Nieuwleusen - Language

Language

The dialect of Nieuwleusen is a variety of Low Saxon. Several dialect maps represent Nieuwleusen as being partly or wholly within the Zuud-Drèents dialectal area. The town lying in Overijssel rather than in the bordering province of Drenthe, however, its dialect (traditionally called simply Ni'jlusens or plat) is often seen as Sallaans rather than Drents. The dialect singer Aalt Westerman from Nieuwleusen, for instance, is billed as 'the troubadour of the Sallaans language'.

The dialect researcher Harrie Scholtmeijer has recently classed the Nieuwleusen dialect as neither Drèents nor Sallaans, but 'North Overijssels'. His categorisation, however, demarcates the main dialect groups within the province of Overijssel and does not examine dialectal continuity across provincial borders. Scholtmeijer supports the view that the Nieuwleusen dialect does not share Sallaans features such as an umlaut in diminutives, or short or drawn-out vowels in certain words that have long vowels in North Overijssels (as in Southwest-South Drèents). The late dialect researcher Hendrik Entjes, who spent the latter part of his life living in Nieuwleusen, has suggested that there is, or used to be, no single Nieuwleusen dialect and that features from both Drèents and Sallaans are found:

• " has an old part, in the south, and a new part which came into existence when the Dedemsvaart was dug. The new part used to be called De Hulst. There were old farms on sandy plateaus which rose above the peat. But De Hulst never developed into a proper peat colony. Now, in the past I have made RND recordings. One in Nieuwleusen and one in De Hulst. But now that I compare the two, I notice that my informants in De Hulst were from those older farms. When, by contrast, I go to the people who are descended from those peat workers, from the time when the Dedemsvaart was dug, there is a clear difference in dialect. Here they express this by saying: the north and the south do speak a bit differently. But what they mean is: the descendants of the old inhabitants speak a bit differently from the descendants of those who came later. The old Vecht river area, for instance, says etten , but in the peat colonies one finds eten. I think this comes from Drente. And I am trying to find traces of that colonial language. One might then say that there is a peat colony dialect in Overijssel."

In accordance with a countrywide trend, the use of the dialect is dwindling in favour of Standard Dutch, and where it continues to be used it is increasingly influenced by the standard language. The dialect is used marginally in publications, for instance in the magazine of the Historical Association Ni'jluusn van vrogger. Some of its vocabulary and expressions have been mapped (for instance, see Schoemaker-Ytsma in the Bibliography).