Maastrichtian dialect
Encyclopedia
Maastrichtian or Maastrichtian Limburgish (respectively Mestreechs məˈstʀeːçs or Mestreechs-Limburgs məˈstʀeːçsˈlimbœʁʝs) is the city dialect
and variant of Limburgish
spoken in the Dutch city of Maastricht
alongside the Dutch language
(which it is not mutually intelligible with). In terms of speakers it is the most widespread variant of Limburgish, and is a tonal one. Like many of the Limburgish dialects spoken in neighbouring Belgian Limburg
, Maastrichtian kept a lot of Gallo-Romance
(or more accurately, French
and Walloon
) influences in its vocabulary
. This Francophone influence can additionally be attributed to the historical importance of French with the cultural elite and educational systems as well as the historical immigration
of Walloon labourers
to the city. Despite being a specific variant of Limburgish, Maastrichtian remains mutually intelligible with other Limburgish variants, especially the ones of surrounding municipalities.
Whilst Maastrichtian is still widely spoken, regardless of social level, research has shown that it is suffering from a degree of dialect loss amongst younger generations. This is the case in dwindling of speakers but also in development of the dialect (dialect levelling
) towards Standard Dutch (e.g. the loss of local words and grammar).
, Borgharen, Heer
and Itteren.
The social status of Maastrichtian speakers is determined by the type of sociolect
spoken by a certain person, with a division between Short Maastrichtian or Standard Maastrichtian (Kort Mestreechs, Standaardmestreechs) and Long/Stretched Maastrichtian (Laank Mestreechs). Short Maastrichtian is generally considered to be spoken by the upper
and middle class
es, whilst Long Maastrichtian is considered to be spoken by the working class
.
A particular feature of Maastrichtian is that it gives its speakers a certain prestige. Research of the dialect showed that people talking the "purest" form of Maastrichtian, i.e. the Short Maastrichtian (Kort Mestreechs) sociolect, were perceived by others to be the well-educated ones.
celebrations and incites people to learn Maastrichtian. As from the 19th century there are more written texts in Maastrichtian, again mostly oriented towards these carnival celebrations. Nowadays however, many other sources display written Maastrichtian, including song texts not written for carnival as well as books, poems, streetsigns etc.
of the Maastrichtian dialect, especially with regards to vowels is quite extensive due to the dialect's tonal nature. As it is the case in all other Limburgish dialects and the Dutch accent area in the region, Maastrichtian uses the so-called soft G
.
(apart from the Limburgish language family this also includes varying degrees of influence from both archaic and modern Dutch
and German). However, what sets Maastrichtian apart from other variants of Limburgish is its relatively strong influences from French
. This is not only because of geographic closeness of a Francophone region (namely Wallonia) to Maastricht
but also because of French being the predominant spoken language of the Maastrichtian cultural elite and the higher secondary educational system of the region in the past. Some examples:
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
and variant of Limburgish
Limburgish language
Limburgish, also called Limburgian or Limburgic is a group of East Low Franconian language varieties spoken in the Limburg and Rhineland regions, near the common Dutch / Belgian / German border...
spoken in the Dutch city of Maastricht
Maastricht
Maastricht is situated on both sides of the Meuse river in the south-eastern part of the Netherlands, on the Belgian border and near the German border...
alongside the Dutch language
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
(which it is not mutually intelligible with). In terms of speakers it is the most widespread variant of Limburgish, and is a tonal one. Like many of the Limburgish dialects spoken in neighbouring Belgian Limburg
Limburg (Belgium)
Limburg is the easternmost province of modern Flanders, which is one of the three main political and cultural sub-divisions of modern Belgium. It is located west of the river Meuse . It borders on the Dutch provinces of North Brabant and Limburg and the Belgian provinces of Liège, Flemish Brabant...
, Maastrichtian kept a lot of Gallo-Romance
Gallo-Romance languages
The Gallo-Romance branch of Romance languages include French and the other langue d'oïl dialects, Occitan , Catalan, Franco-Provençal, Gallo-Italic, and other languages - Other possible classifications :...
(or more accurately, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
and Walloon
Walloon language
Walloon is a Romance language which was spoken as a primary language in large portions of the Walloon Region of Belgium and some villages of Northern France until the middle of the 20th century. It belongs to the langue d'oïl language family, whose most prominent member is the French language...
) influences in its vocabulary
Vocabulary
A person's vocabulary is the set of words within a language that are familiar to that person. A vocabulary usually develops with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge...
. This Francophone influence can additionally be attributed to the historical importance of French with the cultural elite and educational systems as well as the historical immigration
Immigration
Immigration is the act of foreigners passing or coming into a country for the purpose of permanent residence...
of Walloon labourers
Walloons in the Netherlands
The history and presence of the Walloon people, i.e. francophone Belgians, in the Netherlands goes back to the foundation process of the Dutch state...
to the city. Despite being a specific variant of Limburgish, Maastrichtian remains mutually intelligible with other Limburgish variants, especially the ones of surrounding municipalities.
Whilst Maastrichtian is still widely spoken, regardless of social level, research has shown that it is suffering from a degree of dialect loss amongst younger generations. This is the case in dwindling of speakers but also in development of the dialect (dialect levelling
Dialect levelling
Dialect levelling is the means by which dialect differences decrease. For example, in rural areas of Britain, although English is widely spoken, the pronunciation and grammar have historically varied. During the 20th century people have been moving into towns and cities, standardizing the English...
) towards Standard Dutch (e.g. the loss of local words and grammar).
Geographic distribution, social status and sociolects
Maatrichtian being a city dialect, the terminology "Maastrichtian" (Mestreechs) is practically limited to the municipal borders, with the exception of some places within the Maastrichtian municipality where the spoken dialects are in fact not Maastrichtian. These exceptions are previously separate villages and/or municipalities that have merged with the municipality of Maastricht namely AmbyAmby
A former village, Amby is now a neighborhood of Maastricht, in the Netherlands, located about 4 km northeast of the center of the city.From January 2, 1839 to July 1, 1970, Amby existed as a separate municipality....
, Borgharen, Heer
Heer (Netherlands)
Heer is a neighbourhood of Maastricht in the Dutch province of Limburg. It is located on the right bank of the River Meuse.Heer was a separate municipality until 1970, when it was merged with Maastricht. Until 1828, the municipality was called "Heer en Keer"...
and Itteren.
The social status of Maastrichtian speakers is determined by the type of sociolect
Sociolect
In sociolinguistics, a sociolect or social dialect is a variety of language associated with a social group such as a socioeconomic class, an ethnic group, an age group, etc....
spoken by a certain person, with a division between Short Maastrichtian or Standard Maastrichtian (Kort Mestreechs, Standaardmestreechs) and Long/Stretched Maastrichtian (Laank Mestreechs). Short Maastrichtian is generally considered to be spoken by the upper
Upper class
In social science, the "upper class" is the group of people at the top of a social hierarchy. Members of an upper class may have great power over the allocation of resources and governmental policy in their area.- Historical meaning :...
and middle class
Middle class
The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....
es, whilst Long Maastrichtian is considered to be spoken by the working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
.
A particular feature of Maastrichtian is that it gives its speakers a certain prestige. Research of the dialect showed that people talking the "purest" form of Maastrichtian, i.e. the Short Maastrichtian (Kort Mestreechs) sociolect, were perceived by others to be the well-educated ones.
Written Maastrichtian
The oldest known and preserved text in Maastrichtian dates from the 18th century. This text named Sermoen euver de Weurd Inter omnes Linguas nulla Mosa Trajestensi prastantior gehauwe in Mastreeg was presumably written for one of the carnivalCarnival
Carnaval is a festive season which occurs immediately before Lent; the main events are usually during February. Carnaval typically involves a public celebration or parade combining some elements of a circus, mask and public street party...
celebrations and incites people to learn Maastrichtian. As from the 19th century there are more written texts in Maastrichtian, again mostly oriented towards these carnival celebrations. Nowadays however, many other sources display written Maastrichtian, including song texts not written for carnival as well as books, poems, streetsigns etc.
Standardisation and official spelling
In 1999, the municipal government recognised a standardised spelling of Maastrichtian made by Pol Brounts and Phil Dumoulin as the official spelling of the dialect.Dictionaries
- Aarts, F. (2005). Dictionairke vaan 't Mestreechs. (2nd ed.). Maastricht, the Netherlands: Stichting Onderweg.
- Brounts P., Chambille G., Kurris J., Minis T., Paulissen H. & Simais M. (2004). De Nuie Mestreechsen Dictionair. Maastricht, the Netherlands: Veldeke-Krink Mestreech.
Other literature on Maastrichtian
- Aarts, F. (2009). t Verhaol vaan eus Taol. Maastricht, the Netherlands: Stichting Onderweg.
Local anthem
In 2002, the municipal government officially adopted a local anthem (Mestreechs Volksleed) composed of lyrics in Maastrichtian. The theme had originally been written by Alfons Olterdissen (1865–1923) as finishing stanza of the Maastrichtian opera "Trijn de Begijn" of 1910.| Maastrichtian municipal anthem (Mestreechs Volksleed) (2002) |
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2
3
4
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Wikimedia
- Wikipedia: Maastrichtian is included in the Limburgish Wikipedia. Since there are only standardised 'variants' of Limburgish but no widely accepted/recognised standardised Limburgish itself, each article is tagged as being written in a certain variant of the language. All articles in Maastrichtian can be found here.
- Wiktionary: For an overview of some Maastrichtian dialect specific words, their English translations and their origins proceed to this Wiktionary category.
Sounds
The phonologyPhonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
of the Maastrichtian dialect, especially with regards to vowels is quite extensive due to the dialect's tonal nature. As it is the case in all other Limburgish dialects and the Dutch accent area in the region, Maastrichtian uses the so-called soft G
Hard and soft G in Dutch
In the Dutch language the terminology hard and soft ⟨g⟩ refers to not only a phonological phenomenon of the pronunciation of the letters ⟨g⟩ and ⟨ch⟩ but also indicates a major isogloss within the language. In the northern part of the European Dutch language area, these letters represent velar or...
.
Monophthongs
| Sign | IPA International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic... |
Maastrichtian example ("translation") | English or other example | Notes |
| a | [ɑ] | kat ("cat") | spa | -- |
| aa | [aː] | maan ("man") | -- | -- |
| ao | [ɒː] | maon ("moon") | -- | -- |
| äö | [œː] | häöm ("him") | cœur (French French language French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts... ) |
-- |
| e | [æ] ([ɛ]) | werk ("work") | man | -- |
| e | [ə] | de (the) | fur (RP Received Pronunciation Received Pronunciation , also called the Queen's English, Oxford English or BBC English, is the accent of Standard English in England, with a relationship to regional accents similar to the relationship in other European languages between their standard varieties and their regional forms... ) |
-- |
| è | [ɛ] | wèrke ("to work") | bed (GA General American General American , also known as Standard American English , is a major accent of American English. The accent is not restricted to the United States... ) |
-- |
| ee | [eː] | wee ("who") | bear (AUS Australian English Australian English is the name given to the group of dialects spoken in Australia that form a major variety of the English language.... ) |
-- |
| eu | [øː] | leus ("you/he reads") | -- | -- |
| i | [ɪ] | hin ("chicken") | bit | -- |
| ie | [i] | diech ("you") | dich (German German language German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union.... ) |
-- |
| ie | [iː] | zie ("sea") | free | -- |
| o | [ɔ] | bot ("bone") | bore (RP Received Pronunciation Received Pronunciation , also called the Queen's English, Oxford English or BBC English, is the accent of Standard English in England, with a relationship to regional accents similar to the relationship in other European languages between their standard varieties and their regional forms... ) |
-- |
| ó | [o] | lótsj ("dummy" or "pacifier") | -- | u-like |
| ö | [œ] | dörp ("village") | jeune (French French language French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts... ) |
-- |
| oe | [uː] | hoes ("home") | loose | -- |
| oo | [oː] | hoond ("dog") | -- | -- |
| u | [ʏ] | un ("onion") | book (SEE) | -- |
| uu | [yː] | vuur ("fire") | food (SCE Scottish English Scottish English refers to the varieties of English spoken in Scotland. It may or may not be considered distinct from the Scots language. It is always considered distinct from Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic language.... ) |
-- |
Diphthongs
| Sign | IPA International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic... |
Maastrichtian example ("translation") | English or other example | Notes |
| aaj | [aːi] | aajd ("old") | -- | -- |
| aoj | [ɒːi] | slaoj ("salad") | -- | -- |
| äöj | [œːi] | dräöj ("thread") | -- | -- |
| aj | [ɑi] | ajdste ("oldest") | -- | -- |
| au | [ɑu] | auto ("car") | -- | -- |
| aw | [ɑw] | klaw ("claw") | wow! | -- |
| ei, ij | [ɛ(ː)ɪ] | ei ("egg") | -- | often [ɛː] |
| ej | [æj] | hej ("[he/she] had") | -- | -- |
| ew | [æw] | klewke ("claw") | -- | -- |
| iew | [iːw] | kiew ("gill") | new | -- |
| oj | [ɔi] | trojt ([he/she] "marries") | -- | -- |
| ooj | [oːj] | snooje ("to trim" or "to prune") | -- | -- |
| ou | [ɔu] | douf ("deaf") | -- | -- |
| ui | [øi] | buimke ("tree") | -- | -- |
Consonants
| Sign | IPA International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic... |
Maastrichtian example ("in English") | English (or other) example | Notes |
| b | [b] | broor ("brother") | brother | -- |
| ch | [ç], [ʝ] | ouch ("also") | -- | Similar to Dutch accents using soft G Hard and soft G in Dutch In the Dutch language the terminology hard and soft ⟨g⟩ refers to not only a phonological phenomenon of the pronunciation of the letters ⟨g⟩ and ⟨ch⟩ but also indicates a major isogloss within the language. In the northern part of the European Dutch language area, these letters represent velar or... and German German language German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union.... |
| d | [d] | daak ("roof") | diverse | Becomes a [t] when at the end of words |
| f | [f] | fien ("fine") | fine | -- |
| g | [ʝ] | good ("good") | -- | Sometimes similar to [ch] |
| gk | [g] | lègke ("to lay") | -- | -- |
| h | [h] | hei ("here") | here | -- |
| j | [j] | jao ("jao") | yes | -- |
| k | [k] | klaor ("ready") | kiss | -- |
| l | [l] | links ("left") | left | -- |
| m | [m] | miew ("gull") | map | -- |
| n | [n] | nui ("new") | new | -- |
| ng | [ŋ] | ing ("scary") | bang | -- |
| p | [p] | pries ("price") | price | -- |
| r | [ʁ] | roond ("round") | Frau (German German language German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union.... ) |
-- |
| s | [s] | as ("ash") | sap | -- |
| sj | [ʃ] | sjeep ("ship") | ship | -- |
| t | [t] | tied | time | -- |
| v | [v] | vaan ("of") | vase | -- |
| w | [w] | wien ("whine") | weep | -- |
| z | [z] | zie ("sea") | zap | -- |
Orthography
| Consonants | ||||||||||||||||||||
| b B B is the second letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is used to represent a variety of bilabial sounds , most commonly a voiced bilabial plosive.-History:... |
ch Ch (digraph) Ch is a digraph in the Roman alphabet and Uyghur. It is treated as a letter of its own in Chamorro, Czech, Slovak, Polish, Igbo, Quechua, Guarani, Welsh, Cornish, Breton and Belarusian Łacinka alphabets. In Vietnamese, it also used to be considered a letter for collation purposes but this is no... |
d D D is the fourth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History :The Semitic letter Dâlet may have developed from the logogram for a fish or a door. There are various Egyptian hieroglyphs that might have inspired this. In Semitic, Ancient Greek, and Latin, the letter represented ; in the... |
f F F is the sixth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The origin of ⟨f⟩ is the Semitic letter vâv that represented a sound like or . Graphically, it originally probably depicted either a hook or a club... |
g G G is the seventh letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter 'G' was introduced in the Old Latin period as a variant of ⟨c⟩ to distinguish voiced, from voiceless, . The recorded originator of ⟨g⟩ is freedman Spurius Carvilius Ruga, the first Roman to open a fee-paying school,... |
gk | h H H .) is the eighth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The Semitic letter ⟨ח⟩ most likely represented the voiceless pharyngeal fricative . The form of the letter probably stood for a fence or posts.... |
j J Ĵ or ĵ is a letter in Esperanto orthography representing the sound .While Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for its four postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets, the base letters are Romano-Germanic... |
k K K is the eleventh letter of the English and basic modern Latin alphabet.-History and usage:In English, the letter K usually represents the voiceless velar plosive; this sound is also transcribed by in the International Phonetic Alphabet and X-SAMPA.... |
l L Ł or ł, described in English as L with stroke, is a letter of the Polish, Kashubian, Sorbian, Łacinka , Łatynka , Wilamowicean, Navajo, Dene Suline, Inupiaq, Zuni, Hupa, and Dogrib alphabets, several proposed alphabets for the Venetian language, and the ISO 11940 romanization of the Thai alphabet... |
m M M is the thirteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter M is derived from the Phoenician Mem, via the Greek Mu . Semitic Mem probably originally pictured water... |
n N N is the fourteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History of the forms :One of the most common hieroglyphs, snake, was used in Egyptian writing to stand for a sound like English ⟨J⟩, because the Egyptian word for "snake" was djet... |
ng | p P P is the sixteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Usage:In English and most other European languages, P is a voiceless bilabial plosive. Both initial and final Ps can be combined with many other discrete consonants in English words... |
r R R is the eighteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The original Semitic letter may have been inspired by an Egyptian hieroglyph for tp, "head". It was used for by Semites because in their language, the word for "head" was rêš . It developed into Greek Ρ and Latin R... |
s S S is the nineteenth letter in the ISO basic Latin alphabet.-History: Semitic Šîn represented a voiceless postalveolar fricative . Greek did not have this sound, so the Greek sigma came to represent... |
sj | t T T is the 20th letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used consonant and the second most common letter in the English language.- History :Taw was the last letter of the Western Semitic and Hebrew alphabets... |
v V V is the twenty-second letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Letter:The letter V comes from the Semitic letter Waw, as do the modern letters F, U, W, and Y. See F for details.... |
w W W is the 23rd letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.In other Germanic languages, including German, its pronunciation is similar or identical to that of English V... |
z Z Z is the twenty-sixth and final letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Name and pronunciation:In most dialects of English, the letter's name is zed , reflecting its derivation from the Greek zeta but in American English, its name is zee , deriving from a late 17th century English dialectal... |
| Vowels and Diphthongs | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| a A A is the first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is similar to the Ancient Greek letter Alpha, from which it derives.- Origins :... |
aa | aaj AAJ AAJ is a three-letter acronym that may refer to:* AAJ, IATA airport code for Cayana Airstrip in Suriname* Aaj Daily, an Urdu publication* Aaj, an Indian newspaper* AAJ TV, a television station in Pakistan... |
aj | ao | aoj AOJ AOJ may refer to:* the IATA code for Aomori Airport* Axis of Justice, a non-profit organization based in Los Angeles, United States... |
äö | äöj AOJ AOJ may refer to:* the IATA code for Aomori Airport* Axis of Justice, a non-profit organization based in Los Angeles, United States... |
aj | au | aw | e E E is the fifth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used letter in the Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Latin, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish languages.-History:... |
è È or can be*The letter E with a Grave accent.*In Shakespeare's works, è would be used in the -ed suffix to indicate alternate pronunciation, for example with winged/wingèd, the è would be added to produce a pronunciation of instead of .... |
ee | ei | ej | eu | ew | i I I is the ninth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:In Semitic, the letter may have originated in a hieroglyph for an arm that represented a voiced pharyngeal fricative in Egyptian, but was reassigned to by Semites, because their word for "arm" began with that sound... |
ie | iew | o O O is the fifteenth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.The letter was derived from the Semitic `Ayin , which represented a consonant, probably , the sound represented by the Arabic letter ع called `Ayn. This Semitic letter in its original form seems to have been inspired by a... |
ó Ó is a letter in the Faroese, Hungarian, Icelandic, Kashubian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, and Sorbian languages. This letter also appears in the Catalan, Irish, Occitan, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and Vietnamese languages as a variant of letter “o”. It is also used in English for other purposes... |
ö Ö "Ö", or "ö", is a character used in several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter O with umlaut to denote the front vowels or . In languages without umlaut, the character is also used as a "O with diaeresis" to denote a syllable break, wherein its pronunciation remains an unmodified .- O-Umlaut... |
oe | oo | ooj | ou | u U U is the twenty-first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter U ultimately comes from the Semitic letter Waw by way of the letter Y. See the letter Y for details.... |
ui | uu |
Vocabulary
Maastrichtian contains many specific words ample or not used in other Limburgish dialects some being creolisations/"limburgisations" of Dutch, French and German words while others cannot be directly subscribed to one of these languages.(Historical) Vocabulary influences from other languages
Maastrichtian vocabulary, as the language family it belongs to suggests, is based on the Germanic languagesGermanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
(apart from the Limburgish language family this also includes varying degrees of influence from both archaic and modern Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
and German). However, what sets Maastrichtian apart from other variants of Limburgish is its relatively strong influences from French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
. This is not only because of geographic closeness of a Francophone region (namely Wallonia) to Maastricht
Maastricht
Maastricht is situated on both sides of the Meuse river in the south-eastern part of the Netherlands, on the Belgian border and near the German border...
but also because of French being the predominant spoken language of the Maastrichtian cultural elite and the higher secondary educational system of the region in the past. Some examples:
Francophone influence
| English | Dutch | French | Maastrichtian |
|---|---|---|---|
| to advance | vooruitkomen | avancer | avvencere |
| bracelet | armband | bracelet | brazzelèt |
| errand | boodschap | commission | kemissie |
| jealous | jaloers | jaloux | zjelous |
| to remember | (zich) herinneren | se rappeler | (ziech) rappelere |
| washbasin | wastafel | lavabo | lavvabo |
Germanophone influence
| English | Dutch | German | Maastrichtian |
|---|---|---|---|
| bag | zak, tas | Tüte | tuut |
| ham | ham | Schinken | sjink |
| liquorice candy | drop | Lakritze | krissie |
| plate | bord | Teller | teleur |
| ready, done | klaar | fertig | veerdeg |
| swing (for children) | schommel | Schaukel | sjógkel |
Other examples of Maastrichtian vocabulary
Some examples of specific Maastrichtian vocabulary:| English | Dutch | French | German | Maastrichtian | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| approximately, roughly | ongeveer | appoximativement, environ | ungefähr | naoventrint | |
| bag | tas | sac | Tasche | kalbas | |
| completely | helemaal, gans | tout à fait | ganz | gans | (historically) Common in Germanic languages Germanic languages The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe... |
| frame (of doors and windows) | lijst | cadre | Rahmen | sjabrang | |
| grandmother / grandfather | grootmoeder / grootvader | grand-mère / grand-père | Großmutter / Großvater | bomma(ma) / bompa(pa) | |
| sieve | vergiet | passoire | Sieb | zeiboar (sometimes written zeijboar) | |
| where? | waar? | où? | wo? | boe? |
Expressions and Titles
Some examples of Maastrichtian expressions:| Maastrichtian Expression | Meaning (Approx.) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Neet laank meh breid | Literally "Not long but broad". Commonly used to indicate the characteristic of the Maastrichtian dialect to "stretch" vowels (in speech and writing). The word laank (long) is the example in this case whereas it would be written as either lank or lang in other variants of Limburgish and lang in Dutch. | |
| Noondezju | A minor swear word and /or an expression of surprise | Literally a creolisation/"limburgisation" of the French "nom de Dieu" meaning "(in) name of God" |
| Preuvenemint | Name of an annual culinary festival held in Maastricht | A contraction of the Maastrichtian words preuve (to taste) and evenemint (event) |