I printed out some papers, otherwise I'd forget all that I want to say.
Good day, my name is Yorick
and I'm from Haaltert, that's a municipality in between Aalst and Ninove.
Since the last generation our language isn't taught to our children anymore,
while most people here, 40 or older
are still able to speak it.
My old man and my mother have tried
to raise me to speaking proper Flemish,
but they only half succeeded
because I can speak properly,
but when I'm in my own neighbourhoud, it switches to Haalterts by itself.
I learned most of the language by listening very carefully to my dad,
and to the people in our street.
On top of that I bought two books
from the library, next to the church
about the language of Greater Haaltert.
Those books are written by Gilbert Redant,
that's...
the founding father of the Haaltertish spelling.
Without him there would have been close to no documentation of Haalterts.
God rest his soul.
The Haaltertish language isn't being maintained like Aalsters of Ninoofs
because Haaltert is in fact not bigger than a village
and there's no carnival here either,
whilst that's just such a cultural boost for local languages,
for local spoke.
I'm doing my best to babble as much Haalterts as I can
to my family and friends,
and I have written some songs in Haalterts
to be accompanied by accordion or hip hop music.
Haalterts is a Little-Brabantic language
or a dialect.
It's actually Brabantic with a lot of East-Flemish influences,
causing multiple types of conjugation
which stem from both regional languages.
There is, for example:
"È stontj gèjer"
and "stontj" is a Brabantic past tense, whilst there's also
"Oë beldjegen èjer"
and the conjugations which end with:
"-egen", "-tjegen" or "-tegen"
are from East-Flemish descent.
In the Middle Ages we spoke East-Flemish here,
but because of the territorial shifts of Brabantic, it changed.
Haalterts is not just Flemish with a differentiating pronunciation:
we have a large vocabulary that proper Flemish or Dutch doesn't have.
For example:
"Noste" = next
"Pertang" = nevertheless
"En Pantomiene" = an occurrence that's almost impossible
Ouvèjerdeg = stupid and thrasonical
"Ne karrot'ntrekker" = somebody who's pretending
Gèjeloeëgen = looking at something with longing
"Ne pèjeremiejester" = a veterinarian
"Ne cinnemamaan" = somebody who lies or speaks with great gestures
"Drolleg" = nauseous
"Nen bezz'ager" = somebody who caries the money
Besides vocabulary, thare's also a couple of length and weight measurements
which are still used here or at least are still known to the people.
For example:
An "el".
This is the distance from your elbow to your hand
and that's about...
72 centimeter (28'3 inches).
Then a "dagwand":
that's the area an ox can plow in one day.
That's...
3300 m² / 3946.8 yrd²
There's also a lot of folks who use "pond" as a weight measurement.
they've converted it to half a kilo (1'1 pound),
but it's actually closer to 430 grams (0'9 pound).
I'll give you some sayings in Haalterts:
"È zal zoëne loeëp oël'n" = Something he won't want to do
"D' endj za' 'nt outjwoëz'n" = we'll see in the end
"Dad Ooz'n Iejer doër Zè goed eet'n instekt" = something people say of a useless person
"A va' krommen oës agen" = pretend to not understand
and lastly:
"Steek et woër da ter giejen otto's roë'n" = go play in traffic (kinda)
And last but not least, I'd like to ask all people who are still able to speak Haalterts from the bottom of my heart
to teach your children and grand-children Haalterts
because it's just a rich and beautiful language.
And if you're not from Haaltert or just...
...or just are unable to speak Haalterts,
to still do your best to learn some.
You can take some from this video or you could buy a book from Gilbert Redant, etc.
Maybe the day will come that nobody will be able to speak or understand Haalterts
and I hope that this footage could still give an idea
about how it sounded
and what the syntax and conjugations were like.
And last but not least: three Haaltertish tongue twisters to practise:
The first one is:
"Wa riek ek ik ier? Riek ek ik ier kak of kak ek ik ier?"
The second one is:
"D' esp angd on de ska, es 't dij van a, kom pak s' a."
And the third one is:
"Droë ra oër'n in e penneke gekloesjt, as ke ze lotj vaal'n, tij' zè ze gebloesjt."
Allez, bye bye, take good care and "the balls", eh!