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94-460: Several phonological changes occurred leading up to the Middle Dutch period. The consonants of Middle Dutch differed little from those of Old Dutch. The most prominent change is the loss of dental fricatives. In addition the sound [z] was phonemicised during this period, judging from loanwords that retain [s] to this day. For descriptions of the sounds and definitions of the terms, follow

188-507: A Brabantian dialect is still spoken. That made the standard language develop mainly from Brabantian influence. The early modern Dutch written language was initially influenced primarily by Brabantian, with strong influence from the Hollandic dialect after the 16th century. Since then, it has diverged from Standard Dutch and evolved its own way, but it is still similar enough for both to be mutually intelligible . Berlin scientists point to

282-418: A certain ruler also created a sphere of linguistic influence, with the language within the area becoming more homogeneous. Following, more or less, the political divisions of the time, several large dialect groups can be distinguished. However, the borders between them were not strong, and a dialect continuum existed between them, with spoken varieties near the edges of each dialect area showing more features of

376-493: A classic example of a dialect continuum, encompassing Norway, Denmark, Sweden and coastal parts of Finland. The Continental North Germanic standard languages ( Norwegian , Danish and Swedish ) are close enough and intelligible enough for some to consider them to be dialects of the same language, but the Insular ones ( Faroese and Icelandic ) are not immediately intelligible to the other North Germanic speakers. Historically,

470-469: A continuum until they have independent cultural status (autonomy), a process the German linguist Heinz Kloss called ausbau . Speakers of local varieties typically read and write a related standard variety, use it for official purposes, hear it on radio and television, and consider it the standard form of their speech, so that any standardizing changes in their speech are towards that variety. In such cases

564-457: A dialect continuum (excluding urban enclaves of Cantonese ). There are sharper boundaries resulting from more recent expansion between Hakka and Yue, and between Southwestern Mandarin and Yue, but even here there has been considerable convergence in contact areas. Cree is a group of closely related Algonquian languages that are distributed from Alberta to Labrador in Canada . They form

658-459: A dialect continuum, drawing lines called isoglosses between areas that differ with respect to some feature. A variety within a dialect continuum may be developed and codified as a standard language , and then serve as an authority for part of the continuum, e.g. within a particular political unit or geographical area. Since the early 20th century, the increasing dominance of nation-states and their standard languages has been steadily eliminating

752-447: A dialect continuum, isoglosses for different features are typically spread out, reflecting the gradual transition between varieties. A bundle of coinciding isoglosses indicates a stronger dialect boundary, as might occur at geographical obstacles or long-standing political boundaries. In other cases, intersecting isoglosses and more complex patterns are found. Standard varieties may be developed and codified at one or more locations in

846-522: A distinct dialect, but the Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian standard varieties of the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian language are all based on the same dialect, Shtokavian . Therefore, Croats , Serbs , Bosniaks and Montenegrins communicate fluently with each other in their respective standardized varieties . In Croatia , native speakers of Shtokavian may struggle to understand distinct Kajkavian or Chakavian dialects, as might

940-519: A labial or velar consonant. Some former class 1 weak verbs retained so-called Rückumlaut . These verbs had undergone umlaut in the present tense, but the umlaut-triggering vowel was syncopated in the past tense already in Old Dutch, preventing umlaut from taking hold there. Thus, senden had the first- and third-person singular past tense sande . These verbs tended to be reinterpreted as strong verbs in later Middle Dutch; sande itself gave rise to

1034-525: A language defined in this way may include local varieties that are mutually unintelligible, such as the German dialects . The choice of standard is often determined by a political boundary, which may cut across a dialect continuum. As a result, speakers on either side of the boundary may use almost identical varieties, but treat them as dependent on different standards, and thus part of different "languages". The various local dialects then tend to be leveled towards their respective standard varieties, disrupting

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1128-464: A large extent, but those from distant regions are more difficult to be understood. The difference between the written standard and the vernaculars is apparent also in the written language, and children have to be taught Modern Standard Arabic in school to be able to read it. All modern Aramaic languages descend from a dialect continuum that historically existed before the Islamicization of

1222-737: A less arguable example of a dialect continuum. For many decades since Italy's unification, the attitude of the French government towards the ethnolinguistic minorities was copied by the Italian government. The eastern Romance continuum is dominated by Romanian . Outside Romania and Moldova, across the other south-east European countries, various Romanian language groups are to be found: pockets of various Romanian and Aromanian subgroups survive throughout Bulgaria , Serbia , North Macedonia , Greece , Albania and Croatia (in Istria ). Conventionally, on

1316-492: A rapid and ever-increasing decline since the 1850s. Standard Dutch was based on the dialects of the principal Brabantic and Hollandic cities. The written form of Standard German originated in the East Central German used at the chancery of the kingdom of Saxony , while the spoken form emerged later, based on North German pronunciations of the written standard. Being based on widely separated dialects,

1410-554: A result of centuries of interaction and multilingualism. The boundaries between the northern Mandarin area and the central groups, Wu , Gan and Xiang , are particularly weak, due to the steady flow of northern features into these areas. Transitional varieties between the Wu, Gan and Mandarin groups have been variously classified, with some scholars assigning them to a separate Hui group. The boundaries between Gan, Hakka and Min are similarly indistinct. Pinghua and Yue form

1504-725: A very important phenomenon in the 20th century in the south of the Dutch language area: there has been an expansion in the use of Brabantian by the dominant presence of native Brabantian-speakers in the modern mass media like radio and television. About one quarter of the Dutch-speaking population lives in the Brabantian dialect zone. In the Netherlands, rural areas still retain some of their original Brabantian dialects. In large Dutch cities, such as Breda and Eindhoven , where

1598-433: A word could be found spelled differently in different occurrences within the same text. There was the matter of personal taste, and many writers thought it was more aesthetic to follow French or Latin practice, leading to sometimes rather unusual spellings. The spelling was generally phonetic, and words were written based on how they were spoken rather than based on underlying phonemes or morphology. Final-obstruent devoicing

1692-591: Is a dialect group of the Dutch language . It is named after the historical Duchy of Brabant , which corresponded mainly to the Dutch province of North Brabant , the Belgian provinces of Antwerp and Flemish Brabant as well as the Brussels-Capital Region ( Brusselian ; where its native speakers have become a minority) and the province of Walloon Brabant . Brabantian expands into small parts in

1786-832: Is a group of closely related Algonquian languages in Canada , which is distributed from British Columbia to Quebec , and the United States , distributed from Montana to Michigan , with diaspora communities in Kansas and Oklahoma . With Cree, the Ojibwe dialect continuum forms its own continuum, but the Oji-Cree language of this continuum joins the Cree–Montagnais–Naskapi dialect continuum through Swampy Cree . The Ojibwe continuum has 70,606 speakers. Roughly from northwest to southeast, it has these dialects: Unlike

1880-648: Is a popular myth that Brabantian was a dominant influence during the standardisation of Dutch from the 16th century. She says that Standard Dutch is a standardised Hollandic dialect. However, researchers of variance linguistics at the Ghent University and Dutch linguists in Berlin recognise the distinctive influence of Brabantian on the first Dutch standardisation in the 16th century. The first major formation of Standard Dutch also took place in Antwerp , where

1974-520: Is closely related to Italian; in Italy, Ligurian , Piedmontese , Lombard , Emilian , Romagnol , Italian Gallo-Picene, Venetian , Friulian , Ladin ; and in Switzerland, Lombard and Romansh . This continuum is sometimes presented as another example, but the major languages in the group (i.e. Portuguese, Spanish, French and Italian) have had separate standards for longer than the languages in

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2068-1053: Is identical or near-identical. The Germanic dialects spoken on the island of Great Britain comprise areal varieties of English in England and of Scots in Scotland. Those of large areas north and south of the border are often mutually intelligible. In contrast, the Orcadian dialect of Scots is very different from the dialects of English in southern England —but they are linked by a chain of intermediate varieties. The western continuum of Romance languages comprises, from West to East: in Portugal, Portuguese ; in Spain, Galician , Leonese or Asturian , Castilian or Spanish , Aragonese and Catalan or Valencian ; in France, Occitan , Franco-Provençal , standard French and Corsican which

2162-461: Is now more difficult to recognize because many of the intervening languages have declined or become extinct. The Goidelic languages consist of Irish , Scottish Gaelic and Manx . Prior to the 19th and 20th centuries, the continuum existed throughout Ireland, the Isle of Man and Scotland. Many intermediate dialects have become extinct or have died out leaving major gaps between languages such as in

2256-412: Is perhaps most evident today in Italy, where, especially in rural and small-town contexts, local Romance is still often employed at home and work, and geolinguistic distinctions are such that while native speakers from any two nearby towns can understand each other with ease, they can also spot from linguistic features that the other is from elsewhere. In recent centuries, the intermediate dialects between

2350-506: Is unclear. The following can be said: The vowels /eɛ̯/ , /øœ̯/ and /oɔ̯/ , termed "sharp-long" and denoted with a circumflex ê ô , developed from Old Dutch long vowels. The opening diphthong pronunciation was probably widespread, and perhaps once universal, as it is nowadays still found in both West Flemish and in Limburgish, at opposite ends of the Middle Dutch language area. In the general area in between, including standard Dutch,

2444-602: The Balkans in the west with Balkan Turkish , includes Turkish in Turkey and Azerbaijani language in Azerbaijan , extends into Iran with Azeri and Khalaj , into Iraq with Turkmen , across Central Asia to include Turkmenistan , Uzbekistan , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , to southern Regions of Tajikistan and into Afghanistan . In the south, the continuum starts in northern Afghanistan, northward to Chuvashia . In

2538-520: The Dutch , Frisian , Low Saxon and High German dialects formed a canonical dialect continuum, which has been gradually falling apart since the Late Middle Ages due to the pressures of modern education, standard languages, migration and weakening knowledge of the dialects. The transition from German dialects to Dutch variants followed two basic routes: Though the internal dialect continua of both Dutch and German remain largely intact,

2632-556: The East Slavic and West Slavic languages . East Slavic includes Russian , Belarusian , Rusyn and Ukrainian ; West Slavic languages of Czech , Polish , Slovak , Silesian , Kashubian , and Upper and Lower Sorbian . All South Slavic languages form a dialect continuum. It comprises, from West to East, Slovenia , Croatia , Bosnia and Herzegovina , Montenegro , Serbia , North Macedonia , and Bulgaria . Standard Slovene , Macedonian , and Bulgarian are each based on

2726-580: The Industrial Revolution drew many people from other parts of the country, the dialect has been diluted by contact with Standard Dutch. Because people tended to migrate towards the cities from the surrounding rural areas, Brabantian influence is still seen in some terms and in pronunciation (the "Brabantian accent" of Dutch), but the original Brabantian city dialects have largely disappeared there. However, some large cities, such as Tilburg and 's-Hertogenbosch , still have many people speaking

2820-578: The Mass in a church in Jette . Moreover, the use of Dutch is reviving because of young Dutch-speaking families moving back from the suburbs to the old city of Brussels , and an increasing number of non-Dutch-speaking families putting their children in Flemish schools. The comic artist Hergé based fictional languages like Syldavian in his childhood Marols . Brabantian is rather close to and contributed to

2914-520: The Romance languages , which are similarly descended from a language spread by imperial expansion over substrate languages 2000 years ago. Unlike Europe, however, Chinese political unity was restored in the late 6th century and has persisted (with interludes of division) until the present day. There are no equivalents of the local standard literary languages that developed in the numerous independent states of Europe. Chinese dialectologists have divided

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3008-541: The Uralic languages . The Sami languages , sometimes mistaken for a single language, are a dialect continuum, albeit with some disconnections like between North , Skolt and Inari Sami . The Baltic-Finnic languages spoken around the Gulf of Finland form a dialect continuum. Thus, although Finnish and Estonian are considered as separate languages, there is no definite linguistic border or isogloss that separates them. This

3102-588: The modern vernacular dialects (or languages) branched from ancient Arabic dialects, from North Western Africa through Egypt , Sudan , and the Fertile Crescent to the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq . The dialects use different analogues from the Arabic language inventory and have been influenced by different substrate and superstrate languages. Adjacent dialects are mutually understandable to

3196-593: The 13th century. Its characteristics are: Hollandic was spoken in the County of Holland . It was less influential during most of the Middle Ages but became more so in the 16th century during the "Hollandic expansion", during which the Eighty Years' War took place in the south. It shows the following properties: Limburgish was spoken by the people in the provinces of modern Dutch and Belgian Limburg . It

3290-655: The Continental West Germanic group, and so are not commonly classified as dialects of a common language. Focusing instead on the local Romance lects that pre-existed the establishment of national or regional standard languages, all evidence and principles point to Romania continua as having been, and to varying extents in some areas still being, what Charles Hockett called an L-complex, i.e. an unbroken chain of local differentiation such that, in principle and with appropriate caveats, intelligibility (due to sharing of features) attenuates with distance. This

3384-480: The Cree-Montagnais-Naskapi dialect continuum, with around 117,410 speakers. The languages can be roughly classified into nine groups, from west to east: Various Cree languages are used as languages of instruction and taught as subjects: Plains Cree, Eastern Cree, Montagnais, etc. Mutual intelligibility between some dialects can be low. There is no accepted standard dialect. Ojibwa (Chippewa)

3478-543: The Cree–Montagnais–Naskapi dialect continuum, with distinct n/y/l/r/ð dialect characteristics and noticeable west–east k/č(ch) axis, the Ojibwe continuum is marked with vowel syncope along the west–east axis and ∅/n along the north–south axis. Brabantian dialect Brabantian or Brabantish , also Brabantic or Brabantine ( Dutch : Brabants , Standard Dutch pronunciation: [ˈbraːbɑnts] , Brabantian pronunciation: [ˈbrɑːbans] ),

3572-480: The Dutch and German standards do not show a high degree of mutual intelligibility when spoken and only partially so when written. One study concluded that, when concerning written language, Dutch speakers could translate 50.2% of the provided German words correctly, while the German subjects were able to translate 41.9% of the Dutch equivalents correctly. In terms of orthography, 22% of the vocabulary of Dutch and German

3666-456: The Levant and Mesopotamia. Northeastern Neo-Aramaic , including distinct varieties spoken by both Jews and Christians, is a dialect continuum although greatly disrupted by population displacement during the twentieth century. The Persian language in its various varieties ( Tajiki and Dari ), is representative of a dialect continuum. The divergence of Tajik was accelerated by the shift from

3760-408: The Middle Dutch period. A new second person plural pronoun was created by contraction of gij/jij and lui ('people') forming gullie/jullie (literally, 'you people'). Note: There are several other forms. Definite Article ( die , dat = the) Middle Dutch mostly retained the Old Dutch verb system. Like all Germanic languages, it distinguished strong , weak and preterite-present verbs as

3854-624: The Old Dutch long ā , and "soft-long" ā being the result of lengthening. These two vowels were distinguished only in Limburgish and Low Rhenish at the eastern end, and in western Flemish and coastal Hollandic on the western end. The relative backness of the two vowels was opposite in the two areas that distinguished them. The closing diphthong /ɛi̯/ remained from the corresponding Old Dutch diphthong. It occurred primarily in umlauting environments, with /eɛ̯/ appearing otherwise. Some dialects, particularly further west, had /eɛ̯/ in all environments (thus cleene next to cleine ). Limburgish preserved

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3948-643: The Perso-Arabic alphabet to a Cyrillic one under the Soviets. Western dialects of Persian show greater influence from Arabic and Oghuz Turkic languages, but Dari and Tajik tend to preserve many classical features in grammar and vocabulary. Also the Tat language , a dialect of Persian, is spoken in Azerbaijan. Turkic languages are best described as a dialect continuum. Geographically this continuum starts at

4042-758: The Turkic languages are very close to one another, and they share basic features such as SOV word order, vowel harmony and agglutination . Many of the Indo-Aryan languages of the Indian subcontinent form a dialect continuum. What is called " Hindi " in India is frequently Standard Hindi , the Sanskritized register of the colloquial Hindustani spoken in the Delhi area, the other register being Urdu . However,

4136-503: The area where some form of Brabantian functions as the predominant colloquial language; this compares with a total of 22 million Dutch-speakers across the Netherlands and Flanders. Compared to the other dialects and sublanguages of Dutch, Brabantian has historically had a major influence on the development of Dutch. During the Middle Ages , manuscripts from the 10th to 15th centuries show that Limburgish and then West Flemish were

4230-573: The basis of extralinguistic features (such as writing systems or the former western frontier of the Soviet Union), the North Slavic continuum is split into East and West Slavic continua. From the perspective of linguistic features alone, only two Slavic (dialect) continua can be distinguished, namely North and South, separated from each other by a band of non-Slavic languages: Romanian, Hungarian and German. The North Slavic continuum covers

4324-486: The complete loss of its grammatical case systems and adoption of features more commonly found among analytic languages . The barrier between East South Slavic and West South Slavic is historical and natural, caused primarily by a one-time geographical distance between speakers. The two varieties started diverging early on ( c.  11th century CE ) and evolved separately ever since without major mutual influence, as evidenced by distinguishable Old Slavonic , while

4418-714: The continent's largest language branches. The Romance area spanned much of the territory of the Roman Empire but was split into western and eastern portions by the Slav Migrations into the Balkans in the 7th and 8th centuries. The Slavic area was in turn split by the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin in the 9th and 10th centuries. The Norwegian , Danish and Swedish dialects comprise

4512-571: The continuum which historically connected the Dutch, Frisian and German languages has largely disintegrated. Fragmentary areas of the Dutch-German border in which language change is more gradual than in other sections or a higher degree of mutual intelligibility is present still exist, such as the Aachen - Kerkrade area, but the historical chain in which dialects were only divided by minor isoglosses and negligible differences in vocabulary has seen

4606-413: The dative singular, a remnant of the late Old Dutch inflection. In some rare occasions, the genitive singular was also endingless. Some nouns ended in -e in the singular also; these were primarily former ja-stems, which were masculine or neuter. A few were former i-stems with short stems. Nouns of this type tended to be drawn into the weak inflection by analogy. The following table shows the inflection of

4700-442: The development of Standard Dutch . A characteristic phrase, houdoe ("take care"), derives from houd u goed (literally, "keep yourself all right"), but colloquial Dutch and Hollandic use doei ("bye"). In South Brabantian ( Belgium ), "Ale, salu(kes) e!", based on loanwords from French "Allez!" and "Salut!", is a common parting phrase . Brabantian dialects have a characteristic historic tendency toward accusativism ,

4794-499: The diphthong wherever it was preserved in High German. The closing diphthong /ɔu̯/ has two different origins. In the vast majority of the Middle Dutch area, it developed through l-vocalization from older /ol/ and /al/ followed by a dental consonant. In the eastern area, Limburg in particular, it was a remnant of the older diphthong as in High German, which had developed into /oɔ̯/ elsewhere. L-vocalization occurred only in

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4888-430: The distinction was mostly lost. Class 3, which retained a clear distinction that did not rely on vowel length, was levelled in favour of the o of the plural. In classes with a lengthened vowel in the present, the singular imperative often appears with a short vowel instead, e.g. les , drach . An alternative form, with final -e by analogy with the weak verbs, also occurs. The eastern dialects occasionally show i in

4982-693: The east it extends to the Republic of Tuva , the Xinjiang autonomous region in Western China with the Uyghur language and into Mongolia with Khoton . The entire territory is inhabited by Turkic speaking peoples. There are three varieties of Turkic geographically outside the continuum: Chuvash , Yakut and Dolgan . They have been geographically separated from the other Turkic languages for an extensive period of time, and Chuvash language stands out as

5076-436: The exact phonetics are uncertain, and seemed to have differed by dialect. The overall system is clear, however, as almost all the vowels remain distinct in modern Limburgish: /iː/ , /iə̯/ , /eɛ̯/ , /eː/ and /aː/ appear in modern Limburgish as /iː/ , /eː/ , /iə̯/ , /æː/ and /aː/ respectively. The vowels /ie̯/ , /yø̯/ and /uo̯/ developed from Old Dutch opening diphthongs, but their exact character in Middle Dutch

5170-454: The former ja-stems, had an -e even in the strong and copular form, e.g. die vrouwe is clein e "the lady is small". Middle Dutch pronouns differed little from their modern counterparts. The main differences were in the second person with the development of a T-V distinction . The second-person plural pronoun ghi slowly gained use as a respectful second-person singular form. The original singular pronoun du gradually fell out of use during

5264-568: The islands of Rathlin , Arran or Kintyre and also in the Irish counties of Antrim , Londonderry and Down . The current Goidelic speaking areas of Ireland are also separated by extinct dialects but remain mutually intelligible. Arabic is a standard case of diglossia . The standard written language, Modern Standard Arabic , is based on the Classical Arabic of the Qur'an , while

5358-524: The language. The general practice was to write long vowels with a single letter in an open syllable and with two letters in a closed syllable. Which two letters were used varied among texts. Some texts, especially those in the east, do not do so and write long vowels with a single letter in all cases (as is the predominant rule in modern German). Middle Dutch nouns inflected for number as well as case . The weakening of unstressed syllables merged many different Old Dutch classes of nominal declension. The result

5452-521: The links on the headings. Notes: Most notable in the Middle Dutch vowel system, when compared to Old Dutch, is the appearance of phonemic rounded front vowels, and the merger of all unstressed short vowels. Long vowels and diphthongs cannot be clearly distinguished in Middle Dutch, as many long vowels had or developed a diphthongal quality, while existing diphthongs could also develop into monophthongs. Sometimes, this occurred only in restricted dialects, other developments were widespread. Many details of

5546-476: The local varieties into a number of dialect groups, largely based on phonological developments in comparison with Middle Chinese . Most of these groups are found in the rugged terrain of the southeast, reflecting the greater variation in this area, particularly in Fujian . Each of these groups contains numerous mutually unintelligible varieties. Moreover, in many cases the transitions between groups are smooth, as

5640-465: The local variety is said to be dependent on, or heteronomous with respect to, the standard variety. A standard variety together with its dependent varieties is commonly considered a "language", with the dependent varieties called "dialects" of the language, even if the standard is mutually intelligible with another standard from the same continuum. The Scandinavian languages , Danish , Norwegian and Swedish , are often cited as examples. Conversely,

5734-517: The major Romance languages have been moving toward extinction , as their speakers have switched to varieties closer to the more prestigious national standards. That has been most notable in France, owing to the French government's refusal to recognise minority languages , but it has occurred to some extent in all Western Romance speaking countries. Language change has also threatened the survival of stateless languages with existing literary standards, such as Occitan. The Romance languages of Italy are

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5828-481: The masculine noun dach "day", feminine dâet "deed" and neuter brôot "bread". Weak nouns were characterised by the ending -en throughout the plural. The singular ended in -e . The following table shows the inflection of the masculine noun bōge "bow, arc". Middle Dutch adjectives inflected according to the gender, case and number of the noun they modified. The Germanic distinction between strong and weak, or indefinite and definite inflection,

5922-432: The modern zond , mirroring strong class 3. Dialect continuum A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible , but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varieties may not be. This is a typical occurrence with widely spread languages and language families around

6016-469: The modern period in Limburgish, and the distinction between /ol/ and /al/ was preserved, being reflected as ów and aa respectively. Phonological changes that occurred during Middle Dutch: Middle Dutch was not a single homogeneous language. The language differed by area, with different areas having a different pronunciation and often using different vocabulary. The dialect areas were affected by political boundaries. The sphere of political influence of

6110-630: The most divergent from other Turkic languages. There are also Gagauz speakers in Moldavia and Urum speakers in Georgia . The Turkic continuum makes internal genetic classification of the languages problematic. Chuvash , Khalaj and Yakut are generally classified as significantly distinct, but the remaining Turkic languages are quite similar, with a high degree of mutual intelligibility between not only geographically adjacent varieties but also among some varieties some distance apart. Structurally,

6204-559: The national standard of Pakistan , while Hindus regard the same speech as Hindi , an official standard of India . Even so, the Eighth Schedule to the Indian Constitution contains a list of 22 scheduled languages and Urdu is among them. During the time of the former Socialist Republic of Macedonia , a standard was developed from local varieties of Eastern South Slavic , within a continuum with Torlakian to

6298-470: The neighbouring areas. Middle Dutch has four major dialects groups: Flemish, Brabantic and Hollandic are known as West Franconian, while Limburgic is known as East Franconian (not to be confused with the High German dialect East Franconian ). In a finer classification there are: Brabantian was spoken primarily in the Duchy of Brabant . It was an influential dialect during most of the Middle Ages, during

6392-432: The nonstandard dialects that comprise dialect continua, making the boundaries ever more abrupt and well-defined. Dialectologists record variation across a dialect continuum using maps of various features collected in a linguistic atlas , beginning with an atlas of German dialects by Georg Wenker (from 1888), based on a postal survey of schoolmasters. The influential Atlas linguistique de la France (1902–10) pioneered

6486-544: The north and Bulgarian to the east. The standard was based on varieties that were most different from standard Bulgarian. Now known as Macedonian , it is the national standard of North Macedonia , but viewed by Bulgarians as a dialect of Bulgarian. Europe provides several examples of dialect continua, the largest of which involve the Germanic , Romance and Slavic branches of the Indo-European language family ,

6580-503: The original Brabantian dialect. In Antwerp , the local dialect, known as "Antwerps" in Dutch, is Brabantian; however, Het Nieuwsblad wrote in 2020 that "few people can still master it", with its city folk now speaking Tussentaal and Standard Dutch instead. In Brussels , French largely replaced Dutch in the mid-20th century , but there are many cultural activities that use the Brussels dialect (sometimes called Marols ), such as

6674-428: The past participle. In classes 6 and 7, there was no distinction between the two different vowels of the past tense. In classes 4 and 5, the difference was primarily one of length, since ā and â were not distinguished in most dialects. The difference between ê and ē , and between ô and ō , found in classes 1 and 2, was a bit more robust, but also eventually waned in the development to modern Dutch. Consequently,

6768-476: The predominant literary languages, but there is no evidence of literary manuscripts farther north. In the second half of the 14th century, emphasis in society shifted to Brabant and so the Brabantian dialect became dominant. A migration to the north was occurring; the West Flemish dialect influenced the coastal area of the province of South Holland ('s-Gravenhage and Leiden), and migrants from Brabant came to

6862-427: The previous dialect continuum. Examples include the boundaries between Dutch and German , between Czech , Slovak and Polish , and between Belarusian and Ukrainian . The choice may be a matter of national, regional or religious identity, and may be controversial. Examples of controversies are regions such as the disputed territory of Kashmir , in which local Muslims usually regard their language as Urdu ,

6956-638: The provinces of North Holland and Utrecht. In the 16th century, when the Low Countries were in turmoil, another migration occurred from the Spanish Netherlands (roughly what is now Belgium) to the United Provinces of the Netherlands . That made the cultural elite move from the oppressive Spanish and Roman Catholic region to the more liberal (and Protestant) north. Dutch linguistics historian Nicoline van der Sijs says that it

7050-411: The second- and third-person singular present indicative forms, instead of e . This is a remnant of older i-mutation in these forms. Umlaut is also sometimes found in the past subjunctive in the east. Middle Dutch retained weak verbs as the only productive class of verbs. While Old Dutch still had two different classes of weak verbs (and remnants of a third), this distinction was lost in Middle Dutch with

7144-483: The so-called "Brabantian expansion" in which the influence of Brabant was extended outwards into other areas. Compared to the other dialects, Brabantian was a kind of "middle ground" between the coastal areas on one hand, and the Rhineland and Limburg on the other. Brabantian Middle Dutch has the following characteristics compared to other dialects: Flemish, consisting today of West and East Flemish and Zeelandic ,

7238-680: The speakers of the two with each other. Likewise in Serbia , the Torlakian dialect differs significantly from Standard Serbian. Serbian is a Western South Slavic standard, but Torlakian is largely transitional with the Eastern South Slavic languages (Bulgarian and Macedonian). Collectively, the Torlakian dialects with Macedonian and Bulgarian share many grammatical features that set them apart from all other Slavic languages, such as

7332-533: The subjunctive became distinguished from the indicative only in the singular but was identical to it in the plural, and also in the past tense of weak verbs. That led to a gradual decline in the use of the subjunctive, and it has been all but lost entirely in modern Dutch. The seven classes of strong verb common to the Germanic languages were retained. The four principal parts were the present tense, first- and third-person singular past tense, remaining past tense, and

7426-516: The term Hindi is also used for the different dialects from Bihar to Rajasthan and, more widely, some of the Eastern and Northern dialects are sometimes grouped under Hindi. The Indo-Aryan Prakrits also gave rise to languages like Gujarati , Assamese , Maithili , Bengali , Odia , Nepali , Marathi , Konkani and Punjabi . Chinese consists of hundreds of mutually unintelligible local varieties . The differences are similar to those within

7520-406: The three main inflectional classes. Verbs were inflected in present and past tense, and in three moods: indicative, subjunctive and imperative. The weakening of unstressed vowels affected the distinction between the indicative and subjunctive moods, which had largely been determined by the vowel of the inflectional suffix in Old Dutch. In Middle Dutch, with all unstressed vowels merging into one,

7614-435: The underlying phonemic value. However, by and large, spelling was phonetic, which is logical as people usually read texts out loud. Modern dictionaries tend to represent words in a normalised spelling to form a compromise between the variable spellings on one hand and to represent the sounds of the language consistently. Thus, normalised spellings attempt to be a general or "average" spelling but still being accurate and true to

7708-401: The use of a trained fieldworker. These atlases typically consist of display maps , each showing local forms of a particular item at the survey locations. Secondary studies may include interpretive maps , showing the areal distribution of various variants. A common tool in these maps is an isogloss , a line separating areas where different variants of a particular feature predominate. In

7802-445: The use of the accusative case instead of the nominative case . While the cases themselves have fallen out of use in modern language, the accusative form survives in Brabantian, rather than the nominative case of the more northern dialects ( nominativism ). As the accusative case had different forms for masculine and feminine nouns, both genders have thus remained separate in Brabantian. The first attempts at standardising Dutch were in

7896-608: The vowels merged with the "soft-long" vowels during the early modern Dutch period. The vowels /eː/ , /œː/ and /oː/ , termed "soft-long" and denoted with a macron ē ō , developed through the lengthening of Old Dutch short vowels in open syllables, but also frequently before /r/ . They were simple monophthongs in all Middle Dutch dialects, with the exception of western Flanders where /eː/ later developed into /ei̯/ . They might have been close-mid but also perhaps open-mid [ɛː] , [œː] and [ɔː] , as in modern Limburgish. There were two open vowels, with "sharp-long" â developed from

7990-465: The weakening of unstressed syllables. The past tense was formed with a suffix -ed- , which generally lost its e through syncope and thus came to be directly attached to the preceding stem. This triggered voicing assimilation, so that t appeared whenever the preceding stem ended in a voiceless consonant. This phenomenon remains in modern Dutch. Unsyncopated forms, which retain the fuller suffix -ed- , are sometimes found, especially with stems ending in

8084-632: The west of Limburg , and its strong influence on the Flemish dialects in East Flanders weakens toward the west. In a small area in the northwest of North Brabant ( Willemstad ), Hollandic is spoken. Conventionally, the Kleverlandish dialects are distinguished from Brabantian, but for no reason other than geography. Over the relatively-large area in which it is spoken, Brabantian can be roughly divided into three subdialects, all of which differ in some aspects: Over 5 million people live in

8178-495: The western dialect of common Old Slavic was still spoken across the modern Serbo-Croatian area in the 12th and early 13th centuries. An intermediate dialect linking western and eastern variations inevitably came into existence over time – Torlakian – spoken across a wide radius on which the tripoint of Bulgaria , North Macedonia and Serbia is relatively pivotal. The other major language family in Europe besides Indo-European are

8272-801: The world, when these languages did not spread recently. Some prominent examples include the Indo-Aryan languages across large parts of India , varieties of Arabic across north Africa and southwest Asia, the Turkic languages , the varieties of Chinese , and parts of the Romance , Germanic and Slavic families in Europe. Terms used in older literature include dialect area ( Leonard Bloomfield ) and L-complex ( Charles F. Hockett ). Dialect continua typically occur in long-settled agrarian populations, as innovations spread from their various points of origin as waves . In this situation, hierarchical classifications of varieties are impractical. Instead, dialectologists map variation of various language features across

8366-585: Was a general distinction between strong and weak nouns. Eventually even these started to become confused, with the strong and weak endings slowly beginning to merge into a single declension class by the beginning of the modern Dutch period. The strong nouns generally originated from the Old Dutch a-stem, i-stem and u-stem inflections. They mostly had a nominative singular with no ending, and a nominative plural in -e or, for some neuter nouns, with no ending. Most strong nouns were masculine or neuter. Feminines in this class were former i-stems, and could lack an ending in

8460-399: Was fairly minimal in Middle Dutch, appearing only in the masculine and neuter nominative singular. These forms received an -e ending when a definite word (demonstrative, article) preceded, and had no ending otherwise. Adjectives were uninflected when connected through a copula. Thus, even for feminine nouns, no ending appeared: die vrouwe is goet "the lady is good". Some adjectives, namely

8554-471: Was not clearly tied to one political area, instead being divided among various areas, including the Duchy of Limburg (which was south of modern Limburg). It was also the most divergent of the dialects. Kleverlandish ("Kleverlands") was spoken around the area of the Duchy of Cleves , around the Lower Rhine . It represented a transitional dialect between Limburgish and Middle Low German . Middle Dutch

8648-527: Was reflected in the spelling, and clitic pronouns and articles were frequently joined to the preceding or following word. Scribes wrote in their own dialect, and their spelling reflected the pronunciation of that particular scribe or of some prestige dialect by which the scribe was influenced. The modern Dutch word maagd (" maiden ") for example was sometimes written as maghet or maegt , but also meget , magt , maget , magd , and mecht . Some spellings, such as magd , reflect an early tendency to write

8742-489: Was spoken in the County of Flanders , northern parts of the County of Artois and areas around the towns of Calais and Boulogne-sur-Mer . Though due to their intermediary position between West Flemish and Brabantian , the East Flemish dialects have also been grouped with the latter. Flemish had been influential during the earlier Middle Ages (the "Flemish expansion") but lost prestige to the neighbouring Brabantian in

8836-515: Was written in the Latin alphabet , which was not designed for writing Middle Dutch so different scribes used different methods of representing the sounds of their language in writing. The traditions of neighbouring scribes and their languages led to a multitude of ways to write Middle Dutch. Consequently, spelling was not standardised but was highly variable and could differ by both time and place as various "trends" in spelling waxed and waned. Furthermore,

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