I recently came across an article in the online edition of the Limburgs Dagblad in which the age-old question was raised of whether our precious Dutch language will, at some point in the future, be engulfed by the tidal wave that is English. Well, I have to admit that may be a too gloomily painted picture there. Luckily however the journalist who authored the article got a hold of one of our foremost Dutch linguists, the woman who almost single-handedly wrote the VanDale dictionary of modern Dutch, Nicoline van der Sijs. Having the wealth of linguistic experience she has, Van der Sijs replied to the journalist’s questions rather soberly, at least in most respects. That is, to the question of whether English will ever squeeze the life out of our Dutch native tongue, she answered very plainly by saying: ‘No’. ‘It will only become problematic if large groups of people decide to speak exclusively English to each other.’
But that said, there are cases in which the Dutch seem to be guilty of using a plethora of English words that can’t really be justified by any stretch of the imagination. About a year ago I was driving in my car listening to my radio when this young entrepeneur came on. He had come up with a revolutionary new way to advertise through iOS apps and was about to get his 15 minutes of fame. However, judging from his use of vocabulary, I would say he had spent quite some time among non-Dutch speaking people, not necesarily abroad though. What happened next was amazing: at a rapid pace he started blurting out utterances such as ‘Mijn ambitions waren het om dat te perfecten, en by the way hebben we daar meer supply and demand voor nodig’. Owing to his copious use of English words and anglicisms, at some point I am sure even the host must have been checking his guest list to confirm that he had not accidentally invited an English-speaking guest. About a minute into the conversation, the perhaps 10,000 people listening in on the interview could no longer make heads or tails of his story, at which point the host decided to intervene and politely remind his guest that he had been invited to a Dutch radio show, not a British one, urging his guest to switch to English entirely or just speak plain Dutch.
[pullquote align=”left” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Owing to his copious use of English words and anglicisms, at some point I am sure even the host was checking his guest list to confirm that he had not accidentally invited an English speaking guest.[/pullquote]
In my opinion, what we should take away from this, if anything, it is that, ‘yes’, nowadays it is okay to squeeze in an English word every now and again. English words, or words from any other language than your own for that matter, often times enable you to capture a slightly different shade of meaning, one which perhaps would have been difficult to express in Dutch. We generally feel this is okay and if done sparinly it shows you’re not living under a rock and are connected to the outside world. We all do it and these word truly enrich our language. It is not until you start using English words to express something for which there is little reason to abandon your native tongue that you start stepping onto people’s linguistic toes. But unfortunately things are not as simple as that. Nicoline van der Sijs rightly points out for example that the word ‘kaas’ entered our language through the sociolinguistic dominance of Latin, thus making ‘kaas’ a veritable loan word. Whether ‘kaas’ had the same questionable and infamous status as present-day ‘awkward’ (as used by Dutch speakers) might be impossible to find out. Although ‘awkward’ has not attained such a high status, other English loan words have. Think of many words used in advertising, which are plentiful. What seems to do the trick more than anything is who is taking out the loan. ‘Awkward’ is often made out to be a rather vulgar addition to young people’s lexicon, but few adults seem to take issue with ‘accountmanager’.
Van der Sijs, I am sure, must have heard this question asked several hundred times. Fortunately, solid research carried out by her and others supports her straightforward answer that English and Dutch are not on a collision course. She does include a ‘but’ though and this has everything to do with our current trends in education. She points out that college and university students improving their English skills is good. But the number of lectures and classes that are taught exclusively in English, has gone through the roof. Just pick a university and barge into one of the lectures that are ongoing at that moment. You will soon find out that the main language used during these classes is, you guessed it, English. Van der Sijs says this is could be a problem, perhaps not in order of magnitude like Dutch dissappearing forever, but she does point out that students whose first language is Dutch and who are currently taking courses at Dutch universities may find writing essays and research reports in Dutch increasingly difficult.
On the one hand we seem to be facing a real danger of losing parts of our language, while at the other hand, we are not really losing anything, but rather we are gaining and enriching our lives and cultures. Teaching English at school improves our children’s English skills, which is beyond doubt. Teaching exclusively in English, greatly improves our children’s and students’ English proficiency, but we mustn’t forget is that children pick up a lot of formal ways to use language at school. So if in bilingual education you teach geography in English, children might not know what a ‘kwel’ is when they graduate. What we need to learn is that English is and always has been a welcome addition to our schools’ curriculae, but if you add something, something at the other end of the scale will inevitably be nudged off. That doesn’t mean that we can teach languages more effectively and communicatively, but eventually something has got to give. Teaching classes in English is good, but as always the saying ‘moderation in all things’ applies.