Brabantian dialect

Compared to the other dialects and sublanguages of Dutch, Brabantian has historically had a major influence on the development of Dutch. During the Middle Ages, manuscripts from the 10th to 15th centuries show that Limburgish and then West Flemish were the predominant literary languages, but there is no evidence of literary manuscripts farther north.

In the second half of the 14th century, emphasis in society shifted to Brabant and so the Brabantian dialect became dominant. A migration to the north was occurring; the West Flemish dialect influenced the coastal area of the province of South Holland ('s-Gravenhage and Leiden), and migrants from Brabant came to the provinces of North Holland and Utrecht.

In the 16th century, when the Low Countries were in turmoil, another migration occurred from the Spanish Netherlands (roughly what is now Belgium) to the United Provinces of the Netherlands. That made the cultural elite move from the oppressive Spanish and Roman Catholic region to the more liberal (and Protestant) north. Dutch linguistics historian Nicoline van der Sijs[4] says that it is a popular myth that Brabantian was a dominant influence during the standardisation of Dutch from the 16th century. She says that Standard Dutch is a standardised Hollandic dialect. However, researchers of variance linguistics at the University of Gent[5] and Dutch linguists in Berlin[6] recognise the distinctive influence of Brabantian on the first Dutch standardisation in the 16th century. The first major formation of Standard Dutch also took place in Antwerp, where a Brabantian dialect is still spoken. That made the standard language develop mainly from Brabantian influence.

Brabantian is rather close to and contributed to the development of Standard Dutch. A characteristic phrase, houdoe ("take care"), derives from houd u goed (literally, "keep yourself all right"), but colloquial Dutch and Hollandic use doei ("bye").

In South Brabantian (Belgium), "Ale, salu(kes) e!", a calque from French "Allez!" and "Salut!", is a common greeting.

Brabantian dialects have a characteristic historic tendency toward accusativism, the use of the accusative case instead of the nominative case. While the cases themselves have fallen out of use in modern language, the accusative form survives in Brabantian, rather than the nominative case of the more northern dialects (nominativism). As the accusative case had different forms for masculine and feminine nouns, both genders have thus remained separate in Brabantian.

The first attempts at standardising Dutch were in the 1540s and based on the Brabantian dialect of Antwerp and its surroundings. However, after the Dutch Revolt, the Dutch economical and political focus shifted north to centre on the County of Holland, which dwindled the importance of Brabantian. Later attempts to establish a standard form of Brabantian have met little success. However, the new phenomenon of tussentaal is becoming widespread.

Position of Brabantian (beige) among the other minority languages, regional languages and dialects in the Benelux.