Taal en Tongval - Volume 78, Nummer 1, 2026

This article presents a recent, nationwide overview of home language use and multilingualism in the Netherlands. It draws on data from the Social Cohesion and Wellbeing (SSW) survey conducted by Statistics Netherlands (CBS) in four years (2019, 2021, 2023, and 2024), with a total sample of over 22,000 respondents aged 15 and older. The article examines which languages – including dialects and regional languages – are spoken at home, by whom and where, visualizes their regional distribution through language maps, and reports levels of multilingualism across population groups. Home language use is closely related to multilingualism: speakers of Dutch at home are less often multilingual, whereas speakers of Limburgish or other language varieties are more often multilingual. Among regional languages, multilingualism ranges from 62% for Low Saxon to 73% for Frisian and 84% for Limburgish. For other languages, over 80% of speakers are multilingual. Multilingualism varies by province and degree of urbanization and is more common among higher-educated individuals, younger people, men, those without income, and first-generation migrants.

This contribution concerns series of interrelated vowel shifts (‘chain shifts’) in the dialects spoken in and around the southeastern Flemish town of Ronse, which lies almost on the Dutch-French language border. The aim is to better substantiate the facts systematically described by the late Johan Taeldeman and his interpretation of them as a Great Vowel Shift. To this end, Taeldeman’s data (presented here in diplomatic edition) are first compared with those from reliable other sources. Two stages of change can be distinguished in the data (the first with merger, the second without), the second being specific to the Ronse dialect. The patterns that emerge are interpreted in the light of older and younger approaches to sound shifts. Subsequently the question is addressed of why the Ronse dialect added a second, internally motivated series of vowel shifts to the series of shifts that had already taken place earlier in the other (South-) East Flemish dialects. The second series exhibits one striking shift that runs counter to empirically and theoretically solidly grounded universal patterns that sound shifts tend to exhibit. This ‘unnatural’ shift seems to be related to the influence of the dialect of Brussels, with which Ronse, like Ghent, formed a historical city network. Further research could focus on whether and how the long-term and intensive contact with Picard played a role and the nature, cause and development of the heterogeneity of the Ronse dialect identified by previous researchers.

This study examines differences in Frisian language use between L1 speakers, who acquired Frisian from birth, and L2 speakers, who learned Frisian later as a second language, with particular attention to variation across proficiency levels. The analysis draws on data from a large-scale sociolinguistic survey combining sociological and linguistic questionnaires. Focusing on speakers who actively use Frisian, the study investigates lexical and grammatical variation, especially Dutch influence through borrowings. The results show that L2 speakers use fewer Dutch lexical borrowings and display a stronger preference for Standard Frisian vocabulary than L1 speakers, likely reflecting formal learning and heightened language monitoring. In contrast, differences in grammatical borrowings are limited, with an L1 advantage emerging primarily in more complex structures. These findings indicate that both high-level L2 performance and domain-specific L1 advantages coexist, underscoring the importance of linguistic domain and proficiency in research on minority language competence and language contact.