CX nat champs

Was it Dutch or was it Flemish????

Compared by the speech in the Netherlands, Flemish is notable in that nearly
each hamlet or city has preserved its own unique dialect variant, so that a
person's place of origin, down to the level of a city quarter, is apparent
to people from the same region. This is so throughout the entire Flemish
territory, except where communities have been newly founded or their
uniqueness severely weakened by a strong foreign language influence or by
influx from other dialectical areas. There has been some recent upheaval
because the uniqueness and authenticity of many dialects is further
endangered by standard Dutch in the media and in education. In school,
children are prohibited from using dialectical vocabulary in their writing
and dialectally distinctive pronunciation in classroom conversation, and
sometimes even on the school playground. To counteract the decline, many
areas have started archiving their dialects, special school programs have
been started that teach children and adults to speak the local dialect, and
promotional campaigns have encouraged the use of the dialects in art,
literature, and music. The use of dialects appears to have gradually become
popular again to the point of being a source of pride for each community.
The dialect groups as they survived in Flanders have a distinct sound and
rhythm. The remarkably tonal and notably slower speech of Limburgish people
is for more westerly speakers traditional cause for mockery. Once a
television station asked two politicians, one from Limburg, the other from
West Flanders - where the fastest speech occurs - to comment on the subject,
'Which is better: slower or faster?' The hilarious outcome was that the
Limburger, who did speak notably slower, made his point in less than four
minutes, while the West Fleming needed over eight to make his. A similar
observation is noticed between the, interruptionless speech of Dutch people
in general, and the comparatively halting style of many Flemish speakers.
Ironically, the Flemish excel in their knowledge of standard Dutch to such
extent that in the former TV show, "Tien voor Taal" (broadcast on both
Flemish and Dutch public television from 1989 till 2005) their teams could
beat their Dutch opponents two out of three times in the language quiz. The
progam still continues in the Netherlands!

"Ted van de Weteringe" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Summaries, interviews, all in Dutch.
Belgium:

Holland:

Ted van de Weteringe said:

Summaries, interviews, all in Dutch.
Belgium:

Holland:

Don't these people know that national championships are
in December?

Bob Schwartz

Ted van de Weteringe said:

Summaries, interviews, all in Dutch.
Belgium:

Holland:

Thanks. The Dutch video is especially good if not quite as fast as the
Belgian.

Bret