De codificatie van het Limburgs

Abstract

Abstract The codification of Limburgish: motives and their patternsLimburgish, the regional language spoken in the Dutch and Belgian provinces of Limburg, shows characteristics of standardization: from the nineteenth century onwards, an increasing number of dictionaries, grammars, and spelling guides of various Limburgish dialects have been published. This shows that Limburgish undergoes codification, one of the major aspects in standardization processes. This article explores the codification process of Limburgish. First, an overview is given of the various codification materials to be found for the dialects spoken in the Dutch province of Limburg. An investigation of the introductory parts of these materials is conducted to answer the question what motives the authors of the various publications have to codify a particular Limburgish dialect. It appears that the amount of codification materials increases drastically from approximately 1980 onwards, and that the motives concerned with dialect protection or preservation prevail in the publications after the Second World War, suggesting that the decline of active dialect use in the last decades is an important motive for the codification of the dialects of Limburg.