The West Frisian Dialect

Wervershoof 30-05-1913. Mrs Maartje Hooijveld-Mantel sends a postcard to her niece who lives in the neighboring village of Andijk:

~

"Efrouw!

Hiermede bericht ik u dat a.s. zondag P.B. komt, dus verwacht ik later bericht van u. Warm wéér te schoonmaken Ant! maar op bloote benen in de klompen

Nahartelijke groete

M. Mantel-Hooijveld"

~

 In English:

~

"Efrouw!

Herewith I let you know that P.B. will visit me this Sunday, so I expect you to inform me soon. Warm weather to do cleaning Ant!, on bare feet (legs) in our wooden shoes it is then.

Wit kind regards,

M . Mantel-Hooijveld"

 ~

The postcard is somewhat stained, so the true reason I bought this was the message it contains. Especially the last 'cleaning'- sentence sparked my interest:

"Warm wéér te schoonmaken Ant! maar op bloote benen in de klompen"It is written in 'pseudo' West Frisian, to be precise the dialect variant of the Dutch language, not the one labelled as language and which is spoken in the province of Friesland across the IJsselmeer.

A short piece on this dialect can be consulted on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Frisian_Dutch but alas there is no grammar available for English readers, so I will show you a couple of linguistic phenomena typical of West Frisian from the handbook "Hé, is dat Westfries?" by the great H. Langedijk:

Different conjugation of irregular verbs

Dutch: helpen, hielp, geholpen
West Frisian: helpe, holp, holpen
English: help, helped, helped

A peculiarity of West Frisian is the absence of the 'ge'-prefix for the present perfect: so, "holpen" instead of "geholpen"

Another one:
Dutch: hangen, hing, gehangen
West Frisian: hange, hong, hongen
English: hang, hung, hung

Different auxiliary verbs

Dutch: Jij bent niet mee geweest.
West Frisian: Jij hewwe niet mee weest.
English: You haven't come/'been' (with us).

In West Frisian the auxiliary verb of 'to be' = a form of 'hebben' (hewwe) and not 'zijn' (bent) as in Dutch. It sounds very odd if you're not from West Frisia and would be the equivalent of replacing the English 'haven't' with 'wasn't': 'You wasn't come with us'...

The real surprise, if you have been paying close attention, is the fact that English uses the auxiliary verb 'to have' for the present perfect 'been' as in West Frisian but unlike the Dutch 'to be'.

Vocabulary

Enough grammar for now, since the real reason why West Frisian is such a fun language to learn results from its vocabulary and proverbs. It is well-known Frisian is more closely related to English than Dutch and therefore West Frisian has some conspicuous anglophone words as well which are non-existent in Dutch: e.g.
Dutch: Schemerig
West Frisian: Tweilichtig
English: Twilit / dusky

Other wonderful West Frisian expressions (some derive from older Dutch or French words, but other are definitely 'original' and very creative):

Dutch: 't Is mistig.
West Frisian: 't Is moordenaarsweer.
English: It is foggy [murders' weather].

Dutch: Dat was een welkome verrassing.
West Frisian: Dat was in de emmer.
English: That was a pleasant surprise [That was in the bucket].

Dutch: Hij keek erg teleurgesteld.
West Frisian: Z'n lip hong op 't onderste knoupsgat.
English: He looked very disappointed [His lip had fallen to his undermost buttonhole].

Dutch: Daar komen van die hooghartige dames aan.
West Frisian: Deer komme van die grooske tieten an.
English: Those arrogant women are approaching [those arrogant tits are approaching].

Now the grand finale: a proverb which is said of lazy and/or tired people:

West Frisian: 'Louf? Louf ken lang an: eer je biene bai je kniese of benne kèn je nag zestien jaar te wortelewuden nei de Langedoik.
English: Tired? Fatigue can take a long time: before your legs have been worn up to your knees, you're still able to weed amid the carrots in Langedijk for sixteen years.

There you have it: a small introduction to West Frisian because of Maartje Mantel's:


"Warm wéér te schoonmaken Ant! maar op bloote benen in de klompen"
Although she tried to make her West Frisian more Dutch, she made one mistake: to place the essential subordinating conjugation 'om' before the 'te': het is warm weer om te schoonmaken'. But overall, she did a good job: she didn't wrote 'skoonmaken' instead of the Dutch schoonmaken (to clean) and she didn't wrote 'biene' for the Dutch 'benen' (legs).

Large round postmark of Wervershoof on a ¢2½ Vürtheim stamp

The decline

Already in 1913 West Frisians seemingly wanted to speak and write as 'normal' Dutch (whatever that means...). After WWII when the Netherlands prospered and West Frisians could afford study and travel, they tried even harder to ban West Frisian because you made yourself look ridiculous in company of more decent people (from Haarlem, The Hague, Utrecht etc.). The rise of television didn't help much either to preserve the language.
Nowadays you could still hear some reminders of the West Frisian dialect in people's tongue. Especially the melodious aspect of it and the 'wrong' pronunciation of the sch- as in Schaatsen (Ice-skating) which becomes 'Skaatsen' is something difficult to get rid of. But the true soul of the language: the vocabulary, typical expressions and grammar have sadly all become something of the past.

Typenrader arrival 'Langebalk' postmark of the neighbouring village of Andijk 

Netherlands 1939: Dutch express letter by train

Apart from my interest in retrieving information about senders and addressees, contents and messages, I occasionally include covers / postcards in my collection because the postal rate or postal markings intrigue me. The cover below is such an example:

This letter was sent to the 'Dutch agricultural head office' by making use of the Dutch express service. Voermans & Backx had to pay 10c extra to make this a valid express letter. The label 'Spoedbestelling / Exprès / Spoedbestelling' was hence applied which made the PTT aware that this was a special delivery. In these days - and today still - the service was provided for by a separate agency of the postal service, which meant that 'ordinary' postmen weren't allowed to process the item.  

If you carefully read the address of the sender (Voermans & Backx) you might notice that this company which traded in agricultural products was situated alongside the 'Stationsstraat', Dutch for Station Road in Roosendaal. The combination of this address and the unorthodox cancel made me flip the cover: 

A third stamp is glued to the back flap of the cover! And it is no ordinary one:  

It turns out to be a so-called 'Railway stamp', a type of stamp which was used by various countries in the world to pay the cost of the conveyance of a postal item by train. A steam locomotive adorns the stamp and the text reads: Nederlandse Spoorwegen: the Dutch Railways (NS). 

The marvelous book about Dutch express delivery by Arie Zonjee and Ot Louw (2013) devotes a chapter to the Dutch Rail Express Service:

From 1924 onwards the Dutch Railways (NS) made it possible to send express items by train. In order to do so, the sender had to pay the standard PTT Express fee of 10c + and an extra Train Express fee of 10c. The Dutch Railways produced their own stamps in order to comply with this service. The guard on the train took care for the items during the ride. The (Railway) stamps were to be cancelled with a NS cancel of the local luggage center from which the items were being sent. 

The example above was cancelled at Roosendaal Station on the 4th of May 1939 and arrived in The Hague the same day between 1 and 2 p.m. 

Why did the sender chose to sent this particular cover by train instead of the ordinary service? Maybe this was the fastest way to get the letter from a to b. I doubt this, as the ordinary express service would be almost as fast. Maybe the station was easier to reach than the main post office of Roosendaal. Quite possible, but - then again - most railway stations had a PTT office as well... Oh well, it makes a fine example of a Dutch train cover after all!

   

   

A 'Classic' cover (1)

The cover shown above was posted on the 10th of December 1948 from Amsterdam to London, at least, that's where the sender of the cover, Prof Dr A.W. de Groot, thought C.K. Ogden would dwell at the time.

The Wilhelmina "Konijnenburg" stamps which adorn the cover were initially issued in 1940, but after the German invasion of May 1940 the stamps were withdrawn from use as of 11 October 1940. The occupying force reasoned that the stamps could incite resistance, since the stamps bore the portrait of Queen Wilhelmina whom the Dutch considered their only dignity left, as she successfully escaped to England. After the war the stamps were reinstated although the paper quality was noticeably poorer than the 1940 issue. A small act of resistance during the war was to put a Wilhelmina Konijnenburg on cover with a 2 cent orange "Lebeau" Flying Dove stamp above. This would allude to the "Oranje Boven"- song which was (and is) a very popular song in the Netherlands:

Oranje boven, Oranje boven

Leve de koningin (2x)

Orange above all, orange above all,

Long live the Queen (2x)

After more than a century the Netherlands has a king once more, so we'll have to wait until Willem-Alexander's daughter ascends the throne before we can sing the song again...

The Lebeau 2 cent 'Flying Dove' Orange stamp. Artist Chris Lebeau, who helped Jews during the war by faking official documents, was betrayed and deported to Dachau where he died in April 1945...

I'm wandering off, since the real interesting part of this cover is the seal in the upper left corner, which was the reason I bought the cover at an auction in Diemen.

It reads Academia Amstelodamensis - Seminarium Classicum. In my next post I will reveal more about the sender and his relation to the department of classics of the University of Amsterdam and his even more intriguing relationship with the famous linguist/philosopher Ogden.