Cover not available
Article published In:
Linguistics in the Netherlands 2023
Edited by Sterre Leufkens and Marco Bril
[Linguistics in the Netherlands 40] 2023
► pp. 194–209

Is ‘he’ still here?

Exploring the contemporary use of masculine subject pronouns for women in Dutch dialects

| Tilburg University
| Tilburg University
| Tilburg University | Meertens Institute
Various non-standard language varieties in the Netherlands traditionally allow for the use of masculine personal subject pronouns (i.e. regionally distinct variants of hij ‘he’) in reference to women. While this practice is well-documented within Dutch dialectology, especially during the twentieth century, it is unclear to what extent this feature still exists nowadays. Moreover, the use of masculine subject forms for female reference has not previously been described for Limburgian dialects. This paper offers a start to filling these gaps, by providing insight into the contemporary use of ‘he’ for women in Dutch dialects, with a specific focus on occurrences in Dutch Limburg. We report on a Twitter query and three interviews, showing (i) that the use of ‘he’ for women still exists in various Dutch dialects, and (ii) how native speakers of a Limburgian dialect use and perceive this feature of their dialect.
Keywords: Dutch dialects, female reference, interview, masculine subject pronoun, Twitter
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.A Twitter query
  • 3.Interviews
    • 3.1A conspicuous local feature
    • 3.2 Hae in everyday conversations
    • 3.3Referents
    • 3.4 Hae vs. het
    • 3.5A gender-neutral term?
  • 4.Discussion
  • Data availability
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 3 November 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.00087.pie
References (34)
References
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2016. How Gender Shapes the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Auer, Peter, Frans Hinskens & Paul Kerswill. 2005. Dialect Change. Convergence and Divergence in European Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Backus, Ad & Jos Swanenberg. 2013. “The changing countryside: The need for innovation in dialectology.” Nederlandse Taalkunde 18(2), 228–236. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bakker, Frens. 1992. “Wie me euver vrouwluuj sprik. Zeej of het, die of det .” Veldeke 671, 1–14.Google Scholar
Bloemhoff, Henk, Jurjen van der Kooi, Hermann Niebaum & Siemon Reker, eds. 2008. Handboek Nedersaksische Taal- en Letterkunde. Assen: Van Gorcum.Google Scholar
de Bont, Anton Petrus. 1962. Dialekt van Kempenland. Meer in het bijzonder d’n Oerse Taol. Deel I. Klank- en vormleer en enige syntactische bijzonderheden. Assen: Van Gorcum.Google Scholar
Britain, David. 2009. “One foot in the grave? Dialect death, dialect contact, and dialect birth in England.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 196/1971, 121–155. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Daan, Jo & Dirk Peter Blok. 1969. Van Randstad tot Landrand; toelichting bij de kaart: Dialecten en Naamkunde. Amsterdam: Noord-Hollandsche Uitgevers Maatschappij.Google Scholar
Doleschal, Ursula & Sonja Schmid. 2001. “Doing gender in Russian: Structure and perspective.” In Gender across Languages. The Linguistic Representation of Women and Men (Vol. 1), ed. by Marlis Hellinger & Hadumod Bußmann, 253–282. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Doreleijers, Kristel, Joske Piepers, Ad Backus & Jos Swanenberg. 2021. “Language Variation in Dialect-standard Contact Situations: Two Cases from Brabantish and Limburgish Dialects in the Netherlands.” In Cognitive Sociolinguistics Revisited, ed. by Gitte Kristiansen, Karlien Franco, Stefano De Pascale, Laura Rosseel & Weiwei Zhang, 175–185. Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ferguson, Charles Albert. 1964. “Baby Talk in Six Languages.” American Anthropologist 66(6), 103–114. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gerritsen, Marinel. 1978. “Het dialekt van vrouwen, nu eens ouderwets dan weer modern.” In Vrouwentaal en mannenpraat. Verschillen in taalgebruik en taalgedrag in relatie tot de maatschappelijke rolverdeling ed. by Dédé Brouwer, Marinel Gerritsen, Dorian de Haan, Annette van der Post & Evelien de Jong, 40–68. Amsterdam: van Gennep.Google Scholar
Hall, Kira. 2002. ““Unnatural” gender in Hindi.” In Gender across Languages. The Linguistic Representation of Women and Men (Vol. 2) ed. by Marlis Hellinger & Hadumod Bußmann, 133–162. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hinskens, Frans. 1986. “Primaire en secundaire dialectkenmerken: een onderzoek naar de bruikbaarheid van een vergeten(?) onderscheid.” In Werk-in-uitvoering: momentopname van de sociolinguïstiek in België en Nederland ed. by Jos Creten, Guido Geerts & Koen Jaspaert, 135–158. Leuven/Amersfoort: ACCO.Google Scholar
Hoppenbrouwers, Cor. 1990. Het regiolect: van Dialect tot Algemeen Nederlands. Muiderberg: Coutinho.Google Scholar
Louden, Mark Laurence. 2020. “Minority Germanic Languages.” In The Cambridge Handbook of Germanic Linguistics ed. by Michael T. Putnam & B. Richard Page, 807–832. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Notten, Jan G. M. 1974. De Chinezen van Nederland: Opstellen over Limburgse Dialekten en een Bibliografie. Valkenburg: Uitgeverij Het Land van Valkenburg.Google Scholar
Nycz, Jennifer. 2016. “Awareness and Acquisition of New Dialect Features.” In Awareness and Control in Sociolinguistic Research, ed. by Anna M. Babel, 62–79. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pet, Willem J. A. 2011. A grammar sketch and lexicon of Arawak (Lokono Dian). Dallas: SIL International.Google Scholar
Piepers, Joske, Ad Backus & Jos Swanenberg. 2021. “ Ziej is a woman and het is a girl: A referent’s age guides pronominal gender variation in Limburgian.” Taal & Tongval 73(1), 1–44. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2023. “‘It’ is not for everyone: Variation in speakers’ evaluation of sociopragmatic pronouns in Limburgian.” Manuscript in preparation. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Piepers, Joske & Theresa Redl. 2018. “Gender-mismatching pronouns in context: The interpretation of possessive pronouns in Dutch and Limburgian.” Linguistics in the Netherlands 35(1), 97–110. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Royen, Gerlach. 1935. Pronominale problemen in het Nederlands. Tilburg: Drukkerij van het R.K. Jongensweeshuis.Google Scholar
Røyneland, Unn. 2009. “Dialects in Norway: catching up with the rest of Europe?” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 196/1971, 7–30. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stefan, Nika. 2022. Spoken Frisian: language contact, variation and change. Utrecht: LOT.Google Scholar
Steriopolo, Olga. 2021. “Grammatical gender reversals: A morphosyntactic and sociopragmatic analysis.” Open Linguistics 61, 136–165. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Swanenberg, Jos. 2020. “Does dialect loss give more or less variation? On dialect leveling and language creativity.” In Proceedings of Methods XVI. Papers from the Sixteenth International Conference on Methods in Dialectology, ed. by Yoshiyuki Asahi, 65–74. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
. 2022. “Being one of them: Participating in an online community while researching cultural heritage.” Diggit Magazine. Retrieved from [URL]
Tobin, Yishai. 2001. “Gender Switch in Modern Hebrew.” In Gender across Languages. The Linguistic Representation of Women and Men (Vol. 1), ed. by Marlis Hellinger & Hadumod Bußmann, 177–198. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Weijnen, Antonius Angelus. 1966. Nederlandse dialectkunde. Assen: Van Gorcum.Google Scholar
1968. “De aanduiding van vrouwelijke personen door mannelijke voornaamwoorden.” Mededelingen Nijmeegse Centrale Dialect- en Naamkunde 71, 4–11.Google Scholar
1971. Schets van de geschiedenis van de Nederlandse syntaxis. Assen: Van Gorcum.Google Scholar
Weiss, Daniel. 1993. “How many sexes are there? Reflections on natural and grammatical gender in contemporary Polish and Russian.” In Studies in Polish morphology and syntax, ed. by Gerd Hentschel & Roman Laskowski, 71–105. Munich: Kubon & Sagner.Google Scholar
Wilmsen, David. 1999. “Cross-Addressing: Reverse Gender Reference in Spoken Cairene Arabic.” In Arabic Grammar and Linguistics, ed. by Yasir Suleiman, 203–221. London: Routledge.Google Scholar