Jacomine Nortier

A Moroccan accent in Dutch: a sociocultural style restricted to the Moroccan community?

In the major cities in the Western part of The Netherlands, a general “ethnic” accent is developing, which has characteristics of Moroccan languages (Moroccan, Arabic, and Berber). This accent is mainly used by young people in specific in-group situations. It is slightly different from the accent used by adult first generation learners of Dutch as a second language with a Moroccan background. Not only young people from Moroccan descent, but also young people with other ethnic backgrounds (both native Dutch and others) use this accent which will be abbreviated to MFD (Moroccan flavored Dutch) in the remainder of this article. We will address the following questions: • What are the characteristics of MFD? • Why is MFD based on Moroccan languages, rather than on any other language? • In what situations is MFD used? And how does the use of MFD interact with other group defining factors such as music, religion or clothing? • How does MFD interact with larger dynamic social developments such as politics and with other languages and dialects?

Ethnolects?: The emergence of new varieties among adolescents

In the summer of 2006, the 16th biannual Sociolinguistics Symposium was held, at the University of Limerick in Ireland. At this Symposium, a workshop titled “The Emergence of Ethnolects among Adolescents” was organized. The present volume of International Journal of Bilingualism consists of a collection of papers based on this workshop. First I will give a summary of the workshop in Limerick; next an outline of this volume will be given, based on the workshop, and finally I will point at some common themes that form a red line throughout the articles in this volume and which, therefore, are candidates for central points of attention in this relatively new field.

Characterizing Urban Youth Speech Styles in Utrecht and on the Internet

In the past decade there is a growing interest in Urban Youth Speech Styles (UYSS). In this article Dutch UYSS is the focus of attention. The basic question to be addressed is whether the identifying characteristics and functions of spoken UYSS can be used and recognized in written form on the Internet as well. There is no standardized form of UYSS and the use of it is restricted to members of specific subcultures, not necessarily linked to specific ethnic groups. First, linguistic and functional characteristics of UYSS as they are used in the Netherlands will be described. Linguistically, a distinction is made between lexical, grammatical and phonetic/prosodic aspects. Furthermore, a closer look will be taken at the use of UYSS on the Internet (mostly through rap) and examples of the use of UYSS in written comments on the rap videos will be presented and compared to the spoken varieties. It will be shown how written clues are used for identification purposes that are usually non-linguistic in oral encounters (i.e. classification of speech partners on the basis of what they look like, how they sound, etc.). Most of the analysis is based on a rap video by Relschoppers, a group of young Utrecht based Moroccan- and Turkish-Dutch rappers, and the comments on their video. In a separate section some attention is paid to Flemish participants in the Internet-discussions. They seem to use UYSS in a way that differs from their Dutch peers. Finally a short conclusion and outlook is given, showing that the question asked in the beginning can be answered affirmative: identifying characteristics and functions of UYSS can be used and recognized in written form on the Internet as well.

Urban Youth speech Styles in Kenya and the Netherlands

In this chapter, we compare Urban Youth Speech Styles (UYSS’s) in Nairobi, Kenya (Kiessling and Mous 2004) and in the western parts of the Netherlands as it has been documented around the major cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Den Haag and Utrecht (Dorleijn and Nortier 2012 and references there). This chapter is a first attempt at a Northern-European/African cross-continental comparison.

Jürgen Jaspers: De klank van de stad. Stedelijke meertaligheid en interculturele communicatie (red.). Leuven, ACCO, 2009. 219 blz.

De klank van de stad is geschreven naar aanleiding van een congres over hetzelfde thema, stedelijke meertaligheid (maart 2008, Antwerpen). De auteurs waren in meerderheid sprekers bij het congres die hun presentaties in soms wat gewijzigde vorm hebben opgeschreven. Iedereen die wel eens te maken heeft gehad met conference proceedings weet dat het een enorme prestatie is wanneer het boek binnen een jaar na het congres al beschikbaar is. Dat het bovendien ook nog eens een zeer leesbaar en actueel boek is geworden mag gerust worden gezien als een groot compliment aan het adres van de auteurs en vooral de redacteur, Jurgen Jaspers.