Urkers is the local language of the municipality and former island of Urk, 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 ov ...

, 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 ...

, 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 ...

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 language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated vari ...

that links Westphalian dialects in the North and East of Urk to the Lower Franconian 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 gr ...

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 ...

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 digit ...

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 Wiki ...

, 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 ...

code assigned to Urkers was deferred due to incomplete treatment of the scope the rest of

.ISO change request 2009-039
/ref>

Sources

Literature

* Section ' in the Book by : ', , Den Haag 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