Aasters, een bedreigde Friese taalvariëteit op Terschelling

Samenvatting

In Terschelling a West Frisian island of ca 10.780 hectares and with a population of ca 4600,
three local dialects are spoken in addition to Dutch and Frisian, viz. Schylingers (Westers) in
West-Terschelling Meslânzers in the middle and Aasters in East-Terschelling.
The latter variety is the subject of this article. Like many other minor language varieties in
the rest of the world Aasters is presently declining. Nonetheless it has attracted some
attention over the past few years, e.g. because of the planned primary school lessons in
Aasters, starting possibly in 1988.
Naturally this raises the question whether this can save this Terschelling Frisian dialect from
an otherwise certain demise. In order to say something about this we need reliable
information about the present situation with respect to command of the language, language
behaviour and language attitude. In 1986 1 conducted an inquiry among 255 of the
approximately 750 inhabitants of EastTerschelling followed up by an investigation in 1987
that went into the 1986 data more thoroughly.
The inquiry proves that there are major differences between the various age groups as far
as fluency is concerned. Of the younger respondents (aged 4 - 12) 4.8% can speak Aasters;
for the 13 - 40 age bracket this is 24.1%; for the 40 - 65 bracket this is 45.3% and for the over
65 group this is 64.2%.
These low figures, especially among the youngest group (< 13), can be explained by the
decreasing frequency with which parents teach children Aasters as the language of the home.
Only 7.1% of the parents under 40 are still doing so, the 40-65 group did so for 24.5% and
the parents over 65 for 38.5%. The respondents of the 10-12 age bracket with a modicum of
fluency in Aasters have mainly acquired this outside the family.
Now the question is why this shift from Aasters to Dutch is taking place. From the inquiry
it appeared that 86% of the respondents thought the continued existence of Aasters important,
which is in sharp conflict with the above figures. This tallies with a frequent observation by
language sociologists that there is a discrepancy between language attitude and language
behaviour. In the 1987 follow-up the language attitude towards Aasters was gone into in
more detail and it appeared that this attitude was ambivalent. In general people's attitudes
towards Aasters and Dutch are equally positive but school instruction (aimed at saving
Aasters) is rejected.
The above findings confirm Labov's explanation (Labov 1966) of the discrepancy between
language attitude and behaviour. He holds that there are socio-cultural pressures from two
directions:
A: a pressure to identify with one's own group, which creates a need to defend one's own
linguistic behaviour;
B: a pressure to adapt one's linguistic behaviour in situations where this seems socially
necessary due to the need to conform to the prevalent system of values and norms in
society at large.
For Aasters this means that on the one hand people judge it positively (A: they deem its
continued existence important; it is a beautiful language; it is part of local tradition) and on
the other hand negatively (B: it is not used as the language of the home; school instruction
and active language behaviour to save it are rejected).
The investigation into the fluency of bilinguals (speakers of Aasters and Dutch), finally,
appears to confirm the hypothesis that Aasters is not disappearing owing to increasing
interference from Dutch but because of language shift. The bilingual respondents on the
whole have a good command of Aasters and, more importantly, the differences between the
various age groups are negligible in this respect.
Taking a general look I have to conclude that the position of Aasters is highly insecure
despite the announced primary school lessons. If people do not care about Aasters outside
school, or in whatever formal domain, every attempt to save it is doomed from the start. If the
(Dutch-speaking) monolinguals do not learn Aasters before long this means for young
bilinguals that in the future they will not be able to address anyone in Aasters anymore. They
will then be obliged to give up this language variety. Aasters will then die out.