Bildts is not a dialect of Frisian or Dutch, but an independent language. This is what three linguists from the Fryske Akademy advocate. It is a mixed language with a predominantly Frisian grammar and a Dutch vocabulary. In addition, the inhabitants of the Bildt do not feel like Frisians, but Bildtkers.
Languages usually change gradually, from one ancestor or precursor. For example, Frisian and Dutch separated themselves from the West Germanic language soup as separate languages in the first millennium AD. This was a process that took several centuries. Both Frisian and Dutch therefore have only one ancestor:West Germanic. But sometimes a new language is created within a few generations by mixing two languages. Such a language, which arises quite suddenly, then has two ancestors at the same time.
Exotic languages
This process of mixed language formation is especially known from cases where the two languages being mixed bear little resemblance. As a result, the elements of the mix are clearly recognizable, just as if there were specks of red and blue on a purple wall. This is the case, for example, with Cappadocian, which is a mixture of Turkish and Greek.
Other examples are Ma'á in Tanzania, a mix of Cushitic and Bantu, and Michif in Canada, which originated from settler French and the Native American language Cree. In the well-known cases of mixed languages, the mixed languages are genetically far apart and the components of the mix are clearly recognizable.
A mixed language close to home
Yet we don't have to go that far from home to find a mixed language. A day trip to the Bildt, a small corner in the northwest of Fryslân, is sufficient. In a recently published article by our hand, we show that Bildts is a mixed language and how it could have arisen.
For linguists, this mixed language is extremely interesting because two languages are mixed with each other that are very similar:South Holland dialects and Frisian.
Het Bildt was diked in the early sixteenth century. After that, mainly South Holland settlers came to live in an otherwise Frisian-speaking environment. The history of Het Bildts points to a mixed population, which supports the linguistic analysis.
Lingual properties of mixed languages
Mixed languages often follow a characteristic pattern:grammar more from one language, vocabulary more from another. This is also the case with Bildts. And for example at the Ma'á. This is grammatically more like Bantu, while the vocabulary mainly contains Cushitic words.
The grammar of Bildts is predominantly Frisian. For example, the word order in the verb group is the same as in Frisian. Take for example the following Bildtse sentence:I heard hur claw at the lâdder. Frisian would have here … click up heard, with the same order. In Dutch, the verb group has the reverse order:… hear climbing. And Bildts uses the past participle (heard ), just like Frisian (heard ), where Dutch uses the infinitive hear. But in the vocabulary we find many South Dutch words, for example bra 'very', kússy 'young calf', til 'hayloft' and diminutives like tobbechie and karrechie.
Psychological basis of mixed languages
Mixed languages often arise where bilingual speakers resist an intrusive other language. Although they unconsciously adopt the grammar of the intrusive language, they stick to common words from the language on which they base their identity. Bildtkers often heard Frisian, and they all understood it. In practice, they also often spoke a nice bit of Frisian. In addition, many Frisians also migrated to Bildt and they also contributed to the spread of Frisian grammar.
However, the inhabitants of Het Bildt did not feel like Frisians, but Bildtkers. They showed this in the use of South Holland words in their Frisian. When these hybrids of Frisian and South Hollands were passed on to children, the next step was taken in the formation of Bildts. The identity factor explains why the Bildt has not become entirely Frisian. The Bildtkers think they are different, and very different from the Frisians from the area. This is apparent from the widely spread story that all 'real' Bildtkers descended from one ancestor, namely Steven Huygen. This Steven Huygen himself never lived in Het Bildt, but his descendants were part of the first farmers who moved there after the reclamation.
Bildts today
Today there are about ten thousand speakers of Bildts. All kinds of institutions and associations for Bildtse language, culture and history are united in the umbrella organization 't Bildts Aigene, which maintains contact with the municipality. Het Bildt has a weekly newspaper, the Bildtse Post. The number of articles in Bildts therein has slowly increased from an average of about three percent in the 1950s to about twelve percent today. In addition, the Bildtkers themselves are very aware of their own language, culture and history. St. Annaparochie even has a childcare center where speaking Bildts is encouraged. The organizations Kemissy Multilingualhyd and Stichting Ons Bildt offer Bildts courses.
Mixed language versus dialect
The aforementioned Cappadocian is a mixed language that cannot be seen as a dialect of Greek, nor as a dialect of Turkish. So Cappadocian is an independent language. In our article about Bildts we show that Bildts is a mixed language and therefore an independent language, not a dialect of Frisian or Dutch.
A recurring point in the discussion of what makes a language different from a dialect is language will:a language also differs from a dialect in that speakers of a language are aware of how their language differs from that of their neighbors and act accordingly when they pass on their language to their children. In the case of Bildts, we see how this stubbornness and the memory of Steven Huygen have ensured that Bildtkers have created their own language and have passed it on for more than five hundred years in this piece of Frisian countryside.
Bildts recognized as a language?
On January 1, 2018, the municipality of Het Bildt will be merged with several other municipalities, where Bildt is not spoken. This increase in scale led to initiatives to better anchor the protection of Bildt's language and culture in the law. The Fryske Akademy was asked to write a report exploring future perspectives for Bildt's language and culture within a European context.
The municipality of Het Bildt subsequently submitted an application to the Ministry of the Interior to recognize Bildt as a regional language under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, which also includes Frisian. We hope that our analysis of Bildts as a mixed language can help the policy makers of the Ministry who decide on the recognition of Bildts as a language.