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 Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

province of Flevoland. 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, epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the ...

, which became an inland sea called IJsselmeer 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 varie ...

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 gra ...

are also part of the Lower Franconian group. Urkers is considered a part of the Low Saxon 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 is a category of writing, originally meaning beautiful or fine writing. In the modern narrow sense, it is a label for literary works that do not fall into the major categories such as fiction, poetry, or drama. The phrase is sometimes used pejora ...

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 Low Saxon.ISO change request 2009-039
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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