What do you call a resident of Spa?

Answer

Dear Sam

Inhabitant names belonging to places in the Dutch language area are part of the vocabulary of Dutch, just as “horse”, “schitterend” and “because” are words that belong to the vocabulary of Dutch. We learn these words naturally as we learn our language as a mother tongue, that is from birth. Naturally, those names of residents associated with places close to home are more familiar to us than names of residents associated with places a little further away from home. West Flemish people are less familiar with the usual inhabitants names for Limburg places than with inhabitants names for West Flemish places. The further from home, the more difficult, simply because we only occasionally have to name those distant inhabitants in our language and because we rarely hear these inhabitants’ names in our own environment or rarely encounter them in a text.

It goes without saying that residents of a certain place that we hardly ever talk about in Dutch, are not present with a Dutch word in the Dutch language. We don’t often talk about inhabitants of Spa in Dutch. Hence we have to make do with “Spa residents”, just as we have to make do with “Chernobyl residents” or “Sydney residents”. That they speak of “un Spadois” in French does not matter for Dutch. In Dutch we say “a resident of Spa”. Only if you (perhaps a bit snobbishly) want to show that you know what they are saying in French, you can still speak of a “Spadois” in Dutch, but that presupposes that the speaker then knows that his interlocutors understand that, so know what they say to a resident of Spa in Wallonia.

There are Dutch names (ie words) for the places outside the Dutch language area that have always been known historically in Flanders and/or the Netherlands, so that people have spoken and written about them. Berlin, Paris, Milan, Liège, London, Moscow … And then there are also Dutch resident names: Berliner, Parisian, Milanese, Liège resident, Londoner, Muscovite …

Sincerely

Peter Debrabandere