Linguistic Distance From Standard Dutch
After Limburgish, Gronings is the dialect with the farthest distance from Standard Dutch. Reasons for this are vocabulary and pronunciation. The Gronings vocabulary is quite different from Dutch, for example:
- Gronings: Doe hest n hail ìnde luu dij scheuvellopen kinnen
- Dutch: Jij hebt heel veel werknemers die kunnen schaatsen
- English: You have a lot of employees who can ice skate
The pronunciation differs from the writing system. The combination -en is most of the times pronounced like -'n. The Groningen people speak quite fast compared to the Dutch people, with the result that a lot of words are pronounced together as one word. Thus the example sentence is pronounced in English like "doo'estn hyil'eande lu dy-skowfle-low'm kinn". In the word skowfle, the k can also be pronounced like the Dutch -g and the -ow is pronounced like in Australian English . The Dutch pronunciation of that sentence is like "y'I habt hail vail warke'naymers dee cøhna sgahtse", in which the -g- is pronounced as in Dutch itself.
Another reason is the fact that Gronings is a dialect with a lot of own expressions. One third of the language consists of these expressions. In the example sentence n hail ìnde is an example of those expressions. Many of these are given in the 'Nieuwe Groninger Woordenboek' by K. ter Laan published in 1977, (1280pp).
Because of this far distance from Standard Dutch and the official status of the neighbouring Frisian, Grunnegs is considered as a separate language by some of its native speakers, while linguists consider it part of Dutch Low Saxon.
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