Urkers is the local language of the municipality and former island of
Urk
Urk () is a municipality and a town in the Flevoland province in the central Netherlands.
Urk is first mentioned in historical records dating to the 10th century, when it was still an island in the Zuiderzee, an inland sea that would become part ...
, located on the west coast of the
Dutch province of
Flevoland
Flevoland () is the twelfth and youngest province of the Netherlands, established in 1986, when the southern and eastern Flevopolders, together with the Noordoostpolder, were merged into one provincial entity. It is in the centre of the countr ...
. Urk was an island until the middle of the 20th century. It was originally located in the
Zuiderzee
The Zuiderzee or Zuider Zee (; old spelling ''Zuyderzee'' or ''Zuyder Zee'') was a shallow bay of the North Sea in the northwest of the Netherlands, extending about 100 km (60 miles) inland and at most 50 km (30 miles) wide, with an o ...
, a bay of the
North Sea
The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. An epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian S ...
, which became an inland sea called
IJsselmeer
The IJsselmeer (; fy, Iselmar, nds-nl, Iesselmeer), also known as Lake IJssel in English, is a closed off inland bay in the central Netherlands bordering the provinces of Flevoland, North Holland and Friesland. It covers an area of with an a ...
when a dam was built to secure the Dutch coast against floods. Inhabitants of Urk had been mostly fishermen and still predominantly make their living from North Sea fishing.
Urkers is part of the
dialect continuum
A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of Variety (linguistics), language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulat ...
that links
Westphalian dialects in the North and East of Urk to the
Lower Franconian
Low Franconian, Low Frankish, NetherlandicSarah Grey Thomason, Terrence Kaufman: ''Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics'', University of California Press, 1991, p. 321. (Calling it "Low Frankish (or Netherlandish)".)Scott Shay ...
dialects, mainly in the South, West, and North-West of Urk. Standard Dutch, and
Afrikaans
Afrikaans (, ) is a West Germanic language that evolved in the Dutch Cape Colony from the Dutch vernacular of Holland proper (i.e., the Hollandic dialect) used by Dutch, French, and German settlers and their enslaved people. Afrikaans gra ...
are also part of the Lower Franconian group. Urkers is considered a part of the
Low Saxon
Low Saxon, also known as West Low German ( nds, Nedersassisch, Nedersaksies; nl, Nedersaksisch) are a group of Low German dialects spoken in parts of the Netherlands, northwestern Germany and southern Denmark (in North Schleswig by parts of th ...
group of languages despite the fact that it is quite extreme in that group and both geographically and linguistically at its edge.
Authors
The author Gerrit Pasterkamp has written books in Urkers, including translations of the Jewish and Christian
Psalms
The Book of Psalms ( or ; he, תְּהִלִּים, , lit. "praises"), also known as the Psalms, or the Psalter, is the first book of the ("Writings"), the third section of the Tanakh, and a book of the Old Testament. The title is derived ...
and
belletristic works.
There is at least one band, Leuster, that publishes some of their songs sung in Urkers on CD.
Documentation
There is a
crowdsourced
Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digita ...
online dictionary of Urkers and Dutch. The Urkers Dialect Circle has a small website collecting data on Urkers, including sample texts. See
Websites
A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wikipe ...
, below.
Recognition
Urkers is not recognized as a minority language by the Dutch government. A request to have an
ISO 639-3
ISO 639-3:2007, ''Codes for the representation of names of languages – Part 3: Alpha-3 code for comprehensive coverage of languages'', is an international standard for language codes in the ISO 639 series. It defines three-letter codes for i ...
code assigned to Urkers was deferred due to incomplete treatment of the scope the rest of
Low Saxon
Low Saxon, also known as West Low German ( nds, Nedersassisch, Nedersaksies; nl, Nedersaksisch) are a group of Low German dialects spoken in parts of the Netherlands, northwestern Germany and southern Denmark (in North Schleswig by parts of th ...
.
ISO change request 2009-039
/ref>
Sources
Literature
* Section ' in the Book by : ', , Den Haag
The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital of ...
2002,
External links
Urkers Dialekt Circle
Online dictionary Urkers ↔ Dutch
having some 975 entries in July, 2022.
{{Languages of the Benelux
Languages of the Netherlands
Dutch Low Saxon
Westphalian dialects
Dutch dialects
Culture of Flevoland
Urk