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Bilingual street sign in Maastricht: Achter de Oude Minderbroeders is Dutch, Achter d'n Awwe Minnebreure is Maastrichtian. Maatrichtian being a city dialect, the terminology "Maastrichtian" (Mestreechs) is practically limited to the municipal borders, with the exception of some places within the Maastrichtian municipality where the spoken dialects are in fact not Maastrichtian.
French is an administrative language and is commonly but unofficially used in the Maghreb states, Mauritania, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.As of 2023, an estimated 350 million African people spread across 34 African countries can speak French either as a first or second language, mostly as a secondary language, making Africa the continent with the most French speakers in the world. [2]
In the late 18th century the language gained a powerful position as the judicial and administrative language, and throughout the following century it was the preferred language of the upper classes. Between 1851 and 1892 a Francophone newspaper ( Le Courrier de la Meuse ) was published in Maastricht. [ 25 ]
The possible short vowel+glide sequences in the Maastrichtian dialect are /yj, uj, ɔj, æj, ɑj, iw, ɑw, æw/. The long vowel+glide sequences are /eːj, øːj, oːj, ɶːj, ɒːj, aːj/ . The labial /w/ combines only with short vowels, whereas the palatal /j/ can be preceded by both short and long vowels.
Nowadays, there are only a few semi-speakers of these dialects left, or the dialect went extinct already. New Jersey, in particular, had an active Dutch community with a highly divergent dialect spoken as recently as the 1950s, the Jersey Dutch dialect. In Pella, Iowa, the Pella Dutch dialect is spoken. There were only a few speakers in 2011.
Dutch is the most spoken primary language of Belgium and the official language of the Flemish Community and the Flemish Region (merged to Flanders). Along with French, it is an official language of the Brussels-Capital Region. The main Dutch dialects spoken in Belgium are Brabantian, West Flemish, East Flemish, and Limburgish.
In the dialect of Geleen, /eː/ is realized as [iɛ] and /oː/ as [ɔː]. In many dialects such as that of Maastricht and Sittard, the long vowel /aː/ in Dutch cognates is most of the time realized as [ɒː], as in nao ("after", "to, towards"). The Standard Dutch equivalents are na [naː] and naar [naːr].
In the Language Survey Reference Guide issued by SIL International, who produce Ethnologue, a dialect cluster is defined as a central variety together with a collection of varieties whose speakers can understand the central variety at a specified threshold level (usually between 70% and 85%) or higher. It is not required that peripheral ...