Hüning M., Vogl U. Middle Dutch - A short introduction

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press: André Bouwman & Bart Besamusca (eds.), Of Reynaert the Fox: Text and Facing Translation of the Middle Dutch Beast Epic Van den vos Reynaerde, 2009. — p. 257–271.Middle Dutch is the term used for the language varieties spoken between approximately 1150 and 1500 in the territory covered nowadays by the Netherlands and Flanders, the part of modern Belgium, where Flemish — the southern variety of the Dutch spoken in the Netherlands — is spoken. At that time there was no standard variety of Dutch, ‘Middle Dutch’ does not, therefore, refer to one specific language: it is a collective term used to designate several dialects spoken over several centuries. This implies a huge variability in the grammatical structure, the pronunciation and the spelling of Middle Dutch. Middle Dutch thus consisted mainly of spoken varieties, but the surviving texts show that, during the Middle Ages, it was also increasingly used as a written language.