Tusken argaïsme en Hollânisme

Abstract

Ten recent Frisian prose works have provided the data for a study of written language forms that deviate from an 'imaginary' standard as either archaisms or 'Dutchisms'. The data were subjected to scrutiny from a syntactic, morphological and lexical angle as well as from the point of view of gender and sex. The final pages present examples of socalled 'turbo language’, as found in prose aimed at young people.
The author concludes 1) that the syntax of some authors is rather wobbly: 2) that numerous 'unnecessary' Dutchisms are used (i.e. they are replaceable by acceptable Frisian forms) and 3) that various writers zigzag inconsistently between unnecessary archaisms and unnecessary Dutchisms in one and the same piece of prose. Another conclusion is that the publishers have a responsibility here as well. There is no such thing as an absolute standard but with the help of a judiciously used dictionary it should be possible to steer an acceptable middle course between the tendency to write 'conservative' Frisian and everyday linguistic reality. This article is hopefully a modest contribution to the definition of this middle course.