Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/98

86 86 HOLLAND [LANGUAGE Of the Middle Dutch ve have no remains earlier than the beginning of the 13th century, though Saxon and Frankish linguistic monuments go back to the 8tH or 9th. Middle Dutch extends from the 12th century to 1450; then follows a transition period, reaching to 1550, from which date Modern Dutch has prevailed to the present time. In the period last named a subdivision may be made .at 1865, the date of the introduction of the new spelling. 1 In Modern Dutch there is a considerable difference between the latest and the earliest forms. The older language still preserves many words that have now become obsolete, and the style is modelled more closely on that of the classical writers. Towards the end of the 18th century the influence of Van Effen, Stijl, Bilderdijk, and others effected great changes ; and while the deflexion largely increased, the Hollandsch dialect began to make itself predominant, especially in regard to the vowels u and y or ij (i). Indeed the main difference between Middle and Modern Dutch is due to the fact that the former is under the influence of Dietsch (the Flemish-Zealand dialect), while in the latter Hollandsch has the supremacy. In the transition period the language was adulterated by a great number of bastard words and bastard forms derived from French, which obtained currency throughout Holland, Zealand, Utrecht, and the southern provinces, from the influ ence of the court and government of the dukes of Burgundy. The study, of the dialects and grammar of Middle Dutch has not been prosecuted -far enough to allow of very detailed statements regarding them. Our principal authorities for the interpretation of the literary remains are the works of De Vries, Verwijs, Verdam, Moltzer, and others. Most of these remains are in Dietsch, as the romances of chivalry, the works of Maerlant, the- chronicles and songs ; others, as the St Servaas of Van Veldeke, are in the language of the south-east (Limburgsch). Of the mediaeval language, as it was spoken in Utrecht or in the Saxon provinces 2 (the countship of Zutphen, Overyssel, and Drenthe), the only remains are in charters and similar documents. Since the Saxon, as is indicated by the conjugation of the verb, has exercised no dominant influence, and the Hollandsch on the other hand is closely connected with the Dietsch, we will only quote as an example of the language a single strophe from Maerlant s Wapene Martyn, with a metrical translation (hitherto unpublished) from the pen of Nicolas Beets (1880). God, diet al bi redene doet, Graf dit wandel aertsce-goet Der men scheit gemene, Dattere mede wave gevoet, Ende gecleet, ende gescoet, Ende lev-en soude rene. Nu es giericheit so vevwoet, Dat elc settet sinen moet Om al to hebbene allene. Hieromme stortmen menscenblo t, Hievomme stichtmen metter spoat Borge ende hoge stene Mcncgen te wene. 3 God, die liet al met wijsheid doet, Gaf dit verganklijk aimlsche goed Den menschen in t gemeen, Op dat zij zouden zijn gevoed, Het lijf gekleed, geschoeid do voet En leven vein van zeen. Maav 7.ie nu hoe de hebziicht woedt Dat ieclereen in arrcn moed t Al hebben wil alleeu! Hierom vergiet men menacnenbloed, En bouwt met roekeloozen spoed Burohtsloten, zvvaar van steen, Tot smart van menigeen. The Consonants. As regards the consonants, Dutch in the main does not differ from the other Low German languages. The explo sive g and the th are wanting. Instead of the former there is a g with &quot; fricative &quot; pronunciation, and as in High German the thh&s passed over into d. Nearly all the final consonants iu Middle Dutch are sharpened, and the sharp sounds are graphically represented ; in Modern Dutch, on the other hand, the historical development of the language being more distinctly kept in view, and the agreement observed with the inflexional forms, the soft consonant is written more frequently than it is sounded ; thus we have Middle Dutch dach, Modern Dutch dag, in analogy with the plural dagen. The gutturals are g, k, ch, and h. The aspirate sound of the g is of very early date ; even in the Old Dutch psalms g interchanges with h (weh side by side with weg, just as in Gothic faheds and faginon, Anglo-Saxon borh and borges, Old Saxon manah and manag). The gh, which in Middle Dutch frequently appears before e and i, served to distinguish the fricative g from the French g ; in later Middle Dutch we find this object lost sight of, and the gh also written before a, o, or u. In Maerlant ghans and glieiie both occur. In the 15th century the gh was also employed instead of ch, when people began to observe the etymological agreement of 1 For information regarding the results furnished by an investigation of the proper names, see Professor II. Kern in Taal- en. Letterbode, part iii. p. 275. 2 See Sloet, Oorkondmboek van Gelre en Zutphen: Taalkundige liij dragen, 3 Van Jacob ende van ifartine, ed. E. Verwijs (IMbliothcek van Middelnederl Letterkunde, 27). ik Inch and si laghen, and in this way arose the spelling ik lagJi. This indicated no change in pronunciation. That in Middle Dutch, however, an explosive pronunciation existed (in some words, more especially after n), as well as the aspirated pronunciation, is evident from words like dine, ginc ; this sound did not hold ita ground but passed into the nasalized guttural now written ding, ging. The explosive force, however, was preserved where the dimi nutive suffix je followed immediately after ng, as well as before lijk and some other affixes, and it is now expressed by k (koninkje, jonkman). In combination with s, g became k(spccksd, fluks from vlug). So also in intensive verbs like bukken, knikken, where the k arose from an explosive g before j of the suffix, and was doubled after the short vowels. In non-intensives, as liggen, zeggen, whera the g was aspirated, that letter was doubled in the same way from gj. The Dutch g is besides sometimes derived from the common German g (guns, dag); sometimes it is the. Old German hut the end of a word, between vowels, or after liquids (hoog, zuig). Some times it is a survival of the compound gw, and exists along with a form in w, as spugen,^ spuwen. Gf arose out of j in kruisiyen and other verbs in -igcn, just as in Anglo-Saxon. In the beginning of some words in Middle Dutch # passed into,/, asjonst for gonst, while Modern Dutch again has gwnst. The passage of g into j, and i after a or e, and before a vowel, is found both in Middle Dutch and Modern Dutch : segel becomes zcil,- gezegd gczeid. In some words the explosive g has passed into&; in others, and indeed the majority, the k, both in the body of the word and as an initial and a final letter, is the common Low German k. After short vowels the k of the compound kj was doubled, and the j dropped off after producing &quot;umlaut&quot; (dekken, wekken). An original k remained as an initial letter before n or r in kring, knijpen, &c., alongside of which we have ring, nijpen, &c., in Avhich the k passed into h and then disappeared. The k also remains undisplaced in the diminutive ken (Taal- en Letterbode, ii. 105). Before t, k became ch in zucht (ziek), ivaclit (waken). In Middle Dutch c and k are interchanged without distinction of sound. is used before vowels except e and i, and before /, n, and r, and at the end of a word (cop, cleen, crane}. After n sometimes ck is also employed (ganc and ganck). In later Middle Dutch the ck is more frequent ; in other cases k is common (kint, kerke). Frequently we find k as well as c, never, however, c before e or i, except in French words, where c had the sound of s (citroen). Sometimes ch (as in cJieins, chessen) occurs as well as c (ceins, cessen), where ch represents the palatal sound of the s, which in the more modern language is rather represented by sj (korsjet and corset, sjokkcn and sokken, &c.). The doubling of the k was indicated by ck (dcckcn), while qu was the ordinary for kw (bequame, quedelen, queue), in Modern Dutch dekken, bckwaam. In the beginning of words h has lost its original aspirate sound and become a mere breathing, and consequently it has often dropped off both before other consonants and between vowels : thus liring becomes ring (as early as in the Old Frankish psalms), slahan becomes slaan, vliehen in Middle Dutch vlicn. In some of these words a d has been afterwards inserted out of a supposed analogy with weak verbs, as e.g., with belien, bcllde ; where Modern Dutch has vlieden, geschieden, Middle Dutch had vlicn, gescien ; even in Middle Dutch, indeed, gcschicde (Modern Dutch geschiedde) was an alternative form with geschach. In the dialects h is frequently prefixed improperly (harm for arm, &c. ). At the end of words the h occasionally kept its fricative sound (hooch, geschach, tooch), as the ch shows. In the verbs tiegcn (tiuhan) and tijgen (tlhan), which sounded tien and tijen in Middle Dutch, the g has been afterwards introduced into the present stem, probably through the similarity of the sound of the h (ch) in tooch with the ch sound which g acquires as a final consonant, and through the g of the plural preterite togcn. Ch did not remain in the preterite of all verbs in Middle Dutch: vlien has vloe as well as vlooch; alongside of this, however, there is an infinitive vlieghen, also with a preterite vlooch. From the compound hw the h soon dropped off in the Middle Dutch (ivalvisch, wie, waar), not, however, where the w was vocalized (compare hui with wei, hoe with tvoe in the Saxon; in this last case woe passes further into boe~). Before t, h retains its aspirate sound, as in ilucht (ch pronounced as the German ch without i); and (/also before t takes the sharp sound of ch, although this is not represented by the spelling in substantives in -te, as gebergte, adjectives in -lijk, as genoeglijk, and in the conjugation hij ligt. The ch in sch (pro nounced as s : vlecsch, pron. vices), derived from the Middle Dutch sc (sk), is a mere orthographical convention ; as an initial consonant sch is now pronounced sg (schip), but in the Saxon dialects and in Frisian the old sound is preserved: skip, skoal (schola). Sculan has already in Middle Dutch changed the sc into s, and in Modern Dutch it appears as z (zullen). Ch before t, except Avhere it stands for g, ia derived from an / (compare gchucht, kocht, sticht, alongside of which we have words in which the /has been retained, as stiff and bruiloft, Middle Dutch brulocMe). Before s the guttural is assimilated or syncopated: examples are bus (High German b dchse), vos (fox), zes, deesem (dcegsem). There is in Dutch a d which corresponds to the English th and