12-04-2021, 11:54 AM
(12-04-2021, 10:19 AM)Koen G wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.More like Middle Dutch is easier to understand than West Vlaams
It's probably true, especially since one of the most commonly read works, the Reynaert, is in a western dialect. I wonder though if the advantage still holds for the younger generations, who are increasingly growing up with a regional form of standard Dutch rather than a full dialect.
Since the end of World War II, standardized national state languages have been extending their reach and dominance at the expense of regional dialects and languages everywhere. As they say, "A language is a dialect with an army." Those regional languages and dialects without their own armies, nation-states, and governments are endangered just about everywhere. Efforts to preserve local languages and dialects have gotten better in recent decades, but whole generations lost them from about 1945-1990. It is very difficult for a language or dialect to recover from such a generational loss of transmission.