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Abstract:

Around 1930, the Standard Dutch pronunciation in the Netherlands sounded remarkably similar to the Standard Dutch still spoken today in Belgium. Interestingly, the two standards were aligned at one point, but after 1930, the Dutch standard started to shift away (H. Van de Velde 1996). The most notable aspects of this shift were, among others, the diphthongisation of the [e] and [o] sounds towards [ei] and [oʊ] and the devoicing of syllable-initial fricatives. Speakers in Belgium did not follow this shift, which led to the divergence we see today. There have been several attempts to explain this divergence on the basis of social factors: (i) there was not enough contact between the two countries (van den Toorn 1997) (ii) the Dutch standard evolved too fast, and Belgian speakers could not follow its pace (F. Van de Velde 2019) (iii) Belgian speakers did not want to sound like the Dutch (‘ethnocentrism’, Deprez 1985). Since there is very little data available – and we cannot go back in time to collect evidence – it is difficult to investigate these sociolinguistic tendencies in a historical context. Therefore, the theories are examined using an agent-based simulation model. The results show that a lack of contact between both countries can indeed lead to divergence in the model, but only if abroad travel is at least 5000 times less likely than domestic travel. The pace of language change in the Netherlands does not have a sizeable impact on convergence or divergence tendencies in Belgium in the model. High values for ethnocentrism in Belgian agents are able to lead to divergence in the model, as long as these high values are shared by the entire population.