlandic was made the only official language of the
northern part of Belgium. |
