Zeelandic

Zeelandic (Zeêuws in Zeelandic, Zeeuws in Dutch) is a regional language spoken in the Dutch province of Zeeland and on the South Holland island of Goeree-Overflakkee. Commonly considered a Dutch dialect, it has notable differences mainly in pronunciation but also in grammar and vocabulary, which sets it clearly apart from Standard Dutch and makes comprehension by unskilled Dutch speakers difficult. Linguistically it is a dialect of West Flemish.

Origin

Zeelandic is a transitional regional language between Hollandic and West Flemish. In the Middle Ages and early modern age, Zeeland was claimed by the Count of Holland as well as the Count of Flanders, and the area was exposed to influence from both directions. The dialects clearly show a gradual increase of Hollandic elements as one goes northwards. Yet Zeelandic is fairly coherent with easily defined borders, as the broad sea-arms form strong isoglosses.

Hallmarks

The main differences from Standard Dutch are the following: Zeelandic has three rather than two grammatical genders, as a result of the fact that it retained the final schwas in feminine words; it kept the monophthongs [i] and [y] for ij and ui rather than breaking them into [ɛi] and [œy]; it umlauted most [aː]s into [ɛː]s; it renders the old Germanic [ai] and [au] as falling diphthongs ([eə] and [ɔə]), whereas Dutch merged them with etymological e's and o's; and finally it drops the h.