But the Dutch hardly adjust their Dutch when they converse with the Flemish. This is according to new research.

Professor Marc Swerts – who comes from Flanders himself – had already noticed it regularly: when Flemish and Dutch people start talking to each other, Flemish people are inclined to adjust their Dutch, while the Dutch usually continue to chatter apparently unmoved. The anecdotal evidence made the professor curious. Do Flemish people really systematically adapt their Dutch when they speak with Dutch people? And if so, why exactly? He decided – together with a few students and an Antwerp colleague – to find out.

Naval battle between Flemish and Dutch

This resulted in an experiment specially designed for the occasion, in which Flemish and Dutch students played a naval battle-like game via a skype connection. The students could not see each other, but they could hear each other. In the game, the test subjects had to use icons that stood for objects that are often referred to by a different word in the Netherlands than in Belgium. For example, there were icons of a couch (often called a sofa in Flanders), a microwave (in Flanders: microwave oven) and a crate of beer (in Flanders: bak bier). There were also icons of objects that are referred to by the same word in both language varieties, but where that name is pronounced slightly differently. Such as tram (which the Flemish pronounce in French and the Dutch pronounce it in English) and bikini (where the Flemish and Dutch place the emphasis slightly differently).

Before the game, it was recorded how the participants named the icons. It was then checked whether this changed during the game – when the Flemish and Dutch also spoke about the icons. The study showed that Flemish people systematically adapted both their word use and pronunciation to the Dutch more than vice versa. It did not really surprise Swerts – partly due to the anecdotal evidence that formed the impetus for the study, he tells. Scientias.nl. “But I was surprised that the trend was so clear.”

Language insecurity

It naturally raises the question why Flemish people adjust their Dutch in conversation with the Dutch, while their northern neighbors do not. On the one hand, this has to do with the fact that Flemish people often feel insecure about the use of their standard language: Belgian Dutch, says Swerts. “In Flanders for years – culminating in the 1960s and 1970s – there was a tendency to propagate the standard language through all kinds of channels. For a long time, the language recommendations had a very high right/wrong level (“don’t say X, say Y”). In those heydays, in particular, those language advice was given through all sorts of channels at the same time – you couldn’t avoid it: radio and TV programmes, special language sections in newspapers, the magazine “Bouw” of the ABN cores (intended for students), all kinds of language guides in pocket form and of course also through the Dutch lessons at school. Because of this fairly rigid attitude – in combination with the fact that even today the standard language for many Flemish people is still a variety that they only hear on the radio, TV and with a number of teachers – many Flemish people feel insecure about their own language use, especially when it comes to the default language.”

dialects

What also plays a role is that Flanders has a great diversity of dialects and regional languages. “Because the process of dialect loss started later in Flanders than in the Netherlands, there is more regional variation in Flanders than in the Netherlands,” says Swerts. “So the Flemish are – on average – more used to dealing with regional variation than the Dutch.” This means that they are also more accustomed – through some adjustment on their part – to ensure that communication succeeds despite the regional variation. “In any case, it is known that people who use multiple language variants are also often more flexible language users, who adapt more quickly,” says Swerts.

The fact that the Dutch do not start to speak more ‘Flemish’ in conversation with Flemish people does not so much tell us more about the Dutch, but perhaps reveals more about the position of the Dutch language in our country. “In the Netherlands, Dutch has been able to develop into a fully-fledged standard language for much longer than in Flanders, which could be used in education and politics, for example, something that was not possible in Flanders for a long time.”

Conversation Adjustment

The research by Swerts and colleagues provides a unique insight into the adaptive behavior that people display when they communicate with each other. Models that describe this behavior more or less assumed that interlocutors added approximately the same amount of water to the wine. But that turns out not to be the case. “This study fits into a tradition of research looking at the extent to which people adapt to each other over the course of a conversation. We know that people are often ‘lazy’ language users who adopt syntactic structures or words from another person, which generally improves communication. If you don’t have to come up with words or structures yourself, but can copy them from the other person who used those words or structures in a previous turn, it makes the interaction more efficient. Our research therefore shows that this adjustment does not always take place symmetrically, so that it is not the case that interlocutors adapt to each other to the same extent. Our research therefore nuances previous models, in particular by showing that adaptation does not necessarily happen symmetrically, but that higher-order factors (such as the question of which language variant someone speaks naturally) can interfere.”

In addition to new insights, the study also raises plenty of new questions. “We now know that the Flemish adapt to the Dutch,” says Swerts. “But how consciously do they do that? And do they all do it wholeheartedly?” Enough food for further research, then. “Now that we know what we know, it also becomes clear what we don’t know yet.”