East Flemish


East Flemish is a collective term for the two easternmost subdivisions of the so-called Flemish dialects, native to the southwest of the Dutch language area, which also include West Flemish. Their position between West Flemish and Brabantian has caused East Flemish dialects to be grouped with the latter as well. They are spoken mainly in the province of East Flanders and a narrow strip in the southeast of West Flanders in Belgium and eastern Zeelandic Flanders in the Netherlands. Even though the dialects of the Dender area are often discussed together with the East Flemish dialects because of their location, the latter are actually South Brabantian.

History

Before the occurrence of written records, the dialect continuum that took shape in the Old Dutch language area was characterised mainly by differences from east to west, with the east showing more continental Germanic traits and the west having more coastal Germanic features. In East Flanders, it can be noted that not a single typical eastern Low Franconian trait has reached the region, but coastal characteristics are fairly common, albeit less so than more to the west.
In the 15th century, the dominant position in the Low Countries shifted from the County of Flanders to the Duchy of Brabant, which brought an expansian of linguistic traits from Brabant, the so-called 'Brabantic Expansion'. As the Scheldt formed a large barrier in the north, those traits were introduced mainly from South Brabant, particularly the city of Brussels. The Dender area probably already started the process in the 14th century, but Ghent resisted those changes for at least another century, as writings from Ghent still indicated a phonology that was typically West Flemish phonology in the mid-16th century. Eventually, two processes caused the spread of Brabantian traits in eastern Flanders:
While the second process has caused a fairly wide extension of some traits, the traits spread by the first process have reached only the eastern quarter of the province: the Dender and Waasland areas.
Having been dominated by the French, the Austrians and the Spanish, their languages have been other influences on the vocabulary of East Flemish.

Subdivisions

Principal dialects

A special mention should go to continental West Flemish, which, despite being a West Flemish dialect, has some East Flemish colouring, as Kortrijk was historically governed under Ghent.

Notable characteristics

Even though the East Flemish dialect area is one of the most diverse linguistic landscapes in Belgium, the dialects share some traits that set them apart from Standard Dutch as well as the neighbouring dialects:
As the realisation of phonemes can be quite divergent in different East Flemish dialects, the phonemes represented here are based on the most common Core East Flemish realisations.

Consonants

Notes:
The following table gives an overview of some common phonemes in stressed syllables. Many East Flemish dialects have lost the phonemic vowel length distinction, but the distincition is made in the following table for the dialects that have kept it. Also, the central vowel /ə/ occurs only in unstressed syllables and is often heavily reduced or even omitted in many dialects.
Front
unrounded		Front
rounded		Back
Close
Close-mid
Open-mid
Open

Notes:
The following table shows the common diphthong phonemes in East Flemish, but it also includes some allophones or alternative realisations of the vowels mentioned above.
Notes:

Verbs

As in many other southern Dutch dialects, verbal constructions can take several forms, depending on stress, the position of the subject and the next word. Unlike West Flemish, however, there is no subjunctive mood. The following table gives the general rules of conjugation in the present tense and the regular example of zwieren. The spelling is based on Dutch orthography with the addition of ̊ to show devoicing and ̆ to show vowel shortening.
Notes:
Like most other Germanic languages, East Flemish differentiates between strong verbs and weak verbs. Even though there are a few strong verbs in East Flemish that are weak in Standard Dutch, the overall tendency is that East Flemish has more weak verbs. Unlike many other Germanic languages, the rules for the conjugation of the strong preterite are exactly the same as in the present tense. The weak preterite is formed by adding the suffix "-dege" to the verbal stem. While an -n is usually added in the first-person and the third-person plural, the t-ending is not added except in a few southwestern dialects.

Ghent dialect

The dialect of the province's capital, Ghent, is also different from the language of the surrounding region. The Brabantic expansion is believed to have started in Ghent, which has separated its speech from the other Flemish dialects. Some Brabantic traits were exported to other East Flemish dialects, but many were not. The most notable differences include n-dropping and the more extreme diphthongisation of ii and uu. At the same time, Ghent resisted many innovations characteristic for rural East Flanders. In the 19th and the early 20th centuries, the French uvular r was adopted.