Pedants can be found anywhere, and they take on a wide variety of subjects towards which they direct their pedantry. One such group which I have always found particularly frustrating are Dutch language pedants. Folks who insist on ‘correcting’ ‘mistakes’ made by other native speakers. While I have always found these types frustrating, I have never spoken out against them, as they are – by-and-large – well-educated and respectable people. Now that I have finished the first half of my masters in linguistics however, I feel both a right- and even stronger need- to refute some of the points made by these people.
Firstly, let me make clear who I am speaking about. I intentionally use the term ‘pedants’. I do this not in an attempt to demean or belittle this group of people, I do it simply out of a desire to be precise. Many of those who fall under this term might rather be called grammarians, linguists, language-lovers, or the like, but I contend that much of what they maintain actually has very little to do with language at all, let alone grammar.
To make this clear, let me give an example in English. I – personally – use the so-called “oxford comma’’ in my writing. This means that, when I am listing several options, I will separate them by commas INCLUDING a comma before the ‘and’ or ‘or’.
We have apples, bananas, and strawberries on sale today
Amateur linguists (by which I mean self-styled linguists with no formal education) sometimes mistakenly call this a grammatical mistake (or otherwise a grammatical choice). It is however not, at least not in the proper use of the term ‘grammar’. The oxford comma is a style-choice, a matter of convention and etiquette.
Indeed when speaking about grammar and language, linguists tend to – in most cases – ignore the written word. While there certainly is interesting research to be done about the written word, language is the organically arising SPOKEN WORD, which can in-turn me written down, formalized, and changed. This leads me nicely into my first point.
‘Spreektaal’ is a Dutch term which literally translates to “spoken language’’. At the end of this section I hope to have convinced you that this is something of an oxymoron. After all, as I started before, language does not arise in its written form but rather originates in sounds and/or gestures. ‘Spreektaal’ is therefore just ‘taal’, just language.
This term is primarily used to distinguish phrases and words typical in spoken language from those which are acceptable in written/formal language. As such, this is a matter of etiquette, not of language (indeed much like the oxford comma). Some folk indeed use the term MERELY in this way, others however take the etiquette a step further and use it to talk down to those who use it. “Wat een verschikelijke spreektaal’’ (“What horrid spoken-language’’) they will say to their (invariably lower-educated) interlocutor “You can’t speak like that’’.
Let us recall the etymology of the word ‘etiquette’. Coming from the French, it means literally ‘label’ and was used to describe a set of rules to which only the nobility were privy. You can tell a serf from an aristocrat because the former will hold their fork in the right hand rather than the left, raise a cup of tea to their lips in a manner which is most comfortable to them rather than with their little finger raised, and they won’t cutesy with the right leg in front and extended. Such ‘labels’ were of course invented because – at the end of the day – there is no AUTHENTIC difference between the blue-bloods and the rest of us. Instead the difference must be simulated with clothing, etiquette, and language.
For indeed language was a part of this matter as well. The peasantry spoke English while the nobility spoke French. Yet another way of setting the elite apart from the unwashed masses.
Fast-forward to today and we find a perfectly capable Dutch speaker. They grew up in an environment where a certain term or phrase was common. They acquired this phrase and its accompanying grammar as we all do as infants. At some point, they will have formed a complete language (what Chomsky calls their I-language) and – lo-and-behold – they can use it to communicate with those around them, for they have an incredibly similar grammar and lexicon.
Then the pedant shows up to tell them that there exists this thing called “Algemeen beschaafd Nederlands’’ (general civilized Dutch) and that it does not allow for certain constructions this person has used their whole life. In fact, this use of language is WRONG because the grammarians in Holland laid out the law that is Dutch Grammar, and YOU DO NOT ADHERE TO IT.
One such point is the past-tense of the Dutch verb ‘willen’ (“to want’’). There is a roughly 50/50 split between those who use the irregular ‘wou’ and the regular ‘wilde’. Whether a certain verb in one’s lexicon is marked as having irregular- or regular- conjugation is a matter of acquisition. If you grow up in an environment where the irregular is used, then that will be how you acquire it, that will be your language, and that will be correct.
According to the pedant however, the correct from is the regular, because so spoke the grammarians who – in all honestly -- are simply describing the grammar of THEIR individual languages/dialects.
Okay, before I start I must admit that this is really only said by the most-amateur of self-styled-linguists. Certainly no self-respecting language enthusiast would ever claim something so ridiculous. The phrase above translates to “‘Therefore’ is not a word’’. Translating it into English immediately shows the ridiculousness of the statement, but let us first see the argument.
In Dutch the word for ‘why’ is ‘waarom’, which more literally translated to ‘where-for’. To answer in response to a why-question with ‘daarom’ (‘there-for’ or ‘because of that’), is simply an empty meaningless response, and since words must have a meaning, ‘daarom’ cannot be a word.
I won’t spend too much time on this matter and instead will simply point out the following: ‘Daarom’ DOES have a meaning, it is simply context dependent. We see the English are completely capable of using their equivalent ‘therefore’, likewise with the Italian ‘perche’, without devolving into meaningless gibberish. Secondly, words are added to dictionaries all the time even if their meaning is fluid or yet to be established concretely. The BBC aired a report recently on the addition of the word ‘skibbidi’ to the Cambride English dictionary. A spokesperson for the dictionary admitted that the term can be used in various ways: as a noun, adverb, or intensifier, to indicate approval or disdain, or simply as a joke.
Merriam Webster seems to take the route of the pedants and chooses to talk down to those who don’t speak the ‘proper’ English is conformity with the etiquette:
Skibidi: A nonsense internet term
~Merriam Webseter Online [1]
Now onto everyone’s favourite topic: grammatical gender. At first glance, Dutch appears to have two genders: common and neutral with two corresponding determiners ‘de’ and ‘het’ respectively. Some grammarians and pedants like to insist that Dutch in fact has three genders, since this was the case in Old Dutch.
The difference between the male and female gender – they maintain – exists, though it is entirely opaque. One simply needs to learn the genders of all the words in the lexicon. This is – in my opinion – one of the most egregious example of Dutch language pedantry as it is still a rather widespread sentiment, even in schools. Let me be clear: If an aspect of spoken language (unrelated to etiquette or style) cannot be acquired during the natal process of language acquisition, then this aspect is NOT (or no-longer) an element of the language in question.
Yes, Dutch did at some point have three genders, and it was only proper to say “Let nature go HER way’’ and “The girl climbed out of HIS window’’ (technically this last one is due to a separate rule which I will leave aside for now), but this is no-longer the case. Children growing up in a Dutch speaking environment now make the distinction for the use of pronouns the animate/inanimate difference. Inanimate nouns in the common gender receive the same pronouns as neutral gender nouns, and animate nouns get pronouns based on the gender of the individual in question. No longer does one need to know that the cat ‘de kat’ is masculine and therefore refer to a female cat as ‘he’.
In all fairness, it seems that most dictionaries have started removing the masculine/feminine distinction in favour of listing these nouns as ‘common’ gender, so perhaps we are making progress on in this regard.
Staying on the topic of referring to other entities. Dutch (apparently) makes a distinction in the terms used to referring to a direct-object and an indirect-object of a sentence. For the former ‘Hun’ is used while for the latter ‘Hen’ is used[2].
... Or perhaps it is the other way around. This shows immediately the problem with this grammatical rule (for it is actually grammar this time): Native Dutch speakers have not acquired this rule for some time. The process behind this language-change is rather interesting and sadly outside of the scope of this post. But the point stands that native speakers do not have a ‘feel’ for this distinction, our I-languages do not allow for the distinction between direct- and indirect-objects. Much like it only allows for two registers of formality, while other languages allow for several. The Dutch of a century ago did include a feel for this difference, but this has gradually disappeared. Leaving us now in an awkward phase where some insist on the distinction which others simply cannot make.
All of that is to say: the next time you intend to correct someone’s use of language – be it in Dutch or otherwise – consider: Whether you are actually correcting language or rather style, Whether it is possible that your interlocutor acquired a slightly different dialect which is misaligned with yours, and lastly, whether the correction matters for the purpose of communication which is – after all – the aim of language.
| [1]: | https://www.merriam-webster.com/slang/skibidi |
| [2]: | There are also other cases where one is used over the other such as in propositional phrases. |
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