This article aims to contribute to the study of Belgian Dutch as an immigrant language in North America. It
does so with the specific hypothesis that the pre-migration sociolinguistic and language political context in
migrants’ home countries plays an important role, in particular with regard to societal multilingualism, as underlying
layers of multilingualism can have an impact on the post-migration contact situation. Using the diary of a Flemish
missionary who moved to Canada in 1886 as our main source, both Dutch-French and Dutch-English language contact are
charted over a 25-year time span, with specific attention to lexical borrowing. We discuss the impact of a number of
mostly language-internal variables on the relative frequency of lexical borrowing from each source language (e.g.,
semantic field, part of speech, level of integration in the target language, luxury versus necessary loans), revealing
highly divergent borrowing profiles for French and English. The article rounds off by assessing the explanatory value
of the pre-migration sociolinguistic context of Belgian Dutch, for the language patterns observed in this specific
ego-document, discussing the interaction between past and present layers of language contact.
Arnbjörnsdóttir, Birna. 2015. Reexamining
Icelandic as a heritage language in North
America. In Johannessen, Janne Bondi & Joseph C. Salmons (eds.), Germanic
heritage languages in North America: Acquisition, attrition and change (Studies in
Language Variation
18), 72–93. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Betz, Werner. 1959. Lehnwörter
und Lehnprägungen im Vor- und Frühdeutschen. In Maurer, Friedrich & Friedrich Stroh (eds.), Deutsche
Wortgeschichte, 127–147. Berlin: Schmidt.
Blainey, Darcie. 2017. Sociolinguistic
research with endangered varieties: The case of Louisiana French. Canadian
Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de
linguistique 62(4). 576–595.
Brown, Joshua R.2017. Language
maintenance among the Hutterites. Yearbook of German-American
Studies 52. 151–168.
Brown, Joshua R. (ed.). 2019. Historical
heritage language ego-documents: From home, from away, and from below. Journal
of Historical Sociolinguistics. 5(2).
Brown, Joshua R. & Joshua Bousquette. 2018. Heritage
languages in North America: Sociolinguistic approaches. Journal of Language
Contact 11(2). 201–207.
Caestecker, Frank. 2014. Hoe
het Meetjesland Amerika vond. In Stynen, Andreas (ed.), Boer
vindt land: Vlaamse migranten en
Noord-Amerika, 58–66. Leuven: Davidfonds Uitgeverij.
Cohn, Raymond L.2008. Mass migration under
sail: European immigration to the antebellum United
States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. .
Collet, Tanja. 2016. Language
controversies in the Gazette van Detroit
(1916–1918). In Fenoulhet, Jane, Gerdi Quist & Ulrich Tiedau (eds.), Discord
and Consensus in the Low Countries, 1700–2000, 1st
edn., vol. 1, 81–101. London: UCL Press.
De Fina, Anna. 2014. Language
and identities in US communities of Italian origin. Forum
Italicum 48(2). 253–267.
Deprez, Kas & Guido Geerts. 1977. Closure
to French influence in the Flemish speech
community. Lingua 43(2–3). 199–228.
Eggermont-Molenaar, Mary & Paul Callens. 2007. Missionaries
among miners, migrants and Blackfoot. The Van Tighem brother diaries,
Alberta 1875–1917. Calgary: University of Calgary Press.
Elspaß, Stephan. 2007. A
twofold view ‘from below’: New perspectives on language histories and language
historiographies. In Elspaß, Stephan, Nils Langer, Joachim Scharloth & Wim Vandenbussche (eds.), Germanic
language histories ‘from
below’(1700–2000), 3–9. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Elspaß, Stephan. 2012. The
use of private letters and diaries in sociolinguistic
investigation. In Hernández-Campoy, Juan Manuel & Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre (eds.), The
handbook of historical
sociolinguistics, 156–169. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Fishman, Joshua A.1964. Language
maintenance and shift as a field of
inquiry. Linguistics 9. 32–70.
Fishman, Joshua A.2001. 300-plus
years of heritage language education in the United
States. In Peyton, Joy Kreeft, Donald Ranard & Scott McGinnis (eds.), Heritage
languages in America: Preserving a national
resource, 81–97. Washington D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics & Delta Systems.
Grosjean, François. 1982. Life
with two languages: An introduction to bilingualism. Harvard University Press.
Haugen, Einar. 1953. The
Norwegian language in America: A study in bilingual
behavior. Vol. 2: The American
dialects of
Norwegian. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press.
Hipsman, Faye & Doris Meissner. 2013. Immigration
in the United States: New economic, social, political landscapes with legislative reform on the
horizon. Migration Policy
Institute 16.
Johannessen, Janne Bondi. 2015. Attrition
in an American Norwegian heritage language
speaker. In Johannessen, Janne Bondi & Joseph C. Salmons (eds.), Germanic
heritage languages in North America: acquisition, attrition and change (Studies in
Language Variation
18), 46–71. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Kasstan, Jonathan R., Anita Auer & Joseph Salmons. 2018. Heritage-language
speakers: Theoretical and empirical challenges on sociolinguistic attitudes and
prestige. International Journal of
Bilingualism 22(4). 387–394.
Llewellyn, Evan Clifford. 1936. The
influence of Low Dutch on the English
vocabulary. Vol. 12. Oxford University Press Oxford.
Matras, Yaron. 2009. Language
contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Musschoot, Dirk. 2002. Wij
gaan naar Amerika: Vlaamse landverhuizers naar de nieuwe
wereld 1850–1930. Tielt: Lannoo.
Nauwelaerts, Mandy & Frank Caestecker. 2008. Red
Star Line: People on the
move. Schoten: BAI.
Ostyn, Paul. 1973. American
Flemish: A study in language loss and linguistic interference.
Polinsky, Maria. 2008. Gender
under incomplete acquisition: Heritage speakers’ knowledge of noun
categorization. Heritage Language
Journal 6. 40–71.
Poplack, Shana. 2018. Borrowing:
Loanwords in the speech community and in the grammar. New York: Oxford University Press.
Prince, John, D.1910. The Jersey Dutch
Dialect. Dialect
Notes 8. 459–484.
Quintyn, Willy & Marc Van Ooteghem. 2014. Hansbeekse
emigratie naar Amerika, een opmerkelijk
verhaal. In Stynen, Andreas (ed.), Boer
vindt land: Vlaamse migranten en
Noord-Amerika, 67–71. Leuven: Davidsfonds Uitgeverij.
Rothman, Jason. 2009. Understanding
the nature and outcomes of early bilingualism: Romance languages as heritage
languages. International Journal of
Bilingualism 13(2). 155–163.
Rutten, Gijsbert & Rik Vosters. 2010. Chaos
and standards: Orthography in the southern Netherlands
(1720–1830). Multilingua 29(3/4). 417–438.
Rutten, Gijsbert, Rik Vosters & Marijke van der Wal. 2015. Frenchification
in discourse and practice: Loan morphology in Dutch private letters of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. In Catharina Peersman, Gijsbert Rutten & Rik Vosters (eds.), Past,
Present and Future of a Language Border: Germanic-Romance Encounters in the Low
Countries, 143–169. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.
Smits, Caroline & Jaap van Marle. 2015. On
the decrease of language norms in a disintegrating
language. In Johannessen, Janne Bondi & Joseph C. Salmons (eds.), Germanic
heritage languages in North America: Acquisition, attrition and change (Studies in
Language
Variation 18), 389–405. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Stynen, Andreas (ed.). 2014. Boer
vindt land: Vlaamse migranten en
Noord-Amerika. Leuven: Davidsfonds Uitgeverij.
Valdés, Guadalupe. 2000. The
teaching of heritage languages: An introduction for Slavic-teaching
professionals. In Kagan, Olga & Benjamin Rifkin (eds.), The
learning and teaching of Slavic languages and
cultures, 375–403. Bloomington: Slavica Publishers.
van der Wal, Marijke & Gijsbert Rutten. 2013. Ego-documents
in a historical-sociolinguistic perspective. In van der Wal, Marijke & Gijsbert Rutten (eds.), Touching
the past: Studies in the historical sociolinguistics of ego-documents (Advances in
Historical Sociolinguistics
1), 1–18. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
van Hoof, S. & J. Jaspers. 2012. Hyperstandaardisering. Tijdschrift
voor Nederlandse Taal-en
Letterkunde 128(2). 97–125.
Van Landschoot, Hans. 2014. Emigratie
uit Maldegem. In Stynen, Andreas (ed.), Boer
vindt land: Vlaamse migranten en
Noord-Amerika, 72–75. Leuven: Davidsfonds Uitgeverij.
Vandenbussche, Wim. 2009. Historical
language planning in nineteenth-century Flanders: Standardisation as a means of language
survival. In Omdal, Helge (ed.), Språknormering.
I tide og
utide?, 255–268. Oslo: Novus Forlag.
Vanhecke, Eline & Jetje De Groof. 2007. New
data on language policy and language choice in 19th-century Flemish city
administrations. In Elspaß, Stephan, Nils Langer, Joachim Scharloth & Wim Vandenbussche (eds.), Germanic
language histories from below
(1700–2000), 449–465. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Vosters, Rik. 2013. Dutch,
Flemish or Hollandic? Social and ideological aspects of linguistic convergence and divergence during the
United Kingdom of the Netherlands
(1815–1830). In Barát, Erzsébet & Patrick Studer (eds.), Ideological
conceptualisations of language in discourses of linguistic diversity (Prague Papers
on Language, Society and Interaction
3), 35–54. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Vosters, Rik, Gijsbert Rutten & Marijke Van der Wal. 2010. Mythes
op de pijnbank. Naar een herwaardering van de taalsituatie in de Nederlanden in de achttiende en negentiende
eeuw. Verslagen en Mededelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Nederlandse
Taal- en
Letterkunde 120(1). 93–112.
Vosters, Rik, Gijsbert Rutten, Marijke Van der Wal & Wim Vandenbussche. 2012. Spelling
and identity in the Southern Netherlands
(1750–1830). In Jaffe, Alexandra, Jannis Androutsopoulos, Mark Sebba & Sally Johnson (eds.), Orthography
as social action. Scripts, spelling, identity and power (Language and Social
Processes
3), 135–160. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Weinreich, Uriel. 1953. Languages
in contact: Findings and problems. New York: Linguistic circle of New York.
Willemyns, Roland. 2013. Dutch:
Biography of a language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.