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55-601: The Bergsche Maas ( Dutch pronunciation: [ˈbɛr(ə)xsə ˈmaːs] ; current spelling : Bergsche Maas ) is a canal that was constructed in 1904 to be a branch of the river Maas (French: Meuse) in the Dutch province of North Brabant . The Maas splits near Heusden into the Afgedamde Maas and the Bergse Maas. The Afgedamde Maas flows north until its confluence with the river Waal (the main distributary of

110-620: A "progressive" spelling to the present day. During World War II the governments of the Netherlands and Flanders decided to look for a way to restore the unification of spelling based on De Vries and Te Winkel. This led to the introduction of a simplification of the Marchant spelling being introduced in Flanders in 1946 and in the Netherlands the following year. In the Netherlands, the Act on

165-592: A clerk in Amsterdam in the 14th century would usually write lant , but one in Utrecht would write land . The invention of printing led to a more standardized approach. With the spirit of the French Revolution pervading all areas of thought, attempts were made to unify Dutch spelling and grammar . Matthijs Siegenbeek, professor at Leiden was officially asked in 1801 to draw up a uniform spelling;

220-837: A language conference was held in Cape Town , and included delegates invited by the Language Association from Natal, the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony , and created the Vereenvoudigde Hollandse Spelling (the "Simplified Dutch Spelling") with the aim of reviving Dutch as a medium of education and as a public language. The Simplified Dutch Spelling deviates from the De Vries-Te Winkel Spelling in

275-691: A large dictionary: Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal (WNT) (Dictionary of the Dutch Language), incorporating vocabulary of the past centuries. There was a problem with this project: which spelling was to be used for the dictionary? There were three spelling systems in use at the time: the Willems spelling in Belgium, the Siegenbeek spelling in the Netherlands, and several variants of Bilderdijk's system. It would have been unacceptable to have used

330-592: A mixture of these systems. In addition, the Siegenbeek system did not address certain issues such as when compounds were to be written as one word or the interpolation of letters in between . It was proposed to create a special dictionary spelling. This spelling was established by the linguists Matthias de Vries and L.A. te Winkel. In 1863 Te Winkel published the results in De grondbeginselen der Nederlandsche spelling. Ontwerp der spelling voor het aanstaande Nederlandsch Woordenboek (The foundations of Dutch spelling. Project for

385-507: A precursor of today's Groene Boekje ( Green Booklet ). The Netherlands was slower in accepting the De Vries and Te Winkel spelling. Schools continued to use the Siegenbeek spelling until 1870, and in government circles it was not until 1883 that the new spelling started to be used. The De Vries and Te Winkel spelling eventually led to a large degree of uniformity of spelling in the Netherlands and Belgium. The De Vries and Te Winkel spelling

440-460: A proposal for simplification). He emphasized the need for spelling to relate to pronunciation, therefore mensch (person/human) and Nederlandsch ought to become mens and Nederlands , respectively. Russisch (Russian) he thought should be spelt Russies and moeilijk (difficult) moeilik . Heeten would be written heten , but lezen would stay the same. However, academics from the Netherlands and Flanders challenged Kollewijn's proposals with

495-518: Is Charlemagne's sister. In this way Charlemagne learns of a traitor in his court. The next day, when Eggeric arrives in Charlemagne's court, Charlemagne has Eggeric searched and finds his weapons. Elegast duels with Eggeric and exposes him as a traitor. Eggeric is therefore killed, and his wife is given in marriage to Elegast. Elegast's reputation is also restored in the Charlemagne court. The names Elegast , Alegast , and Elbegast are variants of

550-439: Is also unique that a Dutch character Elegast is a hero, most other poems of the time concern Frankish people as the hero. Elegast is possibly symbolic of the Dutch people's pre-Christian myth of an ancient elf or folk hero. In the pre-Christian mythology the dwelling in the forest is a religious and sacred dwelling place. Historically the epic poem may be about a real insurrection against Charlemagne that occurred (circa 785?), as

605-413: Is referred to as Middle Dutch . During this period there was no standardization of grammar. Authors generally wrote in their own dialects. Very often it is possible to tell from the language whether a text comes from Limburg , Brabant , or Holland . There was a lot of variation in the spelling. Words were often written as they were pronounced: lant (land), hi vint (he finds). The sound determined

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660-530: Is that articles or prepositions were often joined onto the word they belonged to: tjaer (the year) and dlant (the land), as in the accompanying fragment from Karel ende Elegast . The text translates: “I will tell you a marvelous story, and a true one. Listen! One evening Charles was sleeping in Ingelheim on the Rhine. All the land you could see was his.” There were also regional differences. Thus

715-551: Is the character Alberich , whose name means "king of the elves". Alberich was a sorcerer in Merovingian epics of the 5th to 8th centuries. This poetry is unique in the reference to Charlemagne (the "Christian" King) being friends with a character who could be symbolic of an elf or dwarf figure of the forest, as well Charlemagne trying robbery on divine inspiration. In this friendship, the poem combines Frankish legends of Charlemagne with some Dutch-Germanic mythology . The poem

770-470: The Zuiderzee Works and Delta Works . There are two road bridges and three car ferries. The latter are free of charge for all traffic, as promised to the people living in the area when the Bergse Maas was dug. 51°43′N 4°56′E  /  51.717°N 4.933°E  / 51.717; 4.933 History of Dutch orthography This did not prove popular however and another attempt

825-701: The priest Petrus Weiland was asked to write a grammar book. A few years later Siegenbeek published his spelling in Verhandeling over de Nederduitsche spelling ter bevordering van de eenparigheid in dezelve (Treatise on Lower Dutch spelling to promote uniformity herein) (1804) and a Woordenboek voor de Nederduitsche spelling (Dictionary for the Dutch Spelling) (1805). The government of the Batavian Republic officially introduced Siegenbeek's spelling on 18 December 1804. Siegenbeek thought that

880-510: The Dutch Language Union the authority to determine the spelling of Dutch by ministerial decision. The law requires that this spelling be followed "at the governmental bodies, at educational institutions funded from the public purse, as well as at the exams for which legal requirements have been established". In other cases, it is recommended, but not mandatory to follow the official spelling. The Dutch spoken between 1150 and 1500

935-468: The Dutch-speaking areas in the south of the Netherlands, the Siegenbeek spelling was always unpopular. After Belgium declared independence in 1830, the spelling was denounced as “Hollandish” and “Protestant”. The spelling situation was quite chaotic with much discussion about whether to use a or ae , oo or oó , ee or eé , ei or ey , ui or uy , ambt or ampt , u or ue , and about

990-645: The Netherlands and Flanders, and on 19 September 1903, the Commissie voor Taal en Letteren bij de Maatschappij der Nederlandsche Letterkunde te Leiden (the Commission for Language and Literature in Leiden at the Society for Dutch Literature) held a meeting which twenty professors attended. Viljoen received support from the management for the simplification of written Dutch on 5 October 1903. On 28 December 1904,

1045-682: The Netherlands, the Spelling Act of 15 September 2005 was passed. Coming into force on 22 February 2006, the 2005 law replaced the 1947 Act on the Spelling of the Dutch Language as the legislation for the legal basis of official spelling. The Spelling Act gives the Committee of Ministers of the Dutch Language Union the authority to determine the spelling of Dutch by ministerial decision. The law requires that this spelling be followed "at

1100-621: The Scandinavian ballad. Karel ende Elegast was an original poem in Middle Dutch that scholars think was probably written at the end of the 12th century, otherwise in the 13th century and set in the region of Charlemagne's castle in Ingelheim . It is a Frankish romance of Charlemagne ("Karel") as an exemplary Christian king who was led on a strange quest to be a robber. Although the poem does not describe Elegast's background, he

1155-724: The South African states and colonies to simplify Dutch as a written language. This movement came from the Zuid-Afrikaansche Taalbond (South African Language Association), as well as from teachers and journalists in the Orange Free State and the South African Republic (both of which had Dutch as an official language). The Language Association was founded in 1890 to promote the knowledge and usage of "the people's language", which

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1210-517: The Spelling Decree of 19 June 1996 (which came into force on 1 August 1996); the decree of 31 October 1953 was repealed. In Belgium, it was adopted on 30 May 1996 and came into effect on 1 September 1996. In 1994 it was agreed that the vocabulary of het Groene Boekje should be revised every ten years without changing the actual rules of spelling . On 15 October 2005 the first of these revisions appeared. Only one rule concerning exceptions

1265-751: The Spelling Decree of 19 June 1996. In Flanders, the same spelling rules are currently applied by the Decree of the Flemish Government Establishing the Rules of the Official Spelling and Grammar of the Dutch language of 30 June 2006. Although government and educational establishments are required to conform, some newspapers and other publications in the Netherlands are refusing to use the new spelling and have released Het Witte Boekje (The White Booklet ) as an alternative to

1320-494: The Spelling of the Dutch Language of 14 February 1947 was passed. A Flemish-Dutch committee compiled a vocabulary which was published in 1954 in a green volume entitled “ Woordenlijst van de Nederlandse taal ” (Vocabulary of the Dutch language), which became known as “het Groene Boekje” (the Green Booklet ). The spelling rules of the green book was officially adopted by Decree of 31 October 1953. A "temporary" article of

1375-415: The acute accent being used on long vowels and the grave accent being used on short vowels, for example de énige échte instead of the previous de énige èchte . Previously the stress mark could be placed on single letters, on the first letter of digraphs composed of two different letters, or on the two double letters for long vowels. The new spelling was officially adopted in the Netherlands by

1430-416: The alternative “progressive” spellings were abolished (it was now actie ) and there were new rules about the n linking the compounds of words ( pannekoek (pancake) became pannenkoek and bessesap (currant juice) became bessensap ). The acute accent was made the only stress mark to be used on the vowel of stressed syllables, on the first two letters of vowels spelled with more than two letters, instead of

1485-405: The argument that said proposals would break down "the unity of the Dutch language" and would make it too "vulgar". In South Africa, however, there was no such opposition to Kollewijn's proposals. This was due to the fact that by the end of the 19th century, many Afrikaners viewed Dutch as a difficult language to write, and as a consequence, there was a movement among many Dutch-language promoters in

1540-492: The binational agreement specified that place names would be left unchanged until appropriate legislation was passed by the competent national authorities. This happened rather fast in Belgium, where Saventhem became Zaventem , Crainhem became Kraainem , Coxyde became Koksijde etc., but the corresponding law was never passed in the Netherlands, where among many others Coevorden (not Koevoorde ) en Hooge Zwaluwe (not Hoge Zwaluw ) subsist to this day. There

1595-870: The first edition of the Afrikaanse Woordelys en Spelreëls (the Afrikaans Wordlist and Spelling Rules), which set out the five principles which govern Afrikaans spelling as of 2019. The fourth principle is that the spelling "[should] deviate as little as possible from the Simplified Dutch Spelling". In 1925, the South African Parliament passed the Official Languages of the Union Act which declared that Afrikaans and Dutch were synonyms for

1650-617: The following event was noted in 1240 in the Chronica Albrici Monachi Trium Fontium : "By the Austracians a dangerous plot was hatched against Charlemagne, of which Hardericus was the instigator. At the discovery of the plot many were dismembered and many were banished. [ ... ] And, as is told in a song, in order to discover this plot, Charlemagne, urged by an angel, went out thieving at night." According to legend, Ingelheim (meaning "Angel's Home")

1705-579: The following manner: The Simplified Dutch Spelling was not without opposition. The Dutch Reformed Church opposed the new spelling as it broke with the tradition of the Dutch language, and proponents of Afrikaans felt that the simplified orthography was still too difficult to learn. In 1917, the Zuid-Afrikaanse Akademie voor Taal, Letteren en Kunst (the South African Academy for Language, Literature and Art) published

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1760-456: The forest at night. Elegast does not recognize the king, as Charlemagne is in disguise as a thief. When Charlemagne suggests they steal from the king's castle, Elegast proves his loyalty to Charlemagne by refusing to steal from the king. Instead, Elegast takes Charlemagne to burgle the castle of Charlemagne's brother-in-law, Eggeric van Eggermonde. Once they break into the castle, Elegast overhears Eggeric scheming to kill Charlemagne to his wife, who

1815-529: The governmental bodies, at educational institutions funded from the public purse, as well as at the exams for which legal requirements have been established". In other cases, it is recommended, but it is not mandatory to follow the official spelling. The Decree on the Spelling Regulations 2005 of 2006 contains the annexed spelling rules decided by the Committee of Ministers on 25 April 2005. This decree entered into force on 1 August 2006, replacing

1870-415: The latest edition of Het Groene Boekje . This "white spelling" allows more than one spelling in several cases, e.g. presence or absence of linking n s, hyphens and capitalisation. It has, in return, been accused of being even more inconsistent than Het Groene Boekje . In Flanders, the white spelling is not used by any large media. Elegast Elegast ( elf spirit ) is the hero and noble robber in

1925-607: The poem Karel ende Elegast , an early Middle Dutch epic poem that has been translated into English as Charlemagne and Elbegast . In the poem, he possibly represents the King of the Elves . He appears as a knight on a black horse, an outcast vassal of Charlemagne living in the forest. The original Dutch poem uses the name Elegast, while translated versions of the poem commonly use the name Elbegast in German and English, or Alegast in

1980-518: The poet Willem Bilderdijk fought against it, largely out of personal spite. He produced some of his own spellings which were popular in the 1830s and 1840s including the modern kachel (stove), plicht (instead of pligt /duty) and gooien (to throw). However, other spellings of his did not last: andwoord ( antwoord / answer), hair ( haar /hair/her), ontfangen ( ontvangen / to receive), thands ( thans / at present) and wareld ( wereld / world). In

2035-775: The river Rhine ) to form the Merwede , while the Bergse Maas continues west as the main distributary of the Maas. Part of the Merwede (the Nieuwe Merwede ) rejoins the Bergse Maas to form the Hollands Diep estuary. Historically, a natural branch of the Maas flowed from Heusden to the Amer and Hollands Diep estuary; this branch silted up and now forms a stream called Oude Maasje . The Bergse Maas, which takes its name from

2090-478: The same /eː/ ). This reflected the etymological distinction between "sharp-long" e (from Old Dutch long ē ) and "soft-long" e (from Old Dutch short e and i that were lengthened in open syllables). However, the etymological reasoning was hard to teach, as the distinction was not made by most Dutch speakers anymore. R.A. Kollewijn  [ nl ] produced an article in 1891 Onze lastige spelling. Een voorstel tot vereenvoudiging (Our difficult spelling:

2145-555: The same Germanic name : the Common Germanic *albi-gastiz , composed of the well attested elements *albi- " elf " and *gastiz "guest". There is one dwarf named Elbegast in Eddic texts. According to Low German legends, Elbegast was a dwarf who could steal eggs from underneath birds. In folklore and legends of Northern Europe, Elbegast was called the king of both the elves and dwarfs . Some scholars propose Elegast

2200-894: The same language, but de facto replaced Dutch with Afrikaans in Government usage. In 1916, a Dutch commission looked into the possibility of a compromise between De Vries and Te Winkel and the Kollewijn spelling. This gradually led to adaptations: on 1 September 1934, the minister for Education, Marchant, accepted most of Kollewijn's proposals. (These proposals were extended to the Dutch East Indies in 1 August 1935. ) The Netherlands and Belgium were starting to diverge once again. The Marchant spelling included: The endings '-isch' (as in logisch (logical)) and '-lijk' ( mogelijk (possible)) remained unchanged. Kollewijn's proposals '-ies' and '-lik' remain popular in some circles as

2255-427: The spelling of the forthcoming Dutch Dictionary). The spelling of De Vries and Te Winkel combined elements of the three current systems, providing a much needed solution to the chaos. By 21 November, the decision was accepted by a royal decree in Belgium. In 1866 De Vries and Te Winkel produced Woordenlijst voor de spelling der Nederlandsche taal (Vocabulary for the spelling of the Dutch language), which can be seen as

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2310-472: The spelling of verbs. In 1836, the Belgian government offered a reward for a proposal for a new spelling. In the end, the jury, headed by Jan Frans Willems , produced their own suggestion in 1839 which remained quite close to the Siegenbeek spelling in use in the Netherlands. They retained their own spelling of a few words such as kaes (cheese), ryden (to ride) and vuerig (fiery). The Willems spelling

2365-833: The spelling should reflect refined Dutch pronunciation, taking into account the uniformity, etymology , and analogy. From the Siegenbeek spelling reforms, one gets the modern Dutch ij (called lange ij ( long y ) as distinct from the usually identically pronounced ei, called korte ei (short ei )). The word for iron ijzer used to be written yzer . Other spellings from Siegenbeek include: berigt (modern Dutch: bericht / report), blaauw ( blauw / blue), Dingsdag ( dinsdag / Tuesday), gooijen ( gooien / to throw), magt ( macht / power), kagchel ( kachel / stove), koningrijk ( koninkrijk /kingdom), muzijk ( muziek / music) and zamen ( samen / together). Siegenbeek's spelling never achieved real popularity. In particular

2420-541: The spelling, irrespective of the basic word. This is no longer the case with modern Dutch, where land is still pronounced [lant] but spelled to conform with the plural landen , and hij vindt (he finds) (still [vint]) has both d of the infinitive ( vinden ) and the 3rd person singular ending t . From the very start of its written history, Dutch used the Latin alphabet . At first there were 23 letters: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, v, x, y, z. It

2475-407: The town of Geertruidenberg , was constructed in its basin to take over its functions, in 1904. The other main distributary of the Maas was at the same time dammed-up and renamed Afgedamde Maas ("Dammed-up Meuse"). The resulting separation of the rivers Rhine and Maas reduced the risk of flooding and is considered to be the greatest achievement in Dutch hydraulic engineering before the completion of

2530-664: The written Dutch language in the direction of Kollewijn's proposals. After the Second Boer War , the conference met again in Stellenbosch on 23 January 1903, and reaffirmed the simplification of Dutch orthography. The conference asked Willem Viljoen (a professor of language at Victoria College (the modern-day Stellenbosch University ) and a member of the Language Association) to prepare a report on simplification. Viljoen consulted linguists and experts from

2585-464: Was an old friend of Charlemagne that had fallen into disgrace, and his banishment to the forest and his name connotes he was elven . Elegast could put people to sleep magically, could open locks without keys, and has a magic herb that when put in his mouth allows him to talk to animals. He lived in the forest, thief to the rich people and kind to poor people. In summary, Charlemagne has a heavenly vision to go thieving in disguise, so meets with Elegast in

2640-739: Was decided by 47 votes to 36 votes would be the Dutch language, as opposed to Afrikaans . The members of the Language Association came to realize that Dutch would be in a much stronger position to compete with the English language in South Africa if its spelling were to be simplified, and so convened a joint conference of Afrikaners from the Cape Colony , Natal , the Orange Free State and the Transvaal to suggest simplification of

2695-537: Was given royal approval on 9 January 1844. The spelling used today both in the Netherlands and in Flanders (Dutch-speaking Belgium) is based on an orthography originally intended only for use in a dictionary. An ambitious project was proposed in 1851 at the Taal- en Letterkundig Congres (Linguistic and Literary Congress) in Brussels at which both the Netherlands and Flanders were represented. The project aimed to produce

2750-584: Was introduced to the South African Republic (Transvaal) in 1888, after Dutch was declared to be the sole official language of the country by a constitutional amendment. Teachers and linguists continued to object to certain features of the spelling. It was thought that too great an emphasis was being given to etymology . For instance, /eː/ was spelt differently in l e zen ("to read", single e in open syllable for /eː/ ) and in h ee ten ("to be called", double e in open syllable for

2805-407: Was made (the so-called Dandelion Rule): paardebloem (dandelion) and vliegezwam (fly agaric) became paardenbloem and vliegenzwam for consistency with other similar compounds, e.g. paardenstaart (horse-tail) and vliegenmepper (fly swatter). (Note that these 'n's are not normally pronounced.) Apart from this there were a few individual changes. Here are some of the most important ones: In

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2860-404: Was made in 1844. Still not entirely satisfactory, an ambitious project was proposed in 1851 to produce a large dictionary incorporating vocabulary of the past centuries. This led to a large degree of uniformity of spelling in the Netherlands and Belgium. Various other attempts at simplification followed, culminating in the Spelling Act of 15 September 2005. This gives the Committee of Ministers of

2915-472: Was not until later that the j, u, and w were added. A problem with the Latin alphabet was that it was not easy to make a distinction between long and short vowels ( a / aa ). Various solutions were found. At the beginning of the 13th century the word jaar (year) was spelt jar but other variants soon appeared: jaer and jair and later jaar or even yaer and iaer . Another feature of Middle Dutch

2970-546: Was of no help for spelling definition. In 1980, a treaty between Belgium and the Netherlands was made which led to the establishment of the Nederlandse Taalunie . Article 4(b) of the treaty gives the Nederlandse Taalunie the mandate to decide on matters concerning official spelling. In 1994, after much discussion, new spelling rules were decided on. In 1995, the new Groene Boekje was published;

3025-469: Was still dissatisfaction after 1954. Uncertainty arose about many words which had alternative spellings: one version was the preferred spelling (e.g. actie (action)), the other was the permissible or progressive spelling (e.g. aktie ). The Dutch generally used the former, the Belgians the latter. Another problem was the speed at which Dutch was developing new vocabulary for which the 1954 dictionary

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