The Earliest Stage of Language Planning: "The First Congress" Phenomenon 9783110848984, 9783110135305

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The Earliest Stage of Language Planning

Contributions to the Sociology of Language

65

Editor

Joshua A. Fishman

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

The Earliest Stage of Language Planning The "First Congress" Phenomenon

Edited by Joshua A. Fishman

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

1993

Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague) is a Division of Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin.

© Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Earliest stage of language planning : the "first congress" phenomenon / edited by Joshua A. Fishman. p. cm. — (Contributions to the sociology of language ; 65) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 3-11-013530-2 (cloth : acid-free paper) 1. Language planning — Congresses. I. Fishman, Joshua A. II. Series. P40.5.L35E18 1993 306.4'49-dc20 92-47497

Deutsche Bibliothek — Cataloging-in-Publication Data The earliest stage of language planning : the "first congress" phenomenon / ed. by Joshua A. Fishman. — Berlin ; New York : Mouton de Gruyter, 1993 (Contributions to the sociology of language ; 65) ISBN 3-11-013530-2 NE: Fishman, Joshua A. [Hrsg.]; GT

© Copyright 1993 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin 30. All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Typesetting and Printing: Arthur Collignon GmbH, Berlin. — Binding: Lüderitz & Bauer, Berlin. Printed in Germany.

A candle in memory of the Tshernovits Conference: Gone but not forgotten

ΊΙΠ nsTV TOD —11 χ

Contents Introduction: Exploring an overlooked sociolinguistic phenomenon (The First Congress for Language X) Joshua A. Fishman

1

The First Language Congress for Afrikaans Lloyd Holliday

11

The Academic Conference on the Reform of Belorussian Orthography and Alphabet (Minsk 1926): A unique non-event? Paul Wexler

31

The First International Catalan Language Congress, Barcelona, 13-18 October, 1906 Joan Marti i Castell

47

Integration vs. particularism: The undeclared issue at the first "Dutch Congress" in 1849 Roland Willemyns

69

The First Congress for Hebrew, or When is a congress not a congress? Lewis Glinert

85

The First Congress of Hindi Raja Ram Mehrotra

117

The first efforts to promote and develop Indonesian Anton M. Moeliono

129

The emergence of the Korean script as a symbol of Korean identity Harald Haarmann 143 The first philological conference for the establishment of the Macedonian alphabet and the Macedonian literary language: Its precedents and consequences Victor A. Friedman

159

viii

Contents

The First Congress for Malay Asmah Hajl Omar

The First Congress of Mayan Languages of Guatemala (1949) Julia Becker Richards

181

199

Language purism and propaganda: The First Congress for Polish Karol Janicki and Adam Jaworski

219

The First Workshop on Quechua and Aymara Writing Nancy H. Hornberger

233

The First Congress for Tok Pisin in 1973 S. A. Wurm

257

The First Turkish Language Congress Jacob M. Landau

271

The 1928 Ukrainian orthography Andrij Hornjatkevyc

293

Senegalese languages in education: The First Congress of Wolof Omar Ka

305

The Tshernovits Conference revisited: The First World Conference for Yiddish, 85 years later Joshua A. Fishman

321

The "First Congress" phenomenon: Arriving at some general conclusions Joshua A. Fishman

333

Topical Index

349

Introduction: Exploring an overlooked sociolinguistic phenomenon (The First Congress for Language X) Joshua A. Fishman

Before the beginning Before arriving at the realization that there was a more generalizable sociolinguistic phenomenon such as "first congresses", there was in my mind no more than the awareness of two such congresses: the Indonesian congress of 1928, which has been mentioned briefly several times (e. g., Alisjahbana 1976) and the Yiddish congress of 1908, which I myself have investigated (Fishman 1980, 1988 a and 1988 b). Since both of these conferences are recognizably similar in their intimate relationship to more encompassing nationalist political (or at least cultural) autonomy movements, it is perhaps understandable why I reached the premature conclusion that all first congresses were of this type. Even had that been the case, there would have been ample reason to explore the phenomenon further. From the little I knew of the Indonesian case (I had visited Indonesia in the early 70s in connection with my co-directorship of the Language Planning Processes Project and I had the rare opportunity of meeting then with individuals who had been present at the 1928 congress), it was clear to me that it was different from the Yiddish congress in many ways: in type of organizational sponsorship, in its exposure to colonial governmental regulation and, above all, in its focus on a lingua franca (i. e., not on a native vernacular of Indonesia) as its language of future national unity. There must be other dimensions of difference, I said to myself, and I decided that after I completed my exploration of the Yiddish congress I would return to the exploration of those other dimensions and to doing so on an even broader base of contrasted cases, provided, of course, I could locate the other first congresses that my intuition told me must have been convened, at least in the nationalist context. The conclusion of the 1988 celebrations of the 80th anniversary of the Yiddish congress (and the publication of my final studies concerning that congress

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during that year) "liberated" me, so to speak, to expand this topic comparatively, although I still assumed that the phenomenon in question was essentially restricted to the nationalist context.

Why should this phenomenon be explored? The sociology of language is centrally concerned not only with societally patterned behavior through language but with societally patterned behavior toward language, whether positive or negative. Not only are language attitudes of concern in this connection but also all aspects of the organized (indeed, even centrally organized) behaviors toward language which have begun to be know as "language planning". Language congresses are easily recognizable as early efforts at both corpus planning and status planning, i. e., efforts to purify, enrich and/or standardize the language itself, on the one hand, and efforts to protect, foster and require the language, on the other hand. When language planning efforts succeed in the sociopolitical realm they turn increasingly (and, ultimately, solely) to corpus planning. Although the two, status planning and corpus planning, should theoretically not be too far "out of synch" with one another, many empirical questions remain as to whether first congresses differ in the amount of attention which they pay to these two aspects of language planning and, if so, whether such differences are possibly related to the degree of status security that exists at the time that first congresses are convened. The various models of the language planning flow-chart (see, e. g., Fishman 1973, Rubin et al. 1977, Eastman 1983, Cobarrubias — Fishman 1983, and Cooper 1989) all posit a beginning stage at which time no authoritative policy decisions have yet been reached. First congresses pertain to just such a "pre-natal" or embryonic stage, when the faithful are being rallied for the first time so that a course of action can be decided upon, responsibilities can be allocated, priorities can be set and authorities can be empowered. It is primarily because of its explicit recognition of this early and formative stage, indeed, perhaps even just the beginning of this earliest stage, that the study of first congresses may constitute a conceptually and strategically worthwhile step ahead in the ongoing efforts to better understand the entire language planning process flow-chart. The decisions and the errors that characterize this stage may long remain to guide and to complicate the subsequent stages of the

Introduction: Exploring an overlooked sociolinguistic phenomenon

3

entire process, perhaps particularly for the languages of less fortunate speech communities which fail to be overtaken by advantageous events that can break them out of their initial problematic contexts.

Characteristics of our sample A few months of intensive correspondence quickly confirmed the correctness of my initial hunch that there must have been many, many first congresses. Of the 30-some that were ultimately confirmed in this fashion (none being excluded for substantive reasons, i. e., all were retained, even if they did not seem to fit into the preconceived mold of nationalist related congresses, except for obviously academic congresses convened for obviously academic purposes), 18 are represented in this volume. The dozen or so that fell by the wayside did so either because the scholars familiar with them had competing commitments that made it impossible for them to meet a generous deadline or because no one could be located to handle them. A set of ten questions was circulated to all participants to serve as a guide to their discussions, but no attempt was made to meticulously keep them to each of these points or to keep them from including others. Although, as mentioned, obviously academic first congresses for obviously academic purposes alone were ruled out, any academically sponsored or hosted first congresses aiming at immediate and broader status and/or corpus impact were admitted into the universe of study. The 18 first congresses with which we have wound up in this volume seem to be fully representative of the total universe that was initially located.1 Table 1 shows the continental distribution of the languages that these 18 first congresses deal with. Clearly, European congresses constitute a plurality, but the phenomenon we are about to investigate is also clearly not a European one alone, and Asian congresses seem to have occurred almost as frequently as European ones. It remains to be seen whether the congresses in one part of the world have differed materially, either in input or in consequences, from those occurring elsewhere. With respect to the time frame of the first congresses, Table 2 reveals that we are dealing almost entirely with occurrences during the past 150 years. The only and obvious exception to this generalization is the Korean case. Roughly one third of the remaining cases took place before World War 1, roughly one third between World War 1 and World War 2, and one third since approximately the end of World War 2. It will be inter-

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Table 1 Continental distribution of the languages whose first congresses are discussed in this volume Europe: n = 8 Belorussian Catalan Dutch in Belgium Macedonian Polish Turkish* Ukrainian Yiddish Americas: n = 2 Mayan Languages Quechua and Aymara Africa: n = 2 Afrikaans Wolof Asia: n = 6 Hebrew** Hindi Indonesian Korean Malay Tok Pisin * Turkish pertains to both Turkey in Europe and Turkey in Asia. ** The Hebrew first congress took place in Palestine but was essentially planned, directed and primarily attended by European-born Zionists.

esting to note, as we familiarize ourselves with the 18 cases that follow, whether those congresses occurring roughly at the same time (e. g., prior to World War I) share any common features, particularly with others occurring in the same region and, if so, whether they do so more than they share common features with congresses in other regions and periods in history. It would appear from Table 2 that there have been no European first congresses, other than the Polish one, since the end of the Second World War, i. e., that only Third World first congresses have been convened since then. On the other hand, among the roughly half dozen first congresses held before the First World War, three pertain to European settings and two more (Hebrew and Afrikaans) pertain to European configurations "transported" to Africa and the Near East. These widely

Introduction: Exploring an overlooked sociolinguistic phenomenon Table 2 When did the first congresses take place? Korean Dutch in Belgium Hindi Afrikaans Hebrew Catalan Yiddish Belorussian Ukrainian Indonesian Turkish Macedonian Mayan languages Malay Tok Pisin Wolof Quechua-Aymara Polish

about

1450 1849 1893 1896 1903 1906 1908 1926 1927 1928 1932 1944 1949 1952 1973 1981 1983 1984

differing proportions of European involvement in first congresses probably reflect the strikingly differing rates of sociocultural modernization characterizing Europe, on the one hand, and most of the rest of the world, on the other hand. Our original nationalist association with first congresses would agree well with the above contrast, since nationalist directed liberation and modernization efforts typically occurred much earlier in Europe than elsewhere. But, if, as appears likely from the mere naming of the cases included in this volume, other types of modernization and vernacular consciousness movements must also be considered in connection with first congresses, then the discrepant Korean case among the pre-World War 1 first congresses and the discrepant Polish case among the post-World War 2 first congresses both deserve special attention in order to clarify their anomalous timing and the nature of their claim to first congress status.

The agendas of first congresses How the "firstness" of first congresses comes to expression would seem to be the heart of the matter. Is this "firstness" recognizable in connection with characteristics of those who organize/sponsor the congresses, attend

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them, make presentations at them, the topics or balance of topics constituting their agendas, their opponents (or the characteristics of those who refuse to attend them, if there are such), their resolutions or decisions, their follow-through to post-congress implementation, their rate of success and the degree to which they are remembered in subsequent years and become part of the lore and mythology of speech communities? Our contributors were asked to give particular attention to these questions and, fortunately, many of them did so. Nevertheless, if the above questions are to be seriously pursued from the point of view of what exactly makes a first congress different from subsequent congresses, it will be necessary to examine a representative sample of subsequent congresses as well and that task goes considerably beyond the limits of the current effort. Accordingly, we may not be able to come to grips with the issue of "firstness" per se, but the issue of agenda characteristics can be addressed to some extent nonetheless, and it can be contextualized in connection with other characteristics of the languages involved and the first congresses convened on their behalf.

The question of "success" The most difficult question that can be addressed to a first congress is whether it was "successful", i. e. whether its resolutions or the efforts which it set into motion can be said to have attained their goals to some immediate and substantial degree. Causality is always difficult to demonstrate unambiguously in socio-historical studies because of the cooccurrence of many different processes and influences. In connection with those whose first congress was associated with nationalist movements for liberation and modernization one would have to demonstrate that subsequent changes in language status or corpus are directly relatable to the first congresses per se rather than to any of the myriad other co-occurring and subsequently occurring nationalist efforts. Furthermore, any pursuit of this issue must take into account the possible differences between first congresses in terms of their sponsorship, organization and size, on the one hand, and such contextual issues as the nature of the opposition to them and the degree of political and cultural tension by which they are accompanied and surrounded, on the other hand. Thus there probably should not be the same standard of "success" for a brief congress involving a dozen individuals and for another involving over 700 participants for a full week.

Introduction: Exploring an overlooked sociolinguistic phenomenon

1

Similarly, failure too can come due to entirely extraneous factors, factors that essentially have nothing to do with the first congress other than proximity in time. Nevertheless, it would be instructive to know which of our 18 first congresses were the most successful, more or less in their own right, by virtue of events which they themselves set in motion, and whether the more successful congresses (by some criterion of success) as a whole can be differentiated from the less successful ones on one or more of the formal dimensions that have been mentioned above.

In summary First congresses are worthy of study because they may provide us with insight into the earliest stage (the pre-stage) of the total language planning process. Increasingly, people and peoples have organized to make their vernaculars conform to the image of "the good language" to which they separately subscribe. They have organized to provide their vernaculars with greater longevity and to assure them the most prestigious functions (or co-functions) of their respective sociocultural establishments. In order to discharge these functions appropriately, these people and peoples have organized to make their vernaculars more all encompassing, more standardized in grammar, spelling and even pronunciation, freer of influences or "contamination" from other languages (particularly, from historically contra-indicated languages), more in accord with a model of the language characteristic of a particularly favored geographic region, social stratum or historical period. Obviously, there is a great deal of decision making involved in the total language planning process and first congresses constitute the very beginning of the long chain of decisions and implementations yet to come. This beginning, of course, is itself the byproduct of circumstances and decisions that have come before it. However, the beginning is also, willynilly, the progenitor of countless directions, choices, priorities, successes and failures yet to come. Having been largely overlooked by sociolinguistic scholarship before, we are about to depart on the first world-wide tour of first congresses, in the hope of mapping out some of the major features of this generally unreported or at least drastically under-reported phenomenon. After our initial spade-work is done, others can then undertake contrasting tours of this same phenomenon, or even re-analyze the data that we will present,

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in accord with a variety (and doubtlessly with an improved array) of theoretical and methodological preferences of their own choosing. We can only claim to have been the first to recognize the potential of this topic and, like the first congresses that we will now begin to describe, we can only hope that we will not be the last to seriously attend to the phenomenon that is of concern to us.2

Notes 1. Several of the write-ups of first congresses that could not be completed in time for inclusion in this volume will be presented in a special issue of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language to be devoted to this topic. This issue, now expected to appear in 1993, will provide readers with an opportunity to judge whether any of proposed integrative conclusions to be suggested in Chapter 20 are cross-validated on a new sample of cases. 2. This introduction was written to reflect the state of our knowledge pertaining to first congresses prior to, rather than after, undertaking the collective efforts reflected in this volume. It eschews any pretense at omniscience or at being able to predict what the ultimate conclusions would be, even though these conclusions were already known to this writer when this introduction was written.

References Alisjahbana, Takdir S. 1976 Language planning for modernization: The case of Indonesian and Malaysian. The Hague: Mouton. Cobarrubias, Juan—Joshua A. Fishman (eds.) 1983 Progress in language planning: International perspectives. Berlin: Mouton. Cooper, Robert L. 1990 Language planning and social change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eastman, Carol. M. 1983 Language planning: An introduction. San Francisco: Chandler and Sharp. Fishman, Joshua A. 1980 "Attracting a following to high-culture functions for a language of everyday life: The role of the Tshernovits Language Conference in the 'Rise of Yiddish'", International Journal of the Sociology of Language 24: 43—73. [Reprinted in Yiddish: Turning to life. Amsterdam: John Benjamins (1991). 255-283.] 1988 a "Der hebreyisher opruf af der tshernovitser konferents", Afn shvel 271: 8 — 13. [Reprinted in Yiddish: Turning to life. Amsterdam: John Benjamins (1991). 284—290. Translated into English ("The Hebraist response to the Tshernovits Conference") in Semitic Studies in Honor of Wolf Leslau, vol. 1. Alan Kaye et al. (ed.), Wiesbaden, Otto Harrasowitz, 1991, 437-448.]

Introduction: Exploring an overlooked sociolinguistic phenomenon 1988b

9

"Nosn birnboyms dray tshernovitser konferentsn", Tsukunft 95, 1: 85-90. [Translated into English ("Nathan Birnbaum's three 'rendezvous' in Tshernovits") in Gregory Guy et al. (eds.), Festschrift for William Labov, in press.] Fishman, Joshua A. (ed.) 1973 Advances in language planning. The Hague: Mouton. Rubin, Joan —Björn Jernudd —Jyotirindra DasGupta — Charles Ferguson—Joshua A. Fishman (eds.) 1977 Language Planning Processes. The Hague: Mouton.

The First Language Congress for Afrikaans1 Lloyd Holliday

There were more than 5 language congresses concerning the language of the Afrikaners at a "national"2 level between 1890 and 1910. Since the first of these conferences was in essence a conference to promote the use of Dutch, my focus in this chapter falls on the second conference, which was quite consciously called Di Eerste Afrikaanse Taalkongres [The First Afrikaans Language Congress]. Despite its title, paradoxically this conference marks the closing years of the 1st Language Movement which was spearheaded by the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners (GRA) [Fellowship of True Afrikaners], The proceedings of and motions tabled at this conference were a direct reflection of the preceding years of the history of the GRA and its leadership, which therefore form a substantial part of this chapter. Although that was not its intention, retrospectively the conference was more of a consummation of past efforts than a provider of a new stimulus to the Afrikaans language, except in one decision. The motion to start a new journal, Ons Klyntji [Our Little One], in addition to the GRA's weekly newspaper Die Afrikaanse Patriot [The Afrikaans Patriot], the only other exclusively Afrikaans publication, provided a new forum to spread the written form of the language. In reality, however, the publication of the journal was the work of a handful of the original remaining members of the GRA, and did not depend on the Congress for support.

Background and status of Afrikaans by mid 19th century Afrikaans, currently one of the two official languages of South Africa and spoken by about 16% of the population (Holliday 1989; in press) as a mother tongue, evolved from Dutch. Within 50 years after the Dutch colonized the Cape in 1652, travellers remarked on the local non-standard Cape Dutch dialect, (see Valkhoff 1971; Botha 1983; Jordaan 1974; Markey 1982; Gilbert and Makhudu 1984; Den Besten 1978; Combrink 1978; for arguments about whether Afrikaans is a Creole or not). By the

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mid 19th century it had become for many people in southern Africa of more than one ethnic origin, their mother tongue and only language. Watts (1976: 43 — 44) estimates that in the whole of southern Africa there were in 1890/1891 248,000 speakers of English and 372,000 speakers of Afrikaans from European ethnic origin. To the latter number of Afrikaans speakers at the end of the 19th century must also be added approximately 400,000 speakers of Afrikaans from various other ethnic origins including indigenous inhabitants (Steyn 1980: 124). However, this language, referred to as Kitchen Dutch or Cape Dutch, was not regarded as a literary language suitable for use in the church, state or education. Of Afrikaans, the Chief Justice of the Cape Colony, Lord J. H. de Villiers, an anglicized Afrikaner, said in 1876: Poor in the number of its words, weak in its inflections, wanting in accuracy of meaning and incapable in expressing ideas connected with the higher spheres of thought, it will have to undergo great modification before it will be able to produce a literature worthy of the name. [The effort] would be more usefully employed in appropriating that rich and glorious language which is ready to our hands as a literary language of first rank, (quoted in Steyn 1980: 139)

Others, including members of the Cape Dutch Reformed Synod of October 1880, cast a racist slur on the language calling it the "Hotnotstaal"3 [language of the Hottentots] (see Scholtz 1975: 78, 93, 96-99; Steyn 1980: 167-171, 468; Davenport 1966: 38). In what was by the 1860s a British Colony with two independent Trekker Republics to the north, English culture was predominant. The educated Dutch-speaking aristocracy in the cities increasingly embraced the English language, politics, and culture, whilst in the rural areas "the spoken language was generally an immature form of Afrikaans, unsupported ... by any significant cultural activity; and unsupported by a literature ..." (Davenport 1966: 3). Afrikaans itself had no legal status until 1925, but the legal status that Dutch had enjoyed at the time of the British occupation in 1806 had gradually been eroded as the Cape government pursued an active policy of Anglicization and by the 5 July 1822 proclamation of Lord Charles Somerset, Governor of the Cape Colony, English became the exclusive language of government and justice, also to be encouraged in the Dutch Reformed Church. From 1865 English became the exclusive medium of education in the Cape Colony. In the northernmost Trekker Republic of the Transvaal, the 1858 constitution (Steyn 1980: 133) contained no stipulation of an official

The First Language Congress for Afrikaans

13

language, even though the constitution itself was written in High Dutch. The constitution of the Orange Free State declared Dutch to be the official language, and made several prescriptions re language use, including the stipulation that Dutch must be the medium of education for at least half of the school subjects from standard two upwards (Steyn 1980: 133). However, English exercised a great influence in both states, especially the Transvaal, beginning with the gold rush that started in 1886, so that by 1900 it was certainly the predominant language. But despite competition from two fully fledged languages, English on the one hand spoken by the politically and economically dominant group, and Standard Dutch on the other accepted by these very selfsame speakers of Afrikaans in the 19th century as their real mother tongue, Afrikaans emerged by the mid 20th century as one of the two official languages of South Africa and a language of tertiary education fully capable of supporting all the higher functions of language.

Antecedents to the First Afrikaans language movement The movement to gain acceptance for Afrikaans as the national language and mother tongue of the Afrikaner people was initiated in 1874 as part of a larger resurgence of Afrikaner nationalism (Davenport 1966; Roberge 1990). The Conservative Party having won the 1874 election in Britain, Lord Carnavon renewed British endeavors to form a confederation of southern African states under British hegemony, similar to the 1867 federation of Canada. In 1868 Basutoland (current day Lesotho) was annexed. The 1867 discovery of diamonds, led to the annexation of the diamond fields in 1871, which was disputed by the Orange Free State. Further north the opening in 1873 of the Lydenberg gold mines began what was eventually the Gold Rush to the Witwatersrand in 1886. In 1872 The Cape Colony was granted responsible government and Sir Theophilus Shepstone annexed the Transvaal Republic in 1877. This led to disputes between the British government and the two sovereign Trekker Republics, which "divided Cape Afrikaner's loyalities and made them conscious of their blood ties with the emigrant trekkers" (Davenport 1966: 11). In the larger arena of official public life centered around Cape Town, as far as language was concerned, the fight was for a wider acceptance of High Dutch, not Afrikaans. In Cape Town, Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr (Onze Jan), the editor of the Volkswiend, amalgamated his paper with

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De Zuid Afrikaan in 1871. His newspaper campaigns led directly to the formation of Dutch-speaking farmers' associations, known as boeren vereeniging. Onze Jan later became the leader of the Afrikaner Bond4 and led the struggle for Afrikaner nationalism in the Cape Parliament, but he always remained a supporter of Dutch as the national language (Lantern 1975: 56-57). The language movement for Afrikaans, itself, began in Paarl, a town in the wine-growing area of South Africa, some 30 miles from the capital of Cape Town, and for the most part appealed to "that part of the people that lived in mental poverty, that understood Dutch to some extent but could not express themselves adequately and easily through it" (Nienaber 1959). It is significant that the movement started not in the capital where English predominated, nor in the trekker republics where Dutch was the language of government, nor even in the rural regions of the Cape Colony least under British cultural influence, but in an area with a long settled and stable Afrikaner population, which enjoyed a good education, a rich cultural and religious life, as well as being within easy access of the capital and its press. The original settlers of this area were French speaking Huguenots who came to the Cape circa 1688. Many of the early participants in the Afrikaans language movement were proud of this heritage,5 in particular its leader the Rev. S. J. du Toit. One could speculate that, although by this time the Huguenots had long been fully assimilated to the Dutchspeaking population and French had died out circa 1750 (Steyn 1980: 111), because they owed less psychological allegiance to the motherland and its language, i. e. High Dutch, these descendants of the Huguenots were more prepared than their counterparts of Dutch and German descent, to forge a wholly new African destiny for themselves as "Afrikaners" by promoting for socio-political purposes the indigenous Dutch "creole" that was in reality the everyday language of the majority of the non-Bantu 6 non-English speaking population.

Founding of the GRA The Rev. S. J. du Toit graduated from the Stellenbosch Theological School in 1872, and after various temporary posts in the Cape and Transvaal, he accepted the pastoral call of the newly established North Paarl Congregation on 28 Sept. 1875.

The First Language Congress for Afrikaans

15

In the meantime on 7 September 1872 Dr Arnoldus Pannevis writing under the pseudonym Een Vriend van het Nuttige [A Friend of the Useful] suggested in De Zuid-Afrikaan [The South African] that the Bible be translated into Afrikaans for the sake of those who did not understand the Dutch State Bible. His chief aim was not the promotion of Afrikaans, but to make the Bible available to the so-called Cape Coloured community. C. P. Hoogenhout, also a Dutch immigrant, a school teacher near Wellington, was converted under the influence of Pannevis and they became lifelong friends. Hoogenhout supported the idea in the press and he actually translated Matthew 28 into Afrikaans. In 1873 he wrote Die Geskiedenis van Josef voor Kinders en Huissouwens, in hulle eige Taal Geskrijwe deur een vriend. [The History of Joseph for children and households, written in their own language by a friend]. It was published by G. J. Malherbe of Paarl, son-in-law of the Rev. van der Lingen, who had exercised an important influence on the Rev. S. J. du Toit. However, not everyone supported the idea of translating the Bible. The Editor of De Gereformeerde Kerkbode [The Reformed Church Messenger] maintained that the lack of comprehension was not due to the language of the Dutch State Bible, but a lack of education, hence an Afrikaans translation was not needed (Scholtz 1975: 69). In the journal Elpis it was maintained that since the Afrikaans language did not exist it was absurd even to consider a translation. In the press articles by Hoogenhout in 1873 — 1874 continued to debate the merits of Afrikaans. In July 1874 the Rev. S. J. du Toit under the pseudonym Een Ware Afrikander wrote, albeit in Dutch, three influential articles, thereby de facto assuming the leadership of the movement to promote Afrikaans. His arguments for Afrikaans laid the foundation of the program for the entire subsequent movement. In the first one he wrote: The language of a nation interprets the character of the nation. People cannot form a nation without a language. Take away from a people their language and you are taking away the wisdom of their forefathers, left to them in the form of idioms and proverbs, etc. ... And what has been done up to the present and will be done in the future about the Afrikaans language and the Afrikaner nation? Systematically, all sense of nationality has been destroyed and with it our language is suppressed in our Parliament, in our courts of law, in our schools, and has even been started in our churches (Zuid Afrikaan, 8 July 1874, quoted in Scholtz 1975: 70).7

In the second article he argues for the status of Afrikaans: People tell you that Afrikaans isn't a language, because it is composed of Dutch, French, Hottentot, etc. However, the manner in which the English language is patched together is wisely hidden (Zuid Afrikaan, 11 July 1874, quoted in Scholtz 1975: 70).

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In the third article he inveighs against Anglicization: Eventually a start has also been made in our churches with sermons, confirmations and the celebration of holy communion in English, etc.; even though those who built the church understand not a word of it. Strangers are taking your place, and you remain silent ... And most unfortunate of all, our ministers — ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church — are helping to promote this ... Proof of this is not only the needless preaching in English in many congregations; but also institutions such as the Huguenot School and the Good Hope Seminary. Afrikaners do you still not know your direction? It is time that you awake! Maybe it is too late! (Zuid Afrikaan, 22 July 1874, quoted in Scholtz 1975: 70)

These letters were probably a consequence of du Toil's observations of the Huguenot Seminary in Wellington opened in January 1874, during his residence in Wellington as assistant pastor and likewise his encounters of services in English at the Groote Kerk in Cape Town during his residency as assistant there in 1873 (Scholtz 1975: 71). The catalyst for the foundation of the GRA was a letter written without the knowledge of his colleagues by Dr Pannevis in November 1874 to the British and Overseas Bible Society asking for help in translating the Dutch State Bible into Afrikaans and recommending the Rev. S. J. du Toit as translator. The London based society wrote to the Rev. G. Morgan their representative in Southern Africa asking him for further information, also noting that "We are by no means inclined to prepetuate jargons by printing the Scriptures in them ..." (Scholtz 1975: 73). At a conference of ministers which the Rev. du Toit did not attend the matter was raised by the Rev. Morgan and received a mixed reception. D. F. du Toit, the brother of the Rev. S. J. du Toit, convened a meeting of all parties interested in an Afrikaans translation of the Bible for 5 July 1875 at the house of Gideon Malherbe in Paarl. What happened at the meeting is unknown, but it had been the intention to choose three delegates to discuss the matter with the Rev. Morgan (Scholtz 1975: 74). It is probable that at this meeting it was decided to formally constitute a society, because on 14 July 1875 eight persons met at the house of Gideon Malherbe to constitute the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners (GRA) [The Society of True Afrikaners]. Those present were: Rev. S. J. du Toit; his brother D. F. du Toit (later known as "Oom LokomotieF); their cousin Daniel Francois du Toit ("Dokter"); Gideon Malherbe (previously married to the Rev. van der Lingen's third daughter, deceased); his nephew, P. J. Malherbe, also nephew to the Rev. S. J. du Toit; S. G. du Toit; C. P. Hoogenhout; August Ahrbeck, the son

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of German immigrants of the Lutheran faith, and at the time a student at Stellenbosch, later at the Theological Seminary, ordained in 1883. Also expected at the meeting were the Rev. Dempers, a missionary preacher who lost much of his Zion Church congregation owing to rumors that he would soon be preaching in "Hottentotstale" [Khoikhoi Languages] and the Rev. van der Rijst, born in the Netherlands in 1828 and who came to the Cape 1856 as a teacher of religion, ordained in 1861. The GRA kept its identity a secret at first and the Rev. S. J. du Toil sent the Rev. Morgan a personal letter informing him that the time was not yet ripe for an Afrikaans translation of the Bible. Their aim summarized in the Society's motto, "to stand for our language, our nation and our country" (Die Afrikaanse Patriot, 15 Jan. 1876: 4), was explicitly political and an undisguised agenda for the promotion of the Afrikaner. Each member was expected to believe in salvation through the death of Jesus Christ and every meeting was to open and close with a prayer. Each member signed that he/she would protect till their death the secrets of the society even if they resigned from it (Scholtz 1975: 76). There were never more than 80 members of all five branches eventually established, according to the attendance registers of all meetings. Neither did the founding members attend all meetings very regularly. Since the second meeting the Rev. S. J. du Toit became President of the GRA and its moving force. Their first task was to establish a journal. On 15 January 1876 the first edition of Die Afrikaanse Patriot [The Afrikaner Patriot] mouthpiece of the GRA appeared. One thousand copies of the first edition were distributed free. Rapidly the Patriot became a popular paper in the eighties because amongst other things it supported Paul Kruger's Presidency of the Transvaal. The editor was known as Oom Lokomotief [Uncle Locomotive], an editorial alias that covered many peoply, and eventually became the nickname of D. F. du Toit, brother to the Rev. S. J. du Toit. However, initially most of the editorial work was done by the Rev. S. J. du Toit, who above all others in his writings educated the Afrikaner spiritually, cultivated a unified political and national consciousness, and brought about an awareness of the right of Afrikaans to exist as national language of the Afrikaners. Nevertheless, the reader must be warned in advance that while it remained a vehicle for Afrikaner nationalism, the Patriot and the Paarl movement flourished. But, as soon as the Rev. S. J. du Toit, its leader, adopted after 1890 for a variety of reasons, a political stance of allegiance with Cecil John Rhodes against Paul Kruger, the first language movement declined.

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In 1877 the Patriot became a weekly, and in 1878 assumed the fullscale format of a newspaper. From 50 subscribers in 1876 it grew to 950 in 1878. It was the very first newspaper to appear entirely in Afrikaans and it would be the only one until the 1930s. In the first edition the manifesto appealed to God's will in the Bible (Gen. 11) that there should be different languages and the concluding paragraph carries the following exhortation: True Afrikaners, we call on you to acknowledge together with us that the Afrikaans language is the mother tongue that our Dear Lord gave us; and to make a stand with us through thick and thin for our language; and not to rest before our language is generally acknowledged as the national language of our country (Die Afrikaanse Patriot, 15 January 1876).

In July 1876 GRA bought its own printing press. It had severe financial difficulties and members had to bail it out with contributions from their personal funds. These contributors eventually established the printing company D. F. du Toit & Co. in July 1878 with the Rev. du Toit's nephew as manager. In the meantime the Rev. S. J. du Toit himself suffered an ugly personal attack, presumably because of his activities in connection with the GRA, in the form of a serious case of slander that jeopardized his position as a minister of religion in the community. He was accused of having sexual relations with the maid servant of De Roubaix on 6 July 1877 in a store room of the aforesaid in Paarl. He was found innocent by the Cape Synod on 9 October. It appears that a group involved in a plot against him disguised themselves as the Reverend in order to act out a crime so as to slander him (Scholtz 1975: 46 — 50). In 1880 the Dutch Reformed Synod in Cape Town debated the evils of the Patriot for three days and a motion of severe censure for its criticism of ministers of the church and its institutions was passed. However, two influential newspaper, De Zuid-Afrikaan and Het Volksblad, both wrote that the Dutch Reformed Church would better adopt a more patriotic attitude and love for the national language and the history of the people. As Het Volksblad (28 October 1880) put it the reason why the Patriot had become a force in the land is that "the journal is written in a language and presents ideas that the population understands" (quoted in Scholtz 1975: 98). In the Patriot (17 December 1880) itself, Dr Pannevis comments about one of the participants (Rev. Hofmeyr) in the synod debate as follows: "I hear Jannie Hofmeyr, with his stiff little neck spoke so that the spit flew (whether he wet the minutes so that he had to rewrite them, I didn't hear); they say he was by turn, purple, blue and green" (quoted in Scholtz 1975: 98).

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Proposal of the First Language Congress In 1877 J. H. Hofmeyr (Onze Jan), editor of the Cape Town newspaper De Zuid-Afrikaan (Zuid Afrikaan: 18/25 August 1877) proposed a "Society for the promotion of the use of Dutch" to combat the overwhelming influence of English. A preliminary body was established which attempted to buy The Patriot from the GRA. The offer was seriously considered because of the press's financial difficulties, but after collecting money and obtaining a bank loan, the GRA rejected the offer. Nothing came of the proposed Dutch Association until 1890. In the meantime the various political organizations that led to the unified body of the Afrikaner Bond in 1883 had been established. Also the First War of Independence broke out in the Transvaal in 1880 and within a year the subscription of the Patriot had increased from 2,000 to 3,700 (Scholtz 1975: 99). It ended with the defeat of the British at the Battle of Majuba Hill in 1881, and the Patriot celebrated the Transvaal armistice by printing the 1 April 1881 edition in blue ink. In 1880 The Cape Synod had requested the Cape Parliament to grant Dutch a more positive role in schools. In 1882 was Dutch allowed as language of debate in the Cape Parliament (see Scholtz 1975: 101 — 102). The 1880s were characterized by various skirmishes on behalf of Dutch (see Scholtz 1975: 102-103) so that in April 1890 the time was ripe for the formation of the Dutch Language Organization originally proposed by Onze Jan in 1877. Hence an open letter by Prof. Nico Mansvelt of the Victoria College in Stellenbosch directed at all supporters of the Dutch language in South Africa, called for a language congress for Dutch in Cape Town later that year to coincide with the sitting of the Cape Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church. At this congress in Cape Town on 31 October and 1 November 1890, the Suid-Afrikaanse Taalbond [South African Language Union] was established with the purpose of fostering the Dutch language and a feeling of national identity. About an equal number of supporters of Dutch and Afrikaans were present. The conference attempted to avoid which language Dutch or Afrikaans was the national language by stating the aim of the Taalbond as follows: "Fostering of the knowledge of the national language and the cultivation of a feeling of national identity" (Van Niekerk 1920: 26). In the meantime the Rev. S. J. du Toit had obtained the appointment of Superintendent of Education in the South African Republic (Trans-

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vaal), starting in 1882, and he had moved to Pretoria, where he remained until 1890. Thus as he could not be present, he sent 71 Theses about Afrikaans to D. F. du Toit (also known as "Dokter"), to present to the conference. These were later published as Afrikaans our National Language. 71 Theses or Propositions. The title was an overt allusion to Luther who on the same date, 31 October, 373 years before, had presented his 95 Theses. These theses, which form the basis of the agenda for the First Language Congress for Afrikaans held in 1896, concerned the position of Afrikaans as a language, as mother tongue, national language, written language, Bible language, medium of instruction, and language of the church. In the preface to the published version, du Toit explicitly says that changing the language laws of a country and bringing forth a written language from a spoken language is not the task of one man. He refers to the fact, (without naming them), that there are associations in England, Germany, France, and Belgium, whose purpose is continually to adjust the written language to the spoken form of the language. He criticizes the October 1890 Language Congress for dodging the issue of what is meant by the national language. He points out that there are in fact three parties with different opinions: 1) those who say write as you speak; 2) those who say Dutch8 as in the Netherlands, 3) those who want a simplified form of Dutch. The South African Taal Union, established at the October Language Congress, he claims is operating from a point of view hovering between positions number 2 and 3. And he proceeds to propose the first language congress for Afrikaans: We must call together a real Afrikaans Language Congress of the first and second class mentioned above, namely of those who favor Afrikaans, and those who are favor Dutch (du Toit 1891: v —vi).

The purpose of the congress would be to discuss which group had grasped the reality of the situation and to achieve unity of purpose and effort, failing that to achieve co-operation between the two parties. The reality of the situation was that by this time Afrikaans had lost conjugated forms of the verb. For example, Ik ben, gij zyt, hij is had become Ek is, jy is and hy is. In addition, the distinction between strong and weak verbs, except in certain idiomatic uses, had disappeared, and the tense system had been simplified to a basic three-tense system. Word gender had disappeared. De man and het boek had become die man and die boek. A double negative system had come into general usage, possibly as result of a regional Dutch dialect used at the Cape becoming reinforced by the

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indigenous non-native speakers of Dutch who had a double negative system in their native languages. A mere spelling reform would not have captured the nuances of the "new" language, nor would it have served as effectively as Afrikaans later did, as a political rallying point for Afrikaner nationalism. In the fifth thesis he proclaims that: "The language itself is the highest legislator. Thus you cannot prescribe language rules for a language, you must derive them from the language. The written language must follow the spoken language, not vice versa" (du Toit: 1891: 14). In the section concerning the national language, he claimed that it was no longer possible to restore Dutch to the primary position it held at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It was rather the case that Dutch in South Africa depended on Afrikaans, which possessed much more "suitability and viability" (du Toit 1891: 89) as the national language. It was unfortunate, he declared, that Dutch had shown itself to be antagonistic towards Afrikaans in its first years. He makes an analogy between Afrikaans and a young tree: "The thick roots of the old tree protects its [Afrikaans] young roots against the English ax, the stiff branches shelters its young shoots against storms, and the old tree gradually dies away, and just as quickly it [Afrikaans] takes its place" (du Toit 1891: 82). A further purpose of the congress would be to consider if the time was not ripe to gain acceptance of Afrikaans as official language. The overt political nature of the language struggle in South Africa is made clear in du Toit's forty-second thesis: "It is the duty of everyone who is against the general domination of English in South Africa, to co-operate for the preservation of the National Language, even though there are differences amongst them about the form" (du Toit 1891: 88). In the forty-sixth thesis he states: "The language that you speak in your home, and in the market, and in the Legislature, and that you read in your newspaper, must be acknowledged as the official language in schools, in the state, in the church, and everywhere" (du Toit 1891: 94). The sixty-fourth and -fifth theses contain a powerful plea for mother tongue education: "Most of our children have so little time to go to school, so that they learn just enough Dutch and English to forget it again, consequently they actually learn nothing, whereas if they had spent the time receiving an education in their mother tongue, they could have learnt quite a lot of useful knowledge for their later lives" (du Toit 1891: 122). And a powerful political argument is added: "A general development of the spirit of the nation can only take place in the national language" (du Toit 1891: 123).

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However, before a conference was convened to discuss these theses, the supporters of Dutch began a movement in 1894 to reform the spelling of Dutch to make it more "serviceable" for Afrikaners (Standard Encyclopedia: 69; Kannemeyer 1987: 31) and at a conference in Stellenbosch on 19 December 1895, a steering committee was elected to organize a conference to determine the form of simplification. The leaders were Dr. W. J. Viljoen, Prof, of Dutch at the Victoria College, the first Afrikaner to have written a doctoral thesis on Afrikaans at Strassburg, and Prof. P. J. G. de Vos. And on 4 and 5 January 1897 the first conference for the simplification of the Dutch language was held in Cape Town. It was attended by many influential persons from as far afield as the Transvaal. The conference named an Executive Commission to consult with authoritative bodies in the Netherlands to ensure that their simplification would proceed in accord with similar notions in the Netherlands and not be in conflict with Dutch idiom (Scholtz 1980: 12).

The First Language Congress for Afrikaans A letter marked private and confidential, and signed by the editorial board of the Patriot invited recipients to attend a meeting on 14 August 1895, the 20th birthday of the GRA, at the Paarl Press. The purpose was to discuss organizing an Afrikaans Language Congress on 4 and 5 October 1895 in Paarl. The agenda proposed referred in detail to the 71 Theses discussed previously. To whom it was sent is not known. However, it can be presumed that it was an attempt to gain supporters for Afrikaans before the upcoming December conference in support of simplified Dutch mentioned above. Why the first Afrikaans Language Congress occurred only the next year and not in October 1895, as mentioned in the letter, is also not known, but appropriately it took place on 15 and 16 January 1896 in the Town Hall of Paarl, on the 20th anniversary of the first publication of the Patriot. The published proceedings (GRA 1896) claim an attendance of approximately a hundred, although only eighty names are listed in the proceedings and ninety in a summary of the proceedings in Ons Klyntji (March 1896: 3), in which a group photograph of the delegates appears. Delegates from the Orange Free State and the Transvaal were prevented from attending due to the recent Jameson Raid of 29 December 1895, when an attempt was made with the connivance of the Prime Minister

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of the Cape, Cecil John Rhodes, to topple the government of President Kruger (Davenport 1966: 162). Since an open invitation to the Second Afrikaans Language Congress of January 1897 was issued in Ons Klyntji (November 1896: 184), it can be safely assumed that the anyone was free to attend the First Congress and that it had been similarly advertised. Those wishing to attend were asked to write to D. F. du Toit & Co. as soon as possible in order that they could firstly, be sent certificates with which they could purchase half price tickets on the colonial train service; and secondly, so that free accommodation could be arranged for them with friends or in private boarding houses close to the center of the town. Delegates are warned in the journal that if the numbers are too great not all will be able to be provided with free accommodation, but certainly not at English Hotels. Prospective delegates are reminded that during January there is an abundance of fruit and grapes in Paarl, that the Annual (presumably agricultural) Show will be held the week after the congress, and that delegates can easily spend a few days at the beach. Pienaar (1943: 190) notes that two of the founding members of the GRA are not listed as being present, i. e. D. F. du Toit, (brother of the Rev. S. J. du Toit), also known as "Oom Lokomotief" from his editorship of the Patriot for many years; and C. P. Hoogenhout. They had severed ties with the Patriot and the Rev. S. J. du Toit in 1892 because of his changed political stance since his return from the Transvaal. Indeed Oom Lokomotief had written to a correspondent on 17 April 1890 that "if the Patriot doesn't break with the Reverend, then the Reverend will break the Patriot'" (quoted in Lantern June 1975: 48). His words became true, as the Patriot declined. Who knows what other erstwhile supporters declined to attend because of the Rev. S. J. du Toit's new found support for Rhodes under whom he now hoped South Africa would be united politically? His change of heart had come about for several reasons. While in the Transvaal in 1883 — 1884 he was part of President Kruger's official delegation to Europe. He became the director of the Paarl-Pretoria Gold Mine and Exploration Co. in 1886 with a capital of £60,000. In 1888 he resigned his education post to devote himself to his business interests. In 1889 before a business trip to Europe he consolidated his business interests in one company with a capital of £140,000. Before leaving for Europe he was again offered the post of superintendent of education with a specific provision from Pres. Kruger that he find staff in Europe in order to establish a university in the Transvaal. While overseas, his gold mining

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concerns went bankrupt and he lost his entire fortune. On his return he also found at a time when he needed employment that petitions against his taking up the post of Superintendent of Education had been delivered to Pres. Kruger by Dutch advisors who objected to the Rev. S. J. du Toil's policy statements in Europe (Scholtz 1975: 151 —190). He had also opposed the Adendorff trekkers who wanted to break away from the Transvaal and establish yet another independent republic in Mashonaland, the area on which Rhodes had focussed his eyes, and which be obtained via the British South Africa Charter Company. He had met Rhodes and become an ardent supporter of his which earned him the enmity of many of his former supporters who saw his change of heart as a sell out of Afrikaner nationalism to British imperialism. The Rev. du Toit's political change is difficult to assess. It was perhaps not so much his personal bitterness with the Transvaal government that motivated him, but a growing realization that a unified South Africa would only be possible under the aegis of the British flag. Nevertheless, the Congress appears from its detailed 16 page published report of the proceedings (Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners 1886), to have been a great success and to have been conducted in an extremely orderly fashion. The Congress was divided into morning and afternoon sessions, plus two evenings of entertainment, at which there were instrumental items, singing, the recitation of Afrikaans poems, and a firsthand account by the son of one of the Great Trek leaders, Sarel Cilliers, about the trekkers' experiences. The drinks were provided by the Paarl Berg Wine and Brandy Company. Noteworthy academic figures like Prof. Lion Cachet, Prof. Postma, and Prof. Logeman,9 attended; while apologies were read from those who regretted their absence like J. H. Hofmeyr (Onze Jan), Rev. Hofmeyr of the State School in Pretoria, and the Chairman of the Afrikaner Bond, amongst others. The first resolution passed after some hectic debate was: that the Afrikaans Language Congress declares itself in favor of the principle write as you speak, that is to use as the basis and regulation of the written language, the cultured spoken language of our land, and to develop the language along with our people (GRA 1896: 6).

During this debate the Rev. S. J. du Toit stepped down from the Chair to deliver his comments. It is interesting that he mentions that during the past 20 years the Patriot Office put out some 93,000 books in Dutch and 81,000 books in Afrikaans, apart from the thousands of books imported from the Netherlands. His point at the time being that the

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Afrikaans Language Movement had "not only started people reading, but had also set them writing" (GRA 1896: 7). The next resolution concerned the issue of a Comparative Grammar and Dictionary of Afrikaans. Many delegates opposed the Rev. S. J. du Toit's appeal for a bilingual English-Afrikaans/Afrikaans-English Dictionary, which they felt would help to promote English rather than foster Afrikaans. A working commission was appointed to consider the matter and reported the following morning to the congress in favor of Afrikaans only. During another heated debate the Rev. S. J. du Toit declared that he now realized this congress should keep to purely Afrikaans, and although he still thought a bilingual dictionary necessary, it could be carried out by others. A Commission consisting of the Revs. S. J. du Toit & F. S. du Toit, Dr. Hoffman; with as supervisors: Prof. Cachet,10 Logeman, and S. Postma, Dr. Brill, and Dr. Viljoen,11 was appointed to carry out the production of such a grammar and dictionary. But, whatever the congress's misgivings, in 1897 A Comparative Grammar of Afrikaans and English was published. And in 1902 the Patriot Dictionary appeared. A debate about spelling rules was also left to a committee. Another overnight working committee declared itself in favor of a decision to found a new monthly journal for creative literature in Afrikaans. This was possibly the most important contribution the Congress made to the development of Afrikaans. The delegates gave the go-ahead and Prof. Postma suggested the title Ons Klyntji [Our Little One]. At the close of the congress there were 500 subscribers, and the first edition appeared in March 1896, with the motto: "Small beginning, keep on winning". The journal became popular and in one year the number of subscribers increased to almost 3,000. It continued to appear until 1906. Two further issues were debated on the last afternoon of the congress. The congress did not support the Rev. S. J. du Toit's plan for a translation of the Bible into Afrikaans, since they felt this initiative belonged to the church, and that the congress was not competent to judge such translations. Nevertheless, the congress passed a resolution declaring its opinion that Afrikaans must become the language of the church, and thanked the Rev. S. J. du Toit for the start he had made in translating the Bible (GRA 1896: 14; Pienaar 1943: 192-193). The congress also passed a resolution that Afrikaans must become the medium of instruction in schools, but that since no textbooks were available, it appointed the GRA to plan the publication of Afrikaans school books and report to the next congress. It was decided to hold the congress at Paarl again the following year and an organizing committee was appointed. The congress closed

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with a prayer and that evening a second round of entertainment took place in the Town Hall, which included many interested parties besides delegates to the congress.

The Second Afrikaans Language Congress Some of the leading figures present at the first Congress, Prof. Cachet, Prof. Logeman, Prof. Postma, and the Rev. Postma, sent their regrets that they were unable to be present at the Second Congress. Whether this was indicative of the growing discontent with the Rev. S. J. du Toit's politics is not known. Certainly, the editorial policy of Ons Klyntji was critized for concerning itself with religion and politics, since it was popular with children, and, as one member put it, since Ons Klyntji was only one year old, it "might easily get a slap in the mouth" (GRA 1897: 10). On other issues the congress was more unanimous, such as in expressing its support for Afrikaans, despite the fact that Dutch was the official language of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, and recognized in the Cape Colony. And although the intention to hold a third Congress was taken, no firm decision was reached where it would be held. The organizing committee appointed this time did not include the Rev. S. J. du Toit, and the congress never materialized.

Conclusion The Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1901 can be said to mark the end of the first language movement for Afrikaans. It arose as a vehicle for the expression of Afrikaner nationalism, but only as long as it supported that nationalism which it had helped to awaken in the first place, did it enjoy unmitigated support from the Afrikaner masses. Afrikaans did not initially enjoy the support of the intelligentsia since it not only already had the established Dutch language as a contender for the intellectual vehicle of Afrikaner nationalism, but was also locked in a cultural struggle against English, a major international language, which was promoted by an active policy of Anglicization. It may also be noteworthy that the core of the original leadership of the movement and its supporters were in some socio-psychological sense slightly distanced from the major group. For example, they came from Huguenot ancestors who had continued to

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live in the areas they originally settled. No matter what the case might be, it was only after this initial group's efforts to spread the gospel of the acceptability of the written form of Afrikaans to the common man that other members of the intelligentsia, spurred on by the rising tide of Afrikaner nationalism, became involved in a renewed struggle for Afrikaans after 1901. This tide of nationalism was not just a response to perceived oppression by British rule, but distinctly encouraged by highly visible military successes against the British, notably the Battle of Majuba during the Transvaal War of Independence, the Jameson Raid, and the Anglo-Boer War. After the Anglo-Boer War a number of local Afrikaans language associations formed, were the prelude to the establishment of a permanent professional academic body to oversee all aspects of the development of Afrikaans. At a meeting of the National Convention in Cape Town during 1908, the Afrikaner political leaders called for a conference in January to effect a rapprochement amongst all the factions. This led to a Congress in Bloemfontein on 1 and 2 July 1909 at which the South African Academy for Language, Literature and Art was established. This small prestigious organization of members elected from the ranks of

Figure 1 The Afrikaans Language Monument

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academics, writers, and cultural leaders, has continued to direct the development of Afrikaans to the present day. While the Paarl movement led by the Rev. S. J. du Toit is indelibly part of the consciousness of the educated Afrikaans speaking public and commemorated by the Afrikaans language monument at Paarl (see Figure 1), the First Language Conference for Afrikaans of 1896 is largely overlooked or perhaps rather overshadowed by the 1909 Conference described above, which established the South African Academy.

Notes 1. My sincere thanks to the following people whose kind help with the research made this paper possible: Ms. A. Burgers of the Afrikaans Language Museum, Paarl, South Africa, for supplying photocopies of archival material; my parents for their help in finding and posting materials; and Peter Veldsman for locating and sending me Rev. Scholtz's Ph. D. thesis on Rev. S. J. du Toit. 2. The word "national" is applicable although no formally united country existed until the Union of South Africa in 1910. 3. Derogatory term for language spoken by indigenous population of southern Africa, as opposed to "Hottentotstaal" (see page 17), the Dutch name given to Khoikkoi languages. 4. Originally proposed by Rev. S. J. du Toit in the Patriot (June 1879), and incorporated J. H. Hofmeyr's Boeren Vereeniging in 1883 during Rev. du Toil's absence in London, the Afrikaner Bond under Hofmeyr's leadership came close to controlling the Cape Parliament in 1883-1884 elections. 5. For instance, an example of their pride in their Huguenot origins can be seen in Rev. S. J. Du Toit's action in starting a committee in 1880 to collect money for a school which would provide a Christian national education. Die Gedenkschool der Hugenoten opened its doors in February 1882 and the old Du Toit family farm Kleinbosch was purchased for the school. 6. A great number of non-Europeans, indigenous Khoikhoi and ex-slaves of various ethnic origins also spoke Afrikaans as their mother tongue by this time. 7. All translations from the original Dutch or Afrikaans are by the author of this chapter and have been kept as literal as possible. 8. The official name of the national language of the Netherlands is Algemeen Beskaafde Nederlands, commonly referred to as Dutch in English. 9. Professors of theology. 10. Prof. Cachet was born in Amsterdam to a Jewish family that had coverted to the Christian faith. This may be another example in support of the thesis that the intellectual promoters of Afrikaans were largely from socio-culturally non-mainstream Dutch origins. 11. This Dr. Viljoen is recorded as being from Stellenbosch, but his initials are not given so that we do not know if it is the same man as Dr. W. J. Viljoen mentioned previously as a proponent of Dutch.

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References Botha, T. J. R. 1983

"Afrikaans: Origin and lexical evolution", in: I. Fodor — C. Hagege (eds.), Language reform: History and future. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag, 213 — 237.

Combrink, J. 1978 "Afrikaans: Its origin and development", in: L. W. Lanham — K . P. Prinsloo (eds.), Language and communication studies in South Africa. Cape Town: Oxford, 69-95. Davenport, T. R. H. 1966 The Afrikaner Bond. The history of a South African political party, 1880 — 1911. Cape Town: Oxford University Press. Den Besten, H. 1978 "Cases of possible syntactic interference in the development of Afrikaans", in: Amsterdam Creole Studies II: 5 — 56. (Universiteit van Amsterdam Publikaties van het Instituut voor Algemene Taalwetenschap. No. 20.) du Toil, S. J. 1891 Afrikaans ons Volkstaal. 71 Theses, of Stellinge. Paarl, Cape Colony: D. F. Du Toil & Co. Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners (GRA) 1896 Di Eerste Afrikaanse Taalkongres gehou an Di Paarl (Minutes of the Congress). Paarl, Cape Colony: D. F. Du Toit & Co. 1897 Verslag van Taalkongres en Samenkomst, gehouden aan De Paarl, op 27 tot 31 Januari, 1897. Paarl, Cape Colony: D. F. du Toit & Co. Gilbert, G.-Makhudu, D. 1984 The Creole continuum in Afrikaans: A non-Eurocentric view. [Mimeo of outline of a lecture to be presented at the University of Minnesota, May 14, 1984.] Holliday, L. 1989 Language planning in South Africa. [Manuscript. University of Pennsylvania.] in press "South Africa's Language Minefield", in: N. Wolfson (ed.), Multilingualism. Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex. Jordaan, K. 1974 "The origins of Afrikaners and their language, 1652 — 1720: A study in miscegenation and Creole", Race XV, 4: 461 —495. Kannemeyer, J. C. 1987 Die Afrikaanse Literatuur 1652—1987. Cape Town, South Africa: Academica. Lantern 1975 "Afrikaans - Sy wording, wasdom en bloei", Lantern, XXIV, 4 (Special 25th anniversary commemorative edition of Lantern to coincide with centenary of GRA, 4 June.) XXIV, 4. 1 -96. Markey, T. L. 1982 "Afrikaans: Creole or Non-Creole?" Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik IL, 2, 169-207. Nienaber, P. J. 1959 "The Evolution of Afrikaans as Literary Language", Lantern VIII, 4. 325 — 366.

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Ons Klyntji 1896 — 1906 [Journal established by Di Eerste Afrikaanse Taalkongres.] Patriot. DifeJ Afrikaanse 1876 — 1904 [Original newspaper of the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners. Edited by Rev. S. J. du Toil (1876-1882, 1891 - 1904) and D. F. du Toil (1882-1891).] Patriot 1895 [Photocopy of a manuscript of a circular latter headed private and confidential from the Editor of the Patriot, 1 August 1895. In the collection of the Afrikaans Language Museum, Paarl.] Pienaar, E. C. 1943 Die Triomf van Afrikaans. Cape Town: Nasionale Pers. Roberge, P. T. 1990 "The ideological profile of Afrikaans historical linguistics", in: J. E. Joseph — T. T. Taylor (eds.). Ideology of language. London: Routledge, 131 — 149. Scholtz, D. A. 1975 Ds. S. J. Du Toil as Kerkman en Kultuurleier. [Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa.] Scholtz, J. du P. 1980 Wording en Ontwikkeling van Afrikaans. Cape Town: Tafelberg. Standard Encyclopedia of Southern Africa (Volume I A AN — B AC) Cape Town: Nasou, 63-72. Steyn, J. C. 1980 Tuiste in Eie Taal. Die behoud en bestaan van Afrikaans. Cape Town: Tafelberg. Valkhoff, M. F. 1971 "Descriptive bibliography of the linguistics of Afrikaans: A survey of major works and authors", in: T. Sebeok (ed.), Current Trends in Linguistics (Vol. 7). The Hague: Mouton, 455 - 500. Van Niekerk, L. 1920 De Eerste Afrikaanse Taalbeweging en Leiterkundige Voortb r engseien. Cape Town: De Nasionale Pers. Watts, H. L. 1976 "A social and demographic portrait of English-speaking White South Africans", in: A. de Villiers (ed.), English-speaking South Africa. Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 41 - 89. Zuid Afrikaan, De 1830-1894 [Newspaper in Cape Town, edited by J. H. Hofmeyr (Onze Jan) (1871 1883), subsequently by Dr. J. W. G. Oordt. Merged with Volksvriend in 1871, and united with Ons Land 1894.]

The Academic Conference on the Reform of Belorussian Orthography and Alphabet (Minsk 1926): A unique non-event?

Paul Wexler

The Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic can boast two unique achievements in the annals of Soviet linguistics: it was in the capital Minsk that (1) the first major international linguistic conference of a Soviet language was convened in 1926 (entitled the Akademicnaja Konferencyja pa reforme belaruskaha pravapisu i azbuki [Academic Conference on the Reform of Belorussian Orthography and Alphabet] and (2) the first comprehensive linguistic atlas of a Soviet language was published in 1931 (see Vilenkin's Yiddish atlas of Soviet Belorussia and the Ukraine).' The convening of an international linguistics conference in 1926 was a remarkable feat, considering that the Belorussian speech community had been deprived of the use of its native language in schools, most publications and government until shortly before the second Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. The bleak history of the Belorussian lands up until the turn of the century hardly augured for the convening of an international linguistic conference in 1926. In the Czarist period, large segments of the Belorussian intelligentsia had assimilated to Polish or Russian language and culture and displayed little interest in a Belorussian national revival. After the first aborted Bolshevik Revolution in 1905 the Czarist government permitted periodical publications (e. g. Nasa dolja 1906, Nasa niva 1906 — 1916, Vjalikodnaja pisanka 1904 — 1914 1914, all in Vilna) and a publishing company (Zahljane sonca i w nasa vakoncy in St. Petersburg).2 Limited publishing, mainly of belles-lettres and poetry, had begun in the late 19th century. Major writers in the 19th century included R. Baxrym, V. DuninMarcinkevic, F. Bahusevic and A. Abuxovic; the beginning of the present century saw the appearance of works by such writers as M. Bahdanovic, Z. Bjadulja and T. Hartny (the last two of whom were to participate in the 1926 Conference).

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In the course of the nineteenth century, there were a number of scholarly publications on Belorussian subjects, often written by Russian scholars (e. g. on history, ethnography, language and Old Belorussian texts)3 — publications which ultimately were to play an important role in making the historical dialectalogical riches of the language available to language planners. 4 But even if the political situation had permitted, Belorussian linguistic activity was impeded before 1917 by the lack of a significant body of scholarly research and the absence of faculties of Belorussian linguistics in Czarist Russian universities. Curiously, the first tacit recognition of the political rights of the Belorussian language came from an unexpected quarter during World War I — from the German Army High Command which published a multilingual dictionary, including Belorussian, for the use of the German army of occupation in Eastern Europe.5 Thus, the remarkable fact is that the 1926 Conference and the publication of the proceedings the following year came about after only some 2 decades of intensive publication in Belorussian belles-lettres and journalism but after only 8 years of government recognition (in 1918) — which made systematic linguistic research possible — and the publication of the first Belorussian grammar in Belorussian (by Taraskevic 1918 ff.) 6 Nevertheless, the body of scholarship available in 1926 — 1927 barely sufficed to enable Belorussian linguists to make intelligent decisions on language planning on the basis of the linguistic facts. For example, the Conference was convened when only a few major terminological dictionaries existed,7 no major synchronic dictionaries were available,8 and only one dialect dictionary had appeared in 1927.9 There were no periodical scholarly organs until the appearance of the first volume of the Zapiski addzela humanitarnyx navuk. Pracy klasa filalohii (Minsk 1928). In Poland, the linguistic journal Rodnaja mova was inaugurated only in 1930. Except for Vowk-Levanovic (1927), no major studies of the history of the Belorussian language had been published. Small wonder, therefore, if between 1918 and 1926 there was little public call for a conference on the Belorussian language, either in Soviet Belorussia or in Western Belorussia under Polish administration. Rather, the public, especially teachers, were invited to pass judgement on new terms in the periodical press.10 In Vilna, Poland, the Belorussian Scientific Society was called upon to make decisions on the structure of terminological dictionaries. The publication of school grammars and newspapers were regarded as more pressing needs than conferences.11 Speakers were

The Academic Conference on the Reform of Belarussian

33

also exhorted to collect terms for the emerging literary language from all dialects, especially terms which lacked cognates in Russian and Polish.12 The first Belorussian linguistic conference, convened in Minsk between the 14th and 21st of November 1926, ostensibly to treat problems in "orthography and alphabet", was attended by 69 Belorussians and nonBelorussians — from Czechoslovakia, Germany, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Soviet Russia and the Soviet Ukraine. The group included linguists (e. g. U. Dubowka, K. Nimoynaw, P. Rastarhuew, A. Serzputowski, A. Sljubski, Ja. Tros'ka and M. Vasmer) and other academics, writers and poets (e. g. Z. Bjadulja, C. Hartny, Janka Kupala and Jakub Kolas), editors of journals and administrators at institutions of higher learning (mainly Belorussian — both in the USSR and abroad). It is striking that a conference on Belorussian — a language which only a few years earlier enjoyed no political recognition — could generate so much interest among scholars, both home and abroad, many of whom were not native speakers of the language. But then again, Soviet Belorussian linguistic discussions — despite their brief history — often attracted non-Belorussians (e. g. the Ukrainian P. Buzuk 1926, 1928, and the Jew M. Sul'man 1926), and non-Belorussians occasionally even became prominent writers in the Belorussian language (e. g. Z. Bjadulja. a Yiddish-speaking Jew).13 (The proceedings of the conference were entirely in Belorussian, except for the very brief intervention in Ukrainian by I. Svjencickyj from L'viv.) By contrast, in the neighboring Ukraine, a parallel linguistic conference on the stardardization of orthography was convened in 1927 by the Ukrainian SSR People's Commissariat of Education in Kharkov (to which a number of West Ukrainians from Poland were invited), but these proceedings were never published.14 The proceedings of the Belorussian conference were published by the Instytut belaruskaj kul'tury, Addzel movy i literatury [Institute of Belorussia Culture, Section on Language and Literature] in Minsk in 1927 under the title Pracy Akademicnae konferencyi pa reforme belaruskaha pravapisu i azbuki [Works of the Academic Conference on the Reform of the Belorussian Orthography and Alphabet]; the volume contained xxviii + 433 pages, and was edited by S. Nekrasevic and U. Ihnatowski. In addition, the conference also generated a few brochures on synchronic topics in phonology15 and an operational program which was published in Minsk four years later under the title Belaruski pravapis. Praekt [Belorussian orthography. A project]. In view of the abrupt changes in the status of Belorussian nationalism brought about by the Stalinist purges and deportations initiated in the early 1930s throughout the Soviet

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Union, only some of the conference recommendations could be adopted. Instead, radically different linguistic norms — advocating the cultivation of similarities between Russian and Belorussian on all levels of language, and the elimination of unique Belorussian properties — were promulgated in Belorussia in 1933.16 The anti-puristic orientation of the 1933 recommendations, though gradually softened, essentially remained in force until the late 1980s.17 Until the last year or so, the 1926 Conference was either the object of critical attack or altogether ignored in the literature. 18 For example, the first comprehensive bibliography of Belorussian linguistics covering publications from 1825 to 1965, which appeared in Minsk in 1967, omitted some of the published contributions of the Conference. 19 Favorable references to the achievements and recommendations of the Conference (though not necessarily total agreement with the recommendations adopted by the majority of participants) appeared in the Soviet Union for the first time briefly during the German occupation of Belorussia,20 and for the second time beginning in 1989 — see Scerbin (1989), and Dubavec, Hermanovic, Supa, Supranovic (1990; in the newly founded Belorussian-language journal Nasa slova dealing with the status of the Belorussian language).21 Hence, the present paper can, by necessity, only assess the historical roots of Belorussian language planning that preceded and made possible the convening of the conference.22 Despite its title, the Conference concerned itself with a broad spectrum of topics — all of which had been repeatedly discussed in the linguistic and periodical press between 1917 and 1926: the state of Belorussian linguistics, the choice of alphabet, the standardization of the orthography, the graphemic representation of typical Belorussian phonological features and morphophonemic oppositions, grammar (particularly the choice of case endings and verb forms), the relationship of Belorussian to Russian and Ukrainian and the nature of Belorussian-Polish contacts.23 The Conference themes reflected both on-going "live" issues (including research in historical topics that language planners required in order to make intelligent decisions, and a variety of practical problems immediately facing speakers) and "terminal" issues over which no further discussion need be anticipated (e. g. the rejection of a Latin alphabet with diacritics borrowed largely from Czech and the rejection of unique symbols for the Cyrillic alphabet to denote the affricates dz and dz — symbols not shared by the Cyrillic alphabets in use in Ukrainian and Russian).24 The topic of "orthography" was understood to include the thorny prob-

The Academic Conference on the Reform of Belomssian

35

lems of setting grammatical norms (endings) and the spelling of foreign words, e. g. should the latter be spelled according to phonetic principles (which applied to most native components) or according to etymological principles.25 These problems had been plaguing the Belomssian speech community since the initial discussions of prescriptive intervention. The issue was compounded by the fact that the dialectal base of the Belorussian literary language had not yet been decided, though regulators at least through the 1920s favored the incorporation of features from all contemporary dialects, especially the Western Belorussian dialects regarded as less affected by foreign (read Russian) influences. In matters of orthography and grammar, the Conference specifically addressed itself to two major defects in Taraskevic's grammar (1918 [1921, 1925]): the cumbersome rules for the spelling of unstressed e and Taraskevic's decision to apply a phonetic spelling to loans used in the vernacular, vs. a non-phonetic spelling to scientific and literary loans. In fact, one of the reasons for the convening of the 1926 Conference was that the Orthographic Commission of the Scientific Council of the Instytut belaruskaj kul'tury [Institute of Belorussian Culture] was unable to decide on the far-reaching proposals for orthographic and grammatical reform repeatedly being voiced by Ja. and A. Lesik. The Lesik brothers advocated applying the phonetic principle to the spelling of all words, both native and non-native, e. g. native med 'honey' and nozka 'knife' should henceforth be spelled met and noska respectively.26 The Conference rejected the Lesik brother's recommendations and Taraskevic's orthographic and grammatical principles emerged relatively unscathed.27 It is noteworthy that the discussions over spelling and grammatical endings were decided more by internal phonetic criteria than by geographical (dialect) distribution. This is partly to be explained by the paucity at that time of comprehensive descriptions of Belorussian dialects.28 Topics not discussed in the Conference include the principles for compiling scientific-technical terminologies (here the central issue is what mix of contemporary native, archaic native, foreign and specifically international elements should be utilized in the construction of the terminologies) and the exploitation of Old Belorussian literary documents as a source of new non-technical vocabulary for the contemporary literary language. The Conference did not need to discuss the first topic since by 1926 — 1927 there existed a substantial corpus of technical dictionaries. Old Belorussian sources of interest to the contemporary language could not be systematically tapped, since a great many of the manuscripts had not yet been studied; e. g. the study of the Belorussian documents written by

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Belorussian Tatars in a Turko-Arabic script attested since the late 17th century, which were to become an important source of enrichment for the contemporary literary language for some regulators after the Conference, only began in the late 1920s, both in the USSR and Poland.29 Since 1933 — when a new anti-puristic line was decreed advocating that the Belorussian literary language be receptive to widespread Russian enrichment and native Belorussian variants which bore maximum similarity to Russian — Belorussian prescriptive intervention has been characterized by a tedious unchanging agenda of topics, the treatment of which varies largely by the extent to which the Belorussian literary language is allowed to be receptive to native dialectal enrichment. Since the 1926 Conference has had little impact on the subsequent course of Belorussian language planning — except in the selection of the original agenda of issues — it might not be excessive to regard it at present as a „non-event". Hence, Belorussian linguists — with the first international linguistics conference in Soviet history to their credit — have, paradoxically, found themselves in the same position as their Ukrainian colleagues who were overtaken by the events of the early 1930s and never succeeded in publishing the fruits of their orthographic conference in Kharkov in 1927. However, in the new liberal atmosphere obtaining in the former Soviet Union in general, and in Belorussia in particular, the Conference discussions should at long last be given an objective scrutiny.30 If some of the Conference recommendations should eventually be adopted, Belorussian linguistics might become unique in a third way: as a language in which prescriptive recommendations could be adopted after a delay of over six decades.

Notes 1. A preliminary Belorussian language atlas published by Buzuk in 1928 contained only 20 maps; see also the program for dialect research enunciated by Nekrasevic and Buzuk (1927). In recent years, the publication of a comprehensive Belorussian linguistic atlas, the Dyjalektalahicny atlas belaruskaj movy (1963), again anticipated — by some two decades — the publication of the bulk of the Ukrainian language atlas (though maps of the Subcarpathian Ukraine had been published a few years earlier by Dzendzelivs'kyj 1958-1960). The Belorussian lands also saw the birth of two well-known Yiddish-speaking language planners whose activities were in languages other than Yiddish or Belorussian, e. g. Eliezer Ben Yehuda (Luzky 1857 —Jerusalem 1922), the father of the modern spoken Hebrew movement in Palestine, and Ludwik Zamenhof (Belastok 1858 —Paris 1917), the founder of the Esperanto movement. The impact of coterritorial Belorussian (and

The Academic Conference on the Reform of Belorussian

2. 3. 4. 5.

6.

7.

8.

37

contiguous Ukrainian and other) language planning on spoken Hebrew and Yiddish prescriptive norms has yet to be studied. Peltz (1985) describes developments in Soviet Yiddish but largely in isolation of the developments in the East Slavic languages; for a comparison of hieratic lexicon in Belorussian and Yiddish, see Wexler (1989). There are a number of parallels in Belorussian and Hebrew prescriptive intervention, e. g. Belorussian linguists recommended that genuine Belorussian words could be recovered from the Ukrainian and Russian lexicons (Nekrasevic 1925: 172), while Ben-Yehuda thought that lost Hebrew roots constituted a substratum of contemporary colloquial Palestinian Arabic (1914: 9-10; 1928: 22, discussed in Wexler 1990: 28 and fn. 100). It is interesting to note where language planning in the two speech communities independently assumed similar forms. On the importance of Nasa niva in the Belorussian national revival, see Nadson (1967). See examples in Birillo-Bulaxov-Sudnik (1966: 159-160). For example, no archaizing trend could lake form without the publication of Old Belorussian texts. See Sieben-Sprachen Wörterbuch (1918). This dictionary praised Belorussian as the oldest Slavic language (see also Bibliohrafija: Siamijazycny sloünik 1918). Belorussians expressed concern for foreign recognition of the political rights of their language, e. g. by Germans (Samabytnasc naszaj movy 1916) and by Ukrainians (Mieleszka 1916 and N. S. 1917). Between 1918 and 1927, the year in which the proceedings of the Conference were published, there were no fewer than 20 Belorussian periodicals (most of them in Belorussian) in existence in the USSR which published discussions of Belorussian language planning (Adrazen'ne Minsk 1922, As'veta Minsk 1924—1929, Belarus' Minsk 1919-1920, Cyrvony s'cjah Minsk 1924-1925, Cyrvony sejbit Minsk 1926-1928, Cyrvony sljax St. Petersburg—Minsk 1918, Litaratura i mastactva Minsk 1923 ff., Mahilewscyna Mahilew 1927, Maladaja Belarus' Minsk 1922, Maladnjak Minsk 19231931, NaskrajMinsk 1925-1930, Polymja Minsk 1922ff., Run Minsk 1920, Saveckaja Belarus' Minsk — Smolensk 1920, Skala i kul'tura sovetskoj Belorussii Minsk 1919 — 1921 [Belorussian section, separate pagination], Uzvyssa Minsk 1927—1931, Vestnik Narodnogo Komissariata Prosvescenija Minsk 1920 — 1922, Vol'naja Belarus' Minsk 1917-1919, Vol'ny s'cjah Minsk 1920-1922, Z'vjazda Minsk-Smolensk-Vilna 1917 ff.) and 3 in Poland and Lithuania (Bielaruskaja krynica Vilna 1925 — 1930, Homan Vilna 1916-1918, Kryvic Kaunas 1923-1924, Vilna 1925). The Vestnik Narodnogo Komissariata Prosvescenija published eight terminological dictionaries in 1921 — 1922, and the Instytut belaruskaj kul'tury published seventeen terminological dictionaries between 1922 and 1927; the latter was to publish another six volumes by 1930 when it ceased operations. Other terminologies in existence by the time of the Conference included A. L (1918); Smolic (1922); V. L. (1923) in both Poland and Soviet Belorussia. See the lone Nosovic (1870). A considerable number of small bilingual dictionaries (mainly in Russian) had appeared between 1918 and 1926, e.g. M. Harecki 1918 a [1926, 1925]; 1918 b; 1919 [1921]; 1926; M. and H. Harecki 1918 [1920, 1921]; Shwnik terminalohii ahul'nae raslinahadowli 1920; Bajkow and Harecki 1924 [1926]; Bajkow and Nekrasevic 1924; 1925; Lastowski 1924; Veras 1924; Kas'pjarovic 1925; Verascaka 1925; Bajkow 1926; Vaskevic 1926. See also Proekt ukladan'nja slownika zyvoj belaruskaj movy 1929.

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9. Kas'pjarovic 1927 (of the Vicebsk dialect). Saternik 1929 (of the Cerven' district) was the next dialect dictionary to appear two years later. 10. A. L. (1918); V.L. (1923); Kul'tura movy (1927). On teachers, see Smolic (1922: 86); Ja. Lesik and C'vjatkow (1928: 44). 11. Grammars published prior to 1926-1927 include Ja. Lesik (1921, 1924-1925, 1926); Nekrasevic (1927 b). 12. See "Instrukcyja da z'biran'nja narodnaha slownika terminolehicnaha matar'jalu w belaruskaj move" (1925: 49) and "Instrukcy da z'biran'nja belaruskix narodnyx terminaw pa anatomii zyvel" (1926). 13. On Belorussian interest in Ukrainian language planning, see Marxel' (1925). A Belorussian Jewess, O. Kurylo (1890 —after 1937), made major contributions to Ukrainian linguistics. Significantly, the Belorussian author of the first Belorussian-language grammar (1918 [1921, 1925]), B. Taraskevic, a resident of Polish-occupied Belorussia, was not given a passport by the Polish authorities to attend the Minsk conference — though his popular grammar was one of the reasons for the convening of the conference in the first place (see below)! 14. See Simovyc (1963: 518); Shevelov (1987: 7). 15. See e. g. Vowk-Levanovic (1926 a, 1926b). 16. See Ab zmenax i sprascenni belaruskaha pravapisu (1933). A conference critical of the 1933 recommendations was convened shorty thereafter in Vilna. Most of the participants in the Conference were arrested and deported after 1930, e. g. Nekrasevic (1883 — 1937), Lastowski (1883 — 1938). Recently, Soviet linguists have been able to address themselves objectively to the study of West Belorussian norms in Poland (see e. g. Vjacorka 1986 a, 1986b). 17. For details, see Wexler (1974, 1979, 1985) and Mayo (1975, 1977, 1978, 1982). 18. For contemporary discussion of the conference, see Nekrasevic (1927 a); for sympathetic reviews, see Movaznavec (1926); Bajkow (1927); Dubowka (1927) and Nestawnik (1927). For attacks in the early Stalinist period of repression on the conference, as well as on all the terminological and standardizing work of the 1920s, see Ab zmenax i sprascenni belaruskaha pravapisu (1933); Xvedarovic (1934). One typical diatribe of this period may be cited to convey the spirit of the Stalinist period of repression: "... the linguists of the 1920s strove by all ways and means to tear the Belorussian literary language away from the language of the broad Belorussian working masses; they created an artificial barrier between the Belorussian and Russian languages, and soiled the Belorussian language with various archaisms from the Middle Ages and bourgeois vulgarisms" (Lamcew 1935: 67). The Promethean League of the Nations Subjugated by Moscow sponsored a conference in Warsaw between 31 May and 1 June 1936 critical of Soviet language planning in the minority languages after 1933 which was attended by 140 delegates (Smal-Stocky 1963: 507). 19. See Belaruskae movaznawstva (1965). For example, no mention was made of the participation of the well known Belorussian historian, Vaclaw Lastowski — though he was listed in the Belaruskaja saveckaja encyklapedyja 6 (Minsk 1972). On Soviet attitudes towards this scholar, see Sienkievic (1984). For other recent examples of Soviet attitudes towards the 1926 Conference, see Sakun (1960: 203); Sudnik (1972); Zurawksi and Kryvicki (1979: 11-12 and 11, fn. 3. In the revised 1984 version of his 1963 book, Sakun devoted a single cryptic paragraph to the 1926 conference, which, according to

The Academic Conference on the Reform of Belorussian

20. 21. 22.

23.

24.

25. 26. 27.

28.

29.

30.

39

him, was convened for the purpose of standardizing the norms of the Belorussian literary language, "but did not give the desired results, since it could not formulate the recommendations which would have met the requirements of society" (1984, 278). See A. Lesik (1943). I am grateful to Father Alexander Nadson for calling my attention to Nasa slova. The linguistic issues have been competently scrutinized by Mayo in considerable detail in three articles (1975, 1977, 1978), and thus need not detain us here. However, to the best of my knowledge, the present paper is the first to emphasize the fact that the 1926 Conference was the first of its kind in the Belorussian lands, and possibly the first in all the Soviet Union. See Buzuk (1927); C'vjatkow (1927); Ja. Lesik (1927); Ja. Lesik and Nekrasevic (1927); Nekrasevic (I927c); Pravapisnaja Kamisija (1927); Protokol pasljadzen'njaw Konferencyi (1927); Svjencickyj (1927). On the Conference choice of the Cyrillic alphabet for Belorussian — a choice first made prior to World War I - see Pracy (1927: VIII, XIX). For further references, see Mayo (1977: 45, fn. 4). Curiously, the issue of unique letters for dz and dz and the choice of alphabet surfaced again in two post-Conference discussions by Dubowka — (Dubowka 1928 and 1929). A Latin orthography continued in use, alongside Cyrillic, among Western Belorussians (in Poland, and again briefly in Belorussia during the German occupation). Essentially, vowels were spelled phonetically, while consonants and loanwords were spelled according to etymological considerations. See Mayo (1977: 36). For Western Belorussian discussions of orthography and the alphabet, see Stankevic (1921 a, 1921 b). See A. and Ja. Lesik (1926); Ja. Lesik (1927); Ja. Lesik and Nekrasevic (1927). Taraskevic himself recognized the need for some reforms, though he declined to accept the Conference recommendations in the 1929 revised version of his grammar, on the grounds that orthographic reform should not be attempted in isolation of a systematic grammatical reform (see Mayo 1977: 38). The publication of the Dyjaleklalahicny atlas belaruskaj movy in 1963 made it possible to put prescriptive discussions on a scholarly footing. The topics of case and verb endings surface over and over in the linguistic literature from 1933 to the present. For a summary, see Mayo (1975, 1977 and 1978). See e. g. Skarynic (1930: 90); Stankevic (1930) in Poland; for a bibliography of Soviet writings on the subject, see Antonovic (1968: bibliography). Soviet scholars lacked access to most of the documents, which were housed in libraries in Vilna. See also Lastowski (1926) for the publication of Old Belorussian texts. More or less objective evaluations of the terminological projects of the 1920s are now appearing with some frequency (see, e. g. Krasnej 1985; "U Terminalahicnaj kamisii TBM" 1990). The recent extreme changes in the political atmosphere suggest that predictions about the death of the Belorussian literary language (made, e. g. in Wexler 1979 and Mayo 1982) were premature. Yiddish is also enjoying a minor revival in Belorussia (and the former USSR in general) and prohibitions against the teaching of Modern Hebrew have been lifted.

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References Abbreviations of frequently cited publications: BL — Belaruskaja linhvistyka. Minsk. JBS — The Journal of Byelorussian Studies. London NK — Nas kraj. Minsk. NS — Nasa slova. Minsk. Pracy — Pracy Akademicnae Konferencyi pa Reforme Belaruskaha Pravapisu i Azbuki, S. Nekrasevic and U. Ihnatowski (eds.). Minsk 1927. (Title normalized to ... Kanferencyi ... in Soviet bibliographies.) RM — Rodnaja mova. Warsaw. UCE — Ukraine. A concise encyclopaedia l, V. Kubijovyc (ed.). Toronto 1963. ZVL — Zixronot va'ad halason. Jerusalem.

A.L. 1918 "Bielaruskaja terminologija". Homan 36. Ab zmenax i sprascenni belaruskaha pravapisu 1933 Minsk. Antonovic, A. K. 1968 Belorusskie teksty, pisannye arabskim pis'mom, i ix graflko-orfograflceskaja sistema. Vilna. Bajkow, M. 1926 Praktycny rasijska-belaruski slownik. Minsk. Bajkow, M. —M. Harecki 1924 Praktycny rasijska-belaruski slownik. Minsk; 19262. Bajkow, M. — S. Nekrasevic 1924 Rasijska-belaruski slownik. Minsk. 1925 Belaruska-rasijski slownik. Minsk. 1927 Review of Pracy 1927. Polymja 7: 255 - 257. Belaruskae movaznawslva. Biblijahraficny wkazal'nik (1825 —1965 hh.) 1967 (Edited by L. M. Sakun.) Minsk. Belaruski pravapis. Praekt 1930 Minsk. Ben-Yehuda, E. 1914 "Mekorot lemale hexaser bilsonenu". ZVL 4: 3 — 14. 1928 Comments to A. §. Yahuda, Toelet lesonot arav lehavanat hamikra, ZVL 6: 19-23. Bibliohrafija: Siamijazycny sloünik 1918 Homan 55. Birillo, H. V.-M. G. Bulaxov-M. R. Sudnik 1966 "Belorusskij jazyk", Jazyki narodov SSSR 1: 154-193. Moscow. Buzuk, P. 1926 "Vzajemovidnosyny miz ukrajins'koju ta bilorus'koju movamy", Zapysky istorycno-filolohicnoho viddilu Ukrajins'koji Akademiji Nauk 7 — 8: 421—426. 1927 "Stanovisca belaruskaj movy sjarod insyx slavjanskix movaw", Pracy 75 — 114. Replies by Vasmer, Vowk-Levanovic, Nimcynaw, C'vjatkow. 1928 Sproba linhvistycnaj heahrafii Belarusi 1. Minsk.

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C'vjatkow, L. 1927 "Nekol'ki slow ab belaruskim elemence w pol'skaj leksycy", Pracy 403 — 417. Dubavec, S. 1990 "Zyvy dux movy - suladnasc'", N S 2: 6-7. Dubowka, U. 1927 Review of Pracy. Polymja 7: 255-257. 1928 "Proekt litar dlja zhukaw dz i dz", Uzvyssa 4, 161 -177. 1929 "Lacinka ci kirylica", Uzvyssa 1, 100-113. Dyjalektalahicny atlas belaruskaj movy 1963 (Edited by R. I. Avanesaw et al.) Minsk. Dzendzelivs'kyj, J. O. 1958 — 1960 Linhvistycnyj atlas ukrajins'kyx narodnyx hovoriv Zakarpats'koji oblasty URSR (leksyka). Uzhorod. Harecki, M. 1918 a Belaruska-rasejski slownik. Vilna; 19212; revised Minsk 19253. 1918 b Karotki rusko-belaruski slownik. Smolensk. 1919 Nevjalicki belaruska-maskowski slownik. Vilna; 19212. 1926 Praktycny rasijska-belaruski slownik. Minsk. Harecki, M. —H. Harecki 1918 Rasejska-belaruski slownik. Smolensk; later editions Vilna 1920, 1921. Hermanovic, I. 1990 "Scjapan Nekrasevic", NS 1: 10. "Instrukcyja da z'biran'nja belaruskix narodnyx terminaw pa anatomii zyvel" 1926 NK 1:47-53. "Instrukcyja da z'biran'nja narodnaha slownika terminolehicnaha matar'jalu w belaruskaj move" 1925 MC 1:49-53. Instytut belaruskaj kul'tury 1922 — 1927 Belaruskaja navukovaja terminalehija. Minsk. 1922 Vol. 1: Elementarnaja matematyka. 1923 Vol. 2: Praktyka i teoryja litaraturnaha mastactva. 1923 Vol. 3: Heohraflcnyja i kosmohraflcnyja terminy i nazovy njabesnyx eel. 1923 Vol.4: Terminalohija lehiki ipsyxalohii. 1924 Vol. 5: Heolehija, mineralehija, krystalehrafija. 1924 Vol. 6: Batanika ahul'naja i specyjal'naja. 1926 Vol. 7: Muzycnyja terminy. 1926 Vol. 8: Slownik Ijasnyx terminaw. 1926 Vol. 9: Nomina anatomica Alboruthenica. 1926 Vol. 10: Terminalehija prava. 1926 Vol.11: Terminalehija hramadaznawstva. 1927 Vol. 12: Nazovy zyvel. 1927 Vol. 13: Nomina anatomica Alboruthenica, II. 1927 Vol. 14: Slownik matematycnae terminalehii. 1927 Vol. 15: Slownik hramatycna-linhvistycny. 1927 Vol. 16: Slownik hlebaznawcae terminalehii. 1927 Vol. 17: Slownik buxhaltarskaj terminalohii (praekt). Kas'pjarovic, M. I. 1925 Belaruska-rasijski slownicak. Vicebsk. 1927 Vicebski kraevy slownik (materyjaly). Vicebsk.

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Krasnej, V. P. 1985

"Posuki princypaw i sljaxow vypracowki belaruskaj nacyjanal'naj terminalohii w 20-x hadax", Belaruskaja mova 13: 31—41. Kul'tura movy 1927 Uzvyssa 5: 194-198. Lamcew, T. S. 1935 Belaruskaja hramatyka: fanetyka i pravapis. Minsk.

Lastowski, V. 1924

Padrucny rasijska-krywski (belaruski) slownik. Kaunas.

1926

Slownik pomnikaw starakrywskaj (belaruskaj) pis'men'nas'ci pavodle pryvedzenyx u teksce vypisak", in his Historyja belaruskaj (krywskaj) knihi. Kaunas.

Lesik, A. 1943

Balaruski pravapis. Minsk.

Lesik, A. —Ja. Lesik 1918

Da reformy belaruskaha pravapisu. Minsk.

1926

"Da reformy belaruskaha pravapisu", Polymja 6: 167 — 173 and Malar'yali da Akademicnaj Konferencyi pa reforme belaruskaha pravapisu i azbuki 3: 1-25; 7: 1-8.

Lesik, Ja. 1921

Pacatkovaja hramatyka belaruskaj movy. Minsk; later editions 1925, 1926.

1924—1925 Syntaks belaruskaj movy. Minsk; later edition 1926. 1926

Hramatyka belaruskaj movy: fanetyka. Minsk.

1927

"Da reformy belaruskaj azbuki". Pracy 115 — 123. Replies by Lastowski, Vasmer, Zylunovic, Buzuk, Rastarhuew, Carzynski. Lesik, Ja. —L. C. C'vjatkow 1928 "Instrukcyja dlja skaldan'nja terminolehicnyx proektaw", NK 4: 44 — 46. Lesik, Ja. — S. Nekrasevic 1927 "Ab reformy belaruskaha pravapisu", Pracy 183 — 233. Replies by VowkLevanovic, A. Lesik, Rastarhuew, Mjaleska, Buzuk. Marxel', H. 1925 "Sucasnae stanovisca ukrainskae navukovae movy", Polymja 4: 190 — 191. Mayo, P. J. 1975 "Recent developments in the norms of the Byelorussian literary language", JBS 3: 244-268.

1977 1978 1982

"The alphabet and orthography of Byelorussian in the 20th century", JBS 4: 28-48. "Byelorussian orthography: From the 1933 Reform to the present day", JBS 4: 25-47. "The Byelorussian language: its rise and fall and rise ...", in: F. E. Knowles—J. I. Press (eds.), Papers in Slavonic linguistics 1: 163 — 184. Birmingham.

Mieleszka, I. 1916 "Trajny sajuz", Homan 28. Movaznavec 1926 Review of Pracy. As'veta 8: 93-97. N.S. 1917 "Szanujma rodnuju mowu!" Homan 45.

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Nadson, A. 1967 "Nasa niva", JBS 1: 184-206. Nastawnik 1927 Review of Pracy. Zvjazda, 5 October. Nekrasevic, S. 1925 "Da pytannja ab ukladanni slownika zyvoj belaruskaj movy". Polymja 5, 164-186. 1927 a "Akademicnaja konferencyja pa reforme pravapisu i hrafiki, vyniki jae pracy", NK\: 3-9. 1927b Hramatyka belaruskaj movy. Minsk. 1927c "Sucasny stan vyvucen'nja belaruskaj movy", Pracy. Replies by Vasmer, Nimcynaw, Imsen'nik, Serbaw. Nekrasevic, S. — P. Buzuk 1927 Prahrama dlja zbirannja asablivascej belaruskix havorak i havorak, peraxodnyx da susednix mow. Minsk. Nosovic, I. I. 1870 Slovar' belorusskogo narecija. St. Petersburg. Peltz, R. 1985 "The dehebraization controversy in Soviet Yiddish language planning: Standard or symbol?" in: J. A. Fishman (ed.), Readings in the sociology of Jewish languages 1, 125 — 150. The Hague: Mouton. Pravapisnaja Kamisija 1927 Pracy 233 — 310. Participation at Conference by Nimcynaw, Vowk-Levanovic, A. Lesik, Mjaleska, Bahdanovic, Tros'ka, Matac, Macul'ski, Bajkow, Carzynski, Nekrasevic, Bjal'kevic, Dambrowski, Ja. Lesik, Imsen'nik. Proekt ukladan 'nja slownika zyvoj belaruskaj movy 1929 (Belaruskaja akademija navuk. Kamisija dlja ukladan'nja slownika zyvoj belaruskaj movy). Minsk. Protokol pasjadzen'njaw Konferency 1927 Pracy 419-425. Rastarhuew, P. A. 1927 "Da reformy belaruskaj azbuki", Pracy 124-131. Sakun, A. M. 1960 Narysy historyi belaruskaj litaraturnaj movy. Minsk. 1963 Historyja belaruskaj literaturnaj movy. Minsk; revised edition Minsk 1984. Samabytnasc naszaj mowy 1916 Homan 85. Saternik, M. 1929 Krajovy slownik Cervenscyny. Minsk. Scerbin, V. K. 1989 "Pytanni mownaj palityki w pracax I. V Vowka-Levanovica", BL 36: 24 — 31. Shevelov, G. Y. 1987 Ukrajins'ka mova v persij polovyni dvadcjatoho stolittja (1900—1941). [Munich.] Sieben-Sprachen- Wörterbuch. Deutsch, Polnisch, Russisch, Weißrussisch, Litauisch, Leitisch, Jiddisch 1918 Leipzig.

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Sienkievic, V. 1984 "Lastouski the historian and his historical views", JBS 5: 3 — 13. Simovyc, V. (supplemented by J. B. Rudnyc'kyj) 1963 "The history of Ukrainian orthography", UCE 512-518. Skarynic, B. 1930 "Review of Taraskevic 19295. RM 3-4: 76-90. Slownik terminalohii ahul'nae raslinahadowli 1920 Minsk. Smal-Stocky, R. 1963 "The Ukrainian language in the Soviet Union", UCE 504-511. Smolic, A. 1922 "Review of Instytut belaruskaj kul'tury in Vestnik Narodnogo Komissariata". Polymja 1: 85-86. Stankevic, J. 1921 a Belaruskaja pravapis' z praktykavan'jami 1. Vilna. 1921 b Pravapis cuzych slou. Vilna. 1930 "Zacemki z kryvickae (belaruskae) movy". RM 5: 109-112. Sudnik, M. P. 1972 "Belarusistyka napjaredadni 50-hodzzja Sajuza SSR", BL 1: 5-14. Sul'man, M. 1926 "Ab ahul'nyx elementax u belaruskaj i jawrejskaj movax", Polymja 8: 203-217. Supa, S. 1990 "Quo vadis, lingua alboruthenica?" NS 4: 8-9. Supranovic, M. 1990 "Sto my pakinem dzecjam", NS 4: 2-3, 12-13. Svjencickyj, I. 1927 "Pravopysni cixy podilu pamjatok stararuskoho pys'menstva", Pracy 417-418. Taraskevic, B. 1918 Belorusskaja grammatika dlja skol. Vilna; Minsk—Vilna —Berlin 19212; revised Vilna 19255. U Terminalahicnaj kamisii TBM 1990 NS 3: 16. V.L. 1923 Terminalehija da anatomii i fizyalehii", Kryvic 1: 62 — 65. Vaskevic, L. 1926 Rasejska-belaruski slownicak dzela cyhunacnyx mjasckomaw. Minsk. Veras, Z. 1924 Belaruska-pol'ska-rasejska-lacinski batanicny slownik. Vilna. Verascaka, Ju. 1925 Slownik starakrywskaj aktavaj movy", Kryvic 2: 91 — 102. Vestnik narodnogo komissariata prosvescenija 1921 — 1922 Minsk. (Contains Hramatycnaja terminalehija 1921: 2; Lehicnaja terminalehija 1922: 1; Terminalehija arytmetyki 1922: 2; Terminalehija al'hebry 1922: 3—4; Batanicnaja terminalehija 1922: 5 — 6; Terminalehija heometryi 1922: 9 — 10; Terminalehija analitycnaj heometryi 1922: 11 — 12; Terminalehija tryhonometryi 1922: 11-12.

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Vilenkin, L. 1931 Jidiser spraxatlas fun sovet-farband. Minsk. Vjacorka, V. R. 1986 a "Asablivasci leksicnaj sistemy belaruskaj literaturnaj movy Zaxodnjaj Belarusi", BL30: 50-54. 1986 b "Asnownyja hrafika-arfahraficnyja asablivasci movi peryedyki Zaxodnjaj Belarusi (1920-1939 hh.)", BL 29: 32-39. Vowk-Levanovic, I. V. 1926 a Belaruskae akanne. Minsk. 1926b Da pytannja ab akanni w belaruskim pravapise. Minsk. 1927 Lekcyi pa historyi belaruskaj movy. Kurs, cytany w BDU w 1925—1927 hh. Ustup i fanetyka. Minsk. Wexler, P. 1974 Purism and language. A study in Modern Ukrainian and Belorussian nationalism (1840 — 1967). Bloomington: University of Indiana Press. 1979 "The rise (and fall) of the modern Byelorussian literary language", The Slavonic and East European Review 51: 481 — 508. 1985 "Belorussification, russification and polonization trends in the Belorussian language 1890—1982", in: I.T. Kreindler (ed.), Sociolinguistic perspectives in Soviet national languages. Sociolinguistic perspectives on their past, present and future, (Contributions to the Sociology of Language 40) 37 — 56. Berlin—New York —Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter. 1989 "Hieratic components in Soviet dictionaries of Yiddish, Dungan and Belorussian", in: B. H. Jernudd —M. J. Shapiro (eds.), The politics of language purism (Contributions to the Sociology of Language 54), 141 — 167. Berlin—New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 1990 The schizoid nature of Modern Hebrew. A Slavic language in search of a Semitic past. Wiesbaden. Xvedarovic, M. 1934 "Pospex leninskaj nacyjanal'naj palityki", Pis'menniki BSSR ab reforme pravapisu belaruskaj movy, 59 — 60. Minsk. Zurawski, A. I. —A. A. Kryvicki 1979 Belaruskae movaznawstva w Akademii Navuk BSSR. Minsk.

The First International Catalan Language Congress, Barcelona, 13-18 October, 1906 Joan Marti i Castell

Yet it is pleasing for me to speak the language of the wise men who filled the Universe with their customs and laws, the language of those heroes who looked up to kings, defended their rights, and avenged their grievances. (Bonaventura Carles Aribau, fragment from Oda a la Patria, 1833)

The social and political situation at the end of the 19th century Catalan, a Romance language spoken mainly in the Eastern part of the Iberian Peninsula and adjacent islands, underwent a gradual decline between the fifteenth century, when it was highly standardised, and was the language of a flourishing literary tradition, as well as being the official language of these areas, until the nineteenth century, when though still being the ordinary language of the people, Catalan was totally subordinated to Spanish and French and was increasingly fragmented geographically. This was due mainly to the increasing political power of Spain and France, including outright repression of the use of Catalan in the eighteenth century. In the first half of the 19th century, a whole series of accumulated contradictions suddenly became apparent within Catalan society. These contradictions caused confrontations mong Catalans, but eventually were to prove the source of enlightenment which led to the recovery of the national conscience that those very same contradictions had done away with. In the second half of the century, things changed substantially. From 1854 to 1856 (the Progressive Biennium), the Catalan bourgeoisie failed in its attempt to liberalize State power and to become hegemonic within Spain: it was a blow which caused the bourgeoisie to turn towards the interests of the rest of the country and

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to plan a Catalan economic policy with a different ideology. It began to give rise to nationalist movements built around the growing industrial world of the period. It was able to pinpoint one particular enemy: the Madrid government. At the turn of the century, growing economic mobility was not able to prevent a rise in social strife. The Catalan bourgeoisie understood that it could not do without the popular classes; in 1868, the September Revolution led to the 1st Spanish Republic, under which the Catalan State was created in 1873. But one year later, in 1874, the former regime was restored by the very same Catalan bourgeoisie — now quite frightened. In the last twenty-five years of the 19th century, this class came closer and closer to the Catalan intelligentsia, and they worked together — not without blatant contradictions — to advance Catalan self-government, with the irregular, though decisive, aid of the popular classes. Within this historical context, it is obvious that the situation of the Catalan language should suffer the consequences of adverse moments. During the first years of the century, the effects of the centralist linguistic policy of the 19th century, which had made Spanish dominant throughout the Peninsula, were still being suffered. These ill effects were not only caused by the Spanish government, but also by the endogenic pressure of those Catalans who had abandoned their own language. Catalan continued to lose out during this period, for although literacy was becoming more and more general, it was predominantly introduced in Spanish. Discriminatory bilingualism, due to schooling and new mass media, reached sectors that had remained solely Catalan-speaking. As from the moment when the bourgeoisie realized that it was on its own territory, that its leadership was to be projected, the sociolinguistic situation was soon transformed. It was in the present century that the concern over Catalan becoming a language capable of literary expression reappeared. As from 1850, a process of standardization was initiated on two fronts: the promotion of its social use, and language standardization. Catalanism, the "Renaixenga" movement, and press in Catalan are characteristics of the former. During the "Renaixenga", a fundamental cornerstone of the literary and cultural revival of Catalan, there was a widespread recovery of the use of Catalan in poetry, and later in prose, drama, journalism and other domains, in literary and intellectual circles where Spanish had predominated for several centuries. It ended the "Decadencia" (16 —18th centuries) during which cultural production in Catalan was not generally acknowledged as being of a high standard. The contin-

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uous discussions about linguistic uses — above all about orthography — are proof of the latter. Among the lower classes, which had not abandoned Catalan, diglossic ideologies were done away with. The use of the native tongue spread until the turn of the century. The bourgeoisie, the Church and the aristocracy contributed to the recovery of Catalan as language A. After the period marked by the "Renaixen$a" movement, the task of recovering Catalan became associated with the Modernist movement, which was born of intellectual circles linked to the journal "L'Aven?": This latter movement's techniques and objectives, however, were somewhat different. Their aim was to modernize culture, taking Europe as their reference point. This enabled them to overcome a provincial view of Catalan life and to stress the country's national character. This spirit favoured the use of Catalan as the language of scientific, medical, agricultural and mathematical works, etc. Despite all this, the unfounded belief that Catalan was not as versatile a language as Spanish still lingered on. Indeed, there were those who took up the use of Catalan not out of any personal conviction, but for reasons of personal interest and class, and the inertia of resorting to Spanish still had great force. During the "Renaixenca" period, the verse "Since he speaks Catalan, may God grant him glory" became a convincing concept, but the language was not at all present in the Administration. The growing industrialization of Catalonia led to a relatively heavy immigration of non-Catalan speakers, and this caused Spanish to become spoken for the first time among the working class. Outside the Principality of Catalonia, in the rest of the Catalan Countries, things did not develop in the same way. Without going into details, the presence of a decisive socio-economic and cultural factor must be stressed. Neither in the Pais Valencia (Valencia), nor in the Roussillon (North Catalonia), nor in the Balearic Islands was there a bourgeoisie with the same characteristics as in the Principality, because there was no industrial development to justify its appearance. For this reason, the bourgeoisie in these regions came closer to the aristocracy, and took up the same habit of speaking Spanish or French to distinguish itself from the peasantry, even in private and family life, and this habit is still current nowadays. As a consequence of this same phenomenon, the Church also came close to the aristocracy and favoured a process of de-Catalanization.

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The "deficient" state of the Catalan language On the one hand, the language became the main symbol of Catalanism in all of the multiple expressions we have mentioned. Languages are a heritage of the people, no matter which social category they belong to. It is for this reason that they function, objectively speaking, as particularly solid inter-class social binders. This was so in the Catalan Countries to the point that in Catalonia particularly — though not exclusively — linguistic desertion was seen, and still is, as a synonym for treason. A lack of sensitivity to problems associated with the language is interpreted as an inequivocal symptom of indifference towards the Catalan nation. Linguistic reflection, at all levels, became the constant practice of all those people who saw themselves as militants of the national cause. On the other hand, the long crisis affecting the frequency and linguistic functions in which the language was used, was to produce a situation of deadlock, and, above all, a loss of unity. Catalan was clearly threatened by a process of fragmentation which could lead it to a fatal outcome. When the recovery of the language began, as described in the previous section, the consequences of the situations the language had gone through became apparent: loss of resources, harmful interference from Spanish, special difficulties in the written level and in the formal linguistic registers in general. There was only one possible way out: a rapid plan for the reconstruction of the grammatical rules that would put an end to these problems. It was no easy task because, apart from the work involved, not everyone was aware of the urgent need for this process. Examples of those hampering the process were the two extremist groups: the "purists", advocating the recovery of an archaic and therefore artificial form of Catalan, and the defenders of the "Catalan that is now spoken" cause, whose populist spirit prevented them from seeing that their proposal would inevitably lead to the splintering of the language, and not to its standardization. Indeed, a code standardization campaign was started up by the Ανεης group. It was debated, in the period spanning the years 1890 and 1892, in the pages of the magazine L'Avenf. Dictionaries, treatises on ortography, and general grammar books were churned out, showing to what degree intellectuals were concerned with the "anarchy" in the written use of the language. Works of great quality were published alongside somewhat poorer and less trustworthy contributions. Alongside works which added to rather than cleared up the

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confusion, there were others which became the basis for solving the problem over the course of the first half of the 20th century. One question which cannot be overlooked, on considering the aftereffects of the repressive centralist Spanish policies, is that of consciousness regarding linguistic unity. There had been no divisions on this front until ideological pressure tending towards the internal fragmentation of the Catalan nation was introduced by the Castilian administration. No one, whether Catalan or not, doubted that the language of Valencia, Balearic Islands, L'Alguer, Andorra, the "Franja" of Aragon (or Aragonese fringe) and the Principality of Catalonia was one and the same. But during the language's recovery process, things have been quite different, and, although linguistic unity was not a serious problem, it became necessary to resist excessive regional variation in order to put an end to linguistic fragmentation. This situation still holds today.

The historical context and sociolinguistic situation in the first half of the 20th century (1900-1939) The situation inherited from the 19th century, which we are here interested in studying, relates to Catalanism. Indeed, at the outset of the 20th century, the concern of the Lliga Regionalista (the best known and most popular Catalanist conservative party) for linguistic and cultural problems was fundamental, having an important expression in the literary current of "Noucentisme". This movement, which was expressed through all the arts, was a return to the refined elegance and neoclassical simplicity of the Attic style of the Greeks. It was a kind of latterday Italian renaissance, and it influenced the politicians of the day considerably. Nonetheless, it had a selective and elitist attitude, and therefore contributed little to democracy. The class-orientated position of the Lliga was to be the cause of its downfall as the leading party of the Catalanist movement. As regards the main historical events, one must single out the following for the Principality of Catalonia: the election of Prat de la Riba as President of the Barcelona Provincial Council in 1906 (the very same year as the First International Catalan Language Congress); a series of social troubles, among which the Tragic Week, in July 1909, stands out; industrialization leading to a clash of bourgeois and working class interests. The factor that most favoured the flourishing of Catalan culture

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and language was the introduction of the Mancomunitat de Catalunya (an inter-provincial council for the four Catalan provinces) in 1914. It was to be the recognition — however weak — of Catalan autonomous power. However, the Spanish still failed to understand the justice of the cause of the Catalan Countries, and called it overtly bourgeois and antipopular (the movement known as Lerrouxisme, which took its name from its leader "Lerroux", claiming that Catalanism was opposed to the interests of the workers, attained a notable degree of working class support). In 1925, Primo de Rivera led a coup d'Etat which resulted in the dissolution of the Mancomunitat, although it was unable to stifle the struggle for Catalan freedom; in fact, it greatly encouraged it. Popular demands became progressively stronger and took a new direction: Republicanism. This step, however, can largely be put down to historical circumstances rather than any deep-felt ideological conviction among the popular classes. The Republic was voted in 1931, and this led to the declaration of the Catalan State by Francesc Maciä, president of Catalonia. Nationalism was no longer the exclusive interest of the bourgeoisie, and became the most widespread feeling of the underprivileged. It was indeed at this time that major progrees was made on all fronts, until 1937, when Franco set about destroying the structures which had been taking shape, with the propagation and assimilation of an ideology which viciously rejected any movement differing from the unitary concept of "the one and only Spain", a position Franco never abandoned. The situation of the Catalan language from 1900 to 1939 was the inevitable reflection of all the other changes which took place. In the period marked by the Mancomunitat and the Republic, Catalan experienced a remarkable process of recovery, which contrasts dramatically with the severe blows suffered under Primo de Rivera and Franco. It is by no means a coincidence that reactionary dictatorships are the regimes that are most intent on linguistic genocide. During the first years of the 20th century, the language reaffirmed its character as an autonomous language, and recovered vital areas for its permanent retension. Linguistic normalization advanced on every front. Despite the contradictions we have referred to, the Lliga Regionalista played a vital role in this process. Between the years 1900 and 1939, Catalan was a popular and cultured national language, as well as a prohibited and persecuted one. Growing industrialization led to greater problems. Catalan and Spanish habitually now lived side by side, giving rise to a new sociolinguistic situation which still obliges us today to be wary of the attempt to

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introduce diglossic bilingualism and to avoid interferences which could threaten the state of Catalan. This has led to an ideological and political conflict between those who defend official monolingualism and those who believe in the need to keep up bilingualism.

The First International Catalan Language Congress At the turn of this century, the Catalan language experienced — as we have explained — a major expansion in its use at all levels. But its social extension would not have been enough to ensure its future. It was also necessary to standardize the language so that a unitary disciplined code would be available. A major problem the "Renaixenga" came up against (on the literary, linguistic and cultural fronts) was the lack of perspective. Writers could not remember why Catalan had been unable to become a codified language, due to the decadence and repression which had not ceased since the 15th century. Luckily, however, people were aware that an urgent solution was called for. If Catalan was opening doors in every field of expression, it could not continue to lack a standardized grammar which would regulate its usage. It was also necessary to put a check on the interferences accumulated from other more influencial languages, namely Spanish, French and Italian. The conviction that this was true was also to be found in the relationship between language and power: political domination also shows up clearly in linguistic domination. The non-standardization of Catalan relative to other languages leads to subordination in all areas, and this had to be overcome. In 1906, an event of great significance for the recent history of the Catalan language occured in Barcelona, the Catalan capital. The different sectors involved joined forces, and enthusiasm was thus sparked off for the reconstruction of the language: the First International Catalan Language Congress was held.

Mossen Antoni M. Alcover The Majorcan priest, Antoni M. Alcover, was the foremost promoter of the organization of the Congress. He was particularly sensitive to the state in which Catalan was to be found. It lacked one unified and solid code for all uses and an institution which would see to its grammatical

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standardization. On the other hand, there was a social will to recover the language for literature and science, as there were many important writers who lacked a common reference point with which to ensure the quality of their works. Alcover therefore decided to put an end to this chaotic situation which inevitably contributed to linguistic substitution in favour of the dominant language, to diglossic attitudes, to the complex of Catalans who believed their language not to be suited to cultural expression, and to the ever more harmful penetration of Spanish into Catalan, a process which threatened to convert the language into a decadent form of slang. Mossen (that is, Father) Antoni M. Alcover carried out this task with the enthusiasm and energy he was always associated with. His initial wish was to limit the subject matter to be covered in the Congress to the question of syntax. This factor shows, however, that he was not fully aware of the exact dimensions of the problem. The Hamburg-born linguist, Bernhard Schädel (with whom Alcover cooperated as from 1904), along with other personalities in the Catalan culture world, made him understand that the occasion of a meeting, such as the one he planned, was justified if all the language's normative problems — and perhaps orthographical problems above all — were to be tackled. Alcover became more and more entrenched in the idea that the Congress had to combine the occasion offered for the exaltation of the Catalan language and nation, with serious ans scientific study. He was also conscious of the fact that it was necessary to enable the Congress to have as much impact as possible, both within and outside the Catalan-speaking countries: in the rest of the Spanish State and abroad. The real image of the project has often been presented in a blurred fashion, since the more strictly patriotic and emotive aspects were the ones to be stressed. The Congress which was launched by Alcover aimed to polish and fully recover the language: no factor that may have contributed to this goal was excluded. It was by no means easy to organize such an ambitious meeting, for all kinds of reasons. If A. M. Alcover had not had the stubborness, will power, conviction and decision of a "fighter", the objective and personal difficulties encountered would have surely made the project fail. He was extraordinarily faithful to his own ideas, but he managed to modify the Congress's initial concept. If only as the major promoter of this single undertaking, his unofficial title as "apostle of the language" does him justice.

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On the need for and the possibilities of the Congress It was not enough for the Congress to make people see that it was absolutely necessary to overcome the chaotic situation in which the Catalan language was being led to a fatal fragmentation. It was also insufficient to make people see that it was necessary to set urgently to work on the task of linguistic and national recovery. It was vital to involve qualified people in a task that was not to be easy, people who were to have the skill and capacity to do their work properly, so that goals set could be attained. It was precisely in this aspect that there were to be clashes. Although everyone was more or less aware of the fact that the language showed extreme decadence due to the degradation it had fallen into, there was no agreement about the path to follow to solve the situation, nor how, nor which was the ideal moment to act. The reasons for these controversies were complex, but basically fell into two categories: some centered on the way the language was to be recovered ("purists" versus "populists") and others on the scientific resources available for this recovery. The fish was biting its own tail: if the decision to start an in depth study of the problems facing Catalan was not taken, there would never be the right atmosphere for the training of fine linguists; if there were no good linguists, solid grammatical analyses could not be started. At this point it is convenient to refer to the figure of Pompeu Fabra, the finest grammarian in the Catalan language. It is to him that we owe the rules for the standardization of the literary language, although he was not favourable to the idea of organizing the Congress. He also did not agree with Alcover, as to the solution of many grammatical questions. Situations of special tension arose between these two men who were both very earnest, having ideological differences in the widest sense of the expression. Fabra and Alcover agreed, however, on one basic conviction: Catalan was very much threatened by the influence of the languages of its neighbouring states, especially by Hispanicisms and Gallicisms. They differed, however, as to the methodology to be employed to solve the problem: Fabra had a more scientific approach to the language; Alcover relied more on intuition and had difficulties elaborating the theses he was defending, which were often referred to as "archaic" and even "arbitrary". They differed very greatly over one particular issue: the question of the role that Barcelona Catalan was to have in the codification of Catalan grammar. Alcover was very much hostile to taking it into

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account, and failed to grasp the importance that Barcelona Catalan has had in the history of Catalan. He was unduly obsessed with the excessive influence it had suffered from Castilian — a factor Pompeu Fabra was fully aware of. Fabra did not underrate any of the Catalan dialects when drawing up the norms for the literary language, but understood that the cultural role played by Barcelona placed her in a position of relative — objective — privilege. But, over and above all other differences, we are here interested in stressing the major profit the Congress and the Catalan language obtained from their bitter arguments. Fabra also had an initial view of the Congress he was later to modify. This change is clear to see in the difference between the contribution he had originally planned and the one he finally made. His original idea was to present a complete grammatical study of an old work, comparing medieval solutions with present-day ones. But his intuitive sensitivity in the area of contemporary sociolinguistics led him to sacrifice personal preferences. He knew it would not be simply a linguistic Congress, and that a task of raising national consciousness had to be carried out. This he would achieve by way of works which would clear up the inseparable interdependence of language, nation and power, as well as freeing the language of its subordination to Spanish, French and Italian. Fabra had headed the campaign for orthographic reform from the magazine L'Avenf (1890 — 1891), and was, without doubt, the person who showed most talent for the complex tasks of the Congress that was to be held. With the initiative and participation of Alcover and the cooperation of Fabra, there were good omens for the Congress. Furthermore, other people who were prepared to engage in scientific study of the language were involved (Masso i Torrents, Joaquim Casas, Carbo, etc.). What became a basic part of the Congress's potential was the realism they shared regarding the possibilities of solving all the problems associated with Catalan grammar. The vital point was to put on the table the plentiful questions that needed attention, to find out how things were, and to initiate sufficient plans for studies and research. It had to be an act to "wake up" the national consciousness, a process that would trigger off the support of the Catalan-speaking community for their language and nation. The initiative also had the support of Spanish and other foreign scholars, because it was felt that the future of the Catalan Countries did not depend exclusively on the will of her citizens, but also on international acknowledgement. Because of the limitations there were at the outstart, it is not difficult to understand the extreme complication involved in the organization of

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a meeting of very substantial size. The tenacity of Mossen Alcover was even greater than expected, because he not only managed to gather an extraordinarily qualified group of intellectuals — linguists and others — from the Catalan-speaking countries (Rubio i Lluch, Maragall, Ruyra, d'Abadal, Costa i Llobera, Cambo, Guimera, Llorente, Prat de la Riba, etc.), but also obtained the cooperation of outstanding Spanish personalities such as Menendez y Pelayo, and foreign ones: Saro'ihandy, Guarnerio, Foulche-Delbosc, etc. The problems involved in starting up a Congress with the aforementioned aims were not limited to the diversity of opinions on whether it should be convened or concerning its precise linguistic topics. The sociolinguistic and political context we have described in detail favoured ideological discussion at all levels. It was particularly difficult to overcome differences in the latter connection, especially so with regard of the concept "nation", over which there were many positions, many of which were quite divorced from each other. To cite a significant sample of what we mean, we may refer to the discussions held among the organizers of the Congress regarding their commitment towards Catholicism. Some wanted it to be part and parcel of the Congress, and complained bitterly that Alcover, vicar-general of the diocese of Majorca and active conservative militant, did not opt for this path. There also predominated the idea that Catalanism would not bear fruit if it were not Christian, and there were fears that among Catalanists there were certain anti-clerical sectors that could turn Catalinism into a revolutionary movement; similarly, the belief of certain sectors that the Congress was only possible given the Church's acceptance. There were other considerations of this kind, insistently brought up with a view to the First International Catalan Language Congress being openly "confessional". But Mossen Alcover was able to keep the concepts well apart. He was aware that to exclude people's participation for reasons of faith could only lead to disaster. He worked on the basis of the negative historical experience that mixing religion and Catalanism had led to. He held that Catalanism is the heritage of all Catalans, without exception, whether they be believers or not. Looking back, no one questions the wisdom of his decision not to be convinced by an opinion that would have quite possibly led to a fatal division of nationalist feeling and commitment. All things considered, the Congress was necessary and possible, although it depended on the gigantic efforts that only an unconditional militant attitude in favour of the recovery and standardization of the

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language could foster. In his closing speech. Alcover began with the following eloquent words: Gentlemen: We have finished the first International Catalan Language Congress, with healthy peace, with holy concord, without any conflict, without any obstacles, thanks be to God (...). The success of the Congress has exceeded all our hopes, which indeed were great, being a little acquainted, as we are, with the Catalan people.

Figure 1 The main organizers of the First Catalan Conference, as well as a number of its participants

Participation in the Congress The First International Catalan Language Congress (October 13th — 18th, 1906) has been defined as a plebiscite on the question of the Catalan language and nation, and as the most important Catalan nationalist act in half a century. Indeed, we do not believe this to be an exaggeration, if we take the social repercussions it give rise to into account. It must be remembered that, in one sense, love of the language was in itself enough of a stimulus to call the whole Congress, and that its main

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driving force was the defence of the linguistic rights of the Catalan people. On another plane, the love and defence of the language implied scientific study that would lead to the availability of a fully-fledged and dignified language which could be used in interaction at all levels and for all subjects. Therefore, there could be no exclusions. Scholars and qualified investigators had to work with the support and encouragement of all those who loved their language. Science had to mingle with passion in a combination which was rather biased towards the latter, because the situation did not permit it to be otherwise. The grammar book and dictionary that were lacking had to be produced with the cooperation of everyone; as Alcover had said, those who could not offer knowledge, could bring forward money, social influence, proselytism ... Popular response demonstrated the great richness of Catalanist feeling in the country and the effectiveness of the way in which the call for the commitment of the whole community had been made. The two basic criteria used to encourage participation are clear from the list of members at the Congress: the appeal was aimed at those with scientific capacity and those who responded to a sense of loyalty to the language. Beside top specialists in linguistics from all parts of the Catalan Countries, from Spain and other foreign countries (Italy, France, Germany), whom we have already referred to elsewhere, men and women of all professions and social classes came together with the shared will to recover the language. Alcover noted, on closing the Congress, that: "We would never have thought that so many people would come to listen to philological discussions and readings, which tend to be arid, tiresome and boring." Surprisingly enough, the Congress had over 3000 members! This factor made it clear that the vast majority of Catalans wanted their language to be restored, purified and dignified, and that this cause was of interest to people outside Catalonia. Congress members were divided into three groups: honorary members, honorary supportive members, and effective members. The public official and political powers of Catalonia were also largely responsive to the Congress: the Barcelona City Hall and Provincial Council, several other town councils and official bodies, the Post Office management board, many honorary congress members, all contributed enthusiastically to the project. This is particularly significant if we bear in mind the degree to which the survival of a threatened language depends on the consideration bestowed on it by those who are responsible for running society, directly or indirectly.

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The press covered the Congress in great detail, and this was by no means a minor aim of the organizers. Everyone spoke of the Congress because it was news. Articles and references about its progress were divulged thanks to the cooperation of the mass media. Catalan newspapers covered the debates about the language, before, during and after the Congress, a tradition that still lives on today.

Organization of the Congress It suffices to consult the Proceedings of the Congress (published in Barcelona in 1908) to become aware of its complexity and perfect development. This is evident both in formal and official ceremonies, marked by severe protocol, with the participation of political, cultural and social authorities, and in those sessions devoted to the presentation and discussion of reports and papers. It was a success in its totality, despite the large quantity of participants. Three organization commissions were set up to cover the technical, economic and administrative areas. An executive Committee, and two special commissions were also set up: one for the bibliographical exhibition and one for the garden party. There were 14 honorary presidencies, some awarded to Spaniards and other foreigners (from the Universities of Innsbruck, Halle, Paris and Lisbon). Reports and papers were distributed among three sections: the Philological and Historical (presided over by Mossen Alcover, having Pompeu Fabra as one of its vice-presidents), the Literary, and finally the Social and Juridical. There was also an Executive Board for the Congress's conclusions and resolutions, which was also presided over by Mossen Alcover. The working programme — including ceremonies — lasted from Saturday 13th October 1906 (the inauguration was in the evening of the 13th), until Thursday 18th October, with an official reception in honour of all Congress members at the Barcelona Atheneum Club. All strictly scientific activity, however, finished in the afternoon of 17th October. In addition to the linguistic discussion sessions, there were complementary acts and ceremonies. There was a Catalan book exhibition and a garden party in honour of Congress members and their families at the Giiell Park. There was a Catalan theatre festival, with different performances of scenes from plays belonging to various periods. There was also a Catalan popular music festival, given by the Orfeo Catalä choir, a dinner in honour of foreign Congress members, as well as a reception at

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Barcelona Town Hall's Salo de Cent and the aforementioned one at the Atheneum Club. Excursions were also organized, to Vic, Ripoll, Poblet, Vilanova and Sitges. The Congress was run in accordance with a set of Regulations which were drawn up by the commissions. There were 16 articles to these Regulations, the last of which declared the Catalan language to be official, though obviously permitting Congress members from other countries to use their own language. Nine subjects and 29 papers were covered by the Philological and Historical Section. The Literary section covered 5 subjects and 22 papers, and the Social and Juridical Section 4 subjects and 7 papers. The presentations of subjects and papers were carried out in 5 sessions held by each of the three sections. Each section prepared a statement of conclusions based on its papers. The volume of the Proceedings (almost 700 pages) gives an idea of the vast working capacity of the First International Catalan Language Congress. The fact that there was no special incident nor any unpleasant surprises demonstrates the degree to which the organization and management of the Congress had been planned down to the last detail. But this is not surprising if we bear in mind that the proposal to celebrate the Congress had been made two years before, on 25th January 1904, at the Barcelona Atheneum Club.

The subjects covered at the Congress It has been said that the First International Catalan Language Congress was almost exclusively inspired by the reaction against the precarious state of the linguistic norms affecting the literary use of the language. However, if one considers the different questions that were dealt with, it has to be admitted that, besides the priority question of grammar, many other problems were also taken into account, thus converting the Congress into a debating centre open to all aspects of the linguistic situation. This could not have been otherwise for one simple reason: if the codification of Catalan was a problem yet to be solved, the cause of that very problem was its sociolinguistic context. How else could one explain the presence of Hispanicisms, Gallicisms and Italianisms in the language — a presence that was overwhelming to the point that the production of many writers was the result of a linguistic hybrid which could as easily be termed Catalanized Spanish as Hispanicized Catalan?

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At a different level, the decision to tackle the grammatical coding of Catalan was a task which could not be avoided, considering the importance the dialects were to have in the process. It was therefore necessary to tackle the question of the unity of the language and the equilibrium between its different dialects. This concern was also intermixed with the need for cohesion between the Catalan Countries, threatened as they were by the policies of centralist governments, which did their utmost to further their division. On reviewing the Proceedings it can be seen that grammatical questions are by far the most abundant, and, in general, the ones which were treated in most depth. This explains why the Philological and Historical section was the one which had most contributions. The nine major themes which were covered are indeed concerned with orthography, morphology and syntax. But in other papers, questions of dialectology, general history of the language, lexicology, prosody, general phonetics and toponomy were also covered. The Literary section was logically concerned with which linguistic model was to be used by writers and, also, therefore, at a more formal level, of written and spoken communication. But it was also concerned with the need for Catalan to become the only language for our literature, as well as the need to rid itself of undue foreign influence from other languages. The Congress was also concerned with the problems associated with specialized language (medical and biological fields, technical professions and construction), dialectology, lexicography, history of the language, fostering the language by means of journalism, and the question of the language's vitality and unity. The Social and Juridical section became involved in very modern and current problems such as the obligation of the public Administration to promote the use of Catalan, and the linguistic rights of the citizens; the question of solidarity between the different Catalan-speaking countries; the full introduction of language into education. Specialized language questions were also studied — especially those associated with law; Catalan among the cultural associations; Catalan usage statistics; and the inseparable relationship between language and nation. We may conclude, from a review of this section, that the more use in awareness of the fact that both the reality of the situation the language was in, and the way of resolving its precarious state, were directly associated with the political context which had converted the Catalan Countries, their language and their culture, into a splintered and subordinated entity.

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From the strict perspective of the internal working order of the Congress, it is clear that nothing was left to improvisation. The anticipation that is reflected in the Regulations enabled the presentation of subjects, papers, amendments and discussions, on the one hand, and the official and social ceremonies we have referred to, on the other, all to take place in strict accordance with what had previously been laid down by the commisions. Naturally, there was no lack of passion in the defence of the opinions made by those presenting reports nor in the defence of amendments put forward by other participants. It would have been unnatural — and maybe even negative — if this passion had been lacking, bearing in mind the historical circumstance of the moment. But this passion always came hand in glove with the undisputed discipline participants submitted themselves to.

The results of the Congress Let us return to the words Mossen Alcover addressed to Congress members in the closing speech we have already made reference to: Perhaps some believe that we have failed to reach widely accepted final conclusions (regarding papers, discussions, etc.). However, we neither set out to do so, nor would it have been possible, [author's emphasis] because of the present situation of philological studies in Catalonia and other Catalanspeaking countries. We have held this opinion since the very beginning. We did not call the Congress to resolve the great questions Catalan grammar has yet to solve, but to encourage the studies that are basic to enable us to solve, at a later stage, those very questions. The Congress has been held to enthuse and encourage people to take up the study of these questions, to promote philological and grammatical studies wherever possible, and to encourage all those who consider and proclaim themselves to be lovers of our native tongue to take an interest in these studies. (...) The work of the Congress is not over. It has only just started (...). The Congress must give rise to a new era for our language, for our philology, for our literature.

His final words of passion and enthusiasm are as follows: "Workers of our Homeland, sons and daughters of the Catalan language, onwards! Courage and good work! ... and I hope to see you all soon at the second Congress we shall celebrate, if God so wishes, when it shall be appropriate." [Author's emphasis] It is a common mistake to be excessively keen to see immediate practical results forthcoming from any initiative, and also to base evaluations on the possibility of being able to measure immediately the progress made

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— which must be proportional in magnitude to the human and material cost of the undertaken project, whatever it may be — because need and anxiety do not allow most viewers to place facts in the historical perspective they must be seen in. It was necessary to wait a few years to see where the Congress was to lead to. Today no one may contest that all, absolutely all the aims, all the expectations that were present in the Congress have been fulfilled over the years: a) The Grammar of the literary language and the general dictionary were established; linguistic studies on the Catalan language continued, and are still carried out today, b) Nationalist and Catalanist feeling lived on, with different degrees of intensity, according to the historical circumstances and the different territories of the Catalan Countries we consider, c) The Second International Catalan Language Congress was carried out eighty years after the first one, in 1986.

The Institut d'Estudis Catalans: Language and power The Congress had contemplated the inevitable need for the creation of a language academy which would serve as a constant promoter of Catalan linguistic studies as well as an undisputed authority to ensure the diffusion of the Catalan literary language, requiring all authors to subscribe to its norms. This project also came to life in a very specific manner: through the initiative of Catalan autonomous power. It is a well-known fact that it is very important for the Administration to support languages as regards their strength, subsistence and expansion. It must also be added that the subsequent work of Pompeu Fabra cannot be seen in isolation from the work of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans: the academy of the Catalan language. Enric Prat de la Riba, who was President of the Mancomunitat de Catalunya (4-province regional government), was decidedly and directly committed to the task of linguistic recovery. At the First International Catalan Language Congress, he presented a paper at the Social and Juridical section with contents that reveal his innermost convictions: "Importancia de la llengua dins del concepte de la nacionalitat". Thanks to his enthusiasm, Catalan recovered once again its official character and schools and new institutions were created, where it was to be the principal or only language. Prat de la Riba called Pompeu Fabra, despite the ideological and political differences there were between them, to direct works aimed at the recovery of the Catalan language. One year after the

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end of the Congress, de la Riba himself founded the Institute of Catalan Studies (Institut d'Estudis Catalans), which has been, and still is — after long periods of persecution and suffering — the basic authority on questions of linguistic standardization, acknowledged not only in the Principality of Catalonia, but also in all of the Catalan countries, a factor that is especially important if we are to take into account the difficulties that prevent the unity of the Catalan language from being implemented throughout its territories. It must also be noted that the intervention of Prat de la Riba, as President, not only of the Mancomunitat but also of the Institute of Catalan Studies, was to prove decisive for the difficult process whereby the grammatical norms were to be accepted by individual writers, and a few important cultural associations and academies. It is also important to remember that it was vital to encourage — from a position of authority — everyone's acceptance of strict discipline regarding the unification of the language in the literary context. This enabled attitudes contrary to specific solutions — attitudes which did not coincide with particular linguistic criteria — to be overcome. The Normes ortogräfiques of 1913, the Gramatica Catalana of 1918 and the Diccionari General de la llengua Catalana of 1932 are all works which Fabra wrote or directed at the request of the Institute, which also gave these works an "official" character. By the years 1930 to 1932, the general acceptance of the authority of the Institute of Catalan Studies was widespread, hardly encountering any opposition at all.

The Second International Catalan Language Congress As we have stated before, the idea of organizing a second Congress, as planned by the first one, has also been carried out. In 1986, on the 80th anniversary of the first Congress, a second Congress was held to pay tribute to the First. The tasks carried out in the wake of the First Congress saved the language from a process of fragmentation which could have led to its disappearance. Luckily, in 1986, the general linguistic, social, political and cultural situation was quite different from the situation at the turn of the century. At the Second International Catalan Language Congress, there was no question of the internal unity of the Catalan language to worry people. Rather, its sociolinguistic situation regained attention. It is for this reason

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that two basic objectives were established for the Second Congress: a) the social projection of concern about the language's future, with a view to making the community of the Catalan Countries aware of the need to keep up a militant linguistic loyalty; and b) the scientific analysis that would enable us to know where we are on the path to language normalization, so as to be able to plan adequate linguistic policies with coherence. The Second International Catalan Language Congress was based on seven large scientific areas, which would discuss their work at seven different sites in the Catalan Countries: 1) language normalization plans and processes; 2) language sociology; 3) social linguistics; 4) mass media and new technologies; 5) language and law; 6) language and education and 7) history of the language. Before such a complex project, it was known (and the experience of the First Congress upheld this theory) that it would not meet with the same response throughout the extensive territory of the Catalan Countries, where it would be seen as either more or less opportune. For the vast majority of participants, however, the Congress was clearly to be carried out if its purpose was to go beyond the sociolinguistic study of the language and to penetrate — as it indeed did — into the major concern of evaluating what had been achieved and what remained to be achieved (particularly, to gain full normalization, as understood basically in terms of growth in the social use of the language). As in the case of the First Congress, this could not boil down to a meeting of experts. As it was designed to be a venue everyone was to feel obliged to attend, the question was to find a way of committing the entire community, and each individual too, to the particular area he/she might be able to contribute to; action and reflection, therefore, had to be complementarily coordinated. There was a clear will to involve the highest political authorities, and this raised obvious suspicion. However, it was not felt to be right to exclude political leaders from the wide range of personalities needed for the Congress. For a fair evaluation of this last great Congress, we doubtless lack the chronological and historical perspective needed in order to reach any firm conclusions. However, as in the case of the First Congress, the second also had far-reaching societal consequences, and this can be said to represent the achievement of one of its important aims. The publication of the Minutes of each of the seven scientific areas, as well as the Llibre Blanc sobre la unitat de la llengua, go a long way to make up for the lack of data regarding the real situation of the language. We are now in a much better position to make a correct diagnosis, and,

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therefore, to plan the measures to rectify a situation which is still seriously far from normality. The reports that were drawn up aim to make essential contributions to the policy of linguistic normalization in a democratic context which is normally defined as a "state of autonomous areas". We are hopeful that a Third International Catalan Language Congress will ultimately be convened to study an official cultivated language used by the whole of the community that it is associated with, at all levels, for all functions and, above all, without the conflicts that are today still so distressing, and which result from the fact that Catalan is still subordinated to other dominant languages.

References Alcover, Antoni M. (posthumous) 1983 Per la llengua. Barcelona. Ardit, Manuel —Albert Balcells —Nuria Sales 1980 Histöria dels Pa'isos Catalans. De 1714 a 1975. Barcelona. Fabra, Pompeu 1980 La llengua catalana i la seva normalitzacio. Barcelona. Lamuela, Xavier—Josep Murgades 1984 Teoria de la llengua literaria segons Fabra. Barcelona. Marti i Castell, Joan 1986 Llengua catalana. Barcelona. 1987 "Reflexions a 1'entorn del II Congres Internacional de la Llengua Catalana", L'espill25: 105-112. Valencia. Massot i Muntaner, Josep 1985 Antoni M. Alcover i la llengua catalana. Barcelona. Moll, Francesc de B. 1981 Un home de combat (Massen Alcover). Palma de Mallorca. 1985 Aspectes marginals d'un home de combat (Massen Alcover). Barcelona. Primer Congres Internacional de la Llengua Catalana 1986 Actes. Barcelona. Segon Congres Internacional de la Llengua Catalana 1987 I. Convocatoria. Inauguracio. Clausura. Conclusions. Congressistes. Barcelona. 1989 a Llibre blanc sobre la unitat de la llengua catalana. Barcelona. 1989b V. area 4. Mitjans de comunicacio i noves tecnologies. Barcelona. 1989c VII. area 6. Ensenyament. Barcelona. 1989d VIII. area 7. Historia de la llengua. Valencia. Sola, Joan 1987 L'obra de Pompeu Fabra. Barcelona.

Integration vs. particularism: The undeclared issue at the first "Dutch Congress" in 1849 Roland Willemyns

Dutch is the official language of Belgium and of The Netherlands. In the former country it shares this status with French and German. The unequal legal status of Dutch and French in the 19th and part of the 20th centuries accounts for Belgium's history of "language struggle". Since this aspect has been largely covered already (cf. overview in Willemyns 1988 a) it will only be treated here in so far as it directly relates to the issue at hand, the "First Congress" of 1849 (26 through 29 August). Achieving more official and legal rights for Dutch and its speakers was one of the major motivations for convening the congress, yet it was only timidly stated as such, the central topic being (at least as far as the Flemish participants were concerned) to stress the linguistic unity of the Northern and the Southern varieties of Dutch. ] This unity was to serve as a weapon in the domestic fight against the predominence of French, the then prestige language of the country. Defining the position of the Southern variety of Dutch vis-a-vis the Northern one and improving its legal status in the competition with French were the two main preoccupations of the advocates of the Dutch cause, constituting the so-called Vlaamse Beweging ("Flemish Movement"; Elias—Willemsen 1973). Yet, not all Flemish activists agreed on the fact that strengthening the ties with the Dutch was a necessary, or even a desirable evolution. The two factions to be discerned were: a) those advocating a standard language development on the basis of the local varieties, i. e. domestic standardization, called "particularists", and b) those insisting that the northern model should be followed and that the Flemings ought to take over as much as possible the standard language norm as it already existed in the North. They were called the "integrationists" (Willemyns 1988 b).

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\. It was the latter faction who organized the first Nederlandsch Congres [Dutch Congress] of 1849, and in order to understand what it was all about we will need a short historical overview of the standardization process of Dutch (Van de Craen —Willemyns 1988). 1.1. The period directly preceding the political split of the Dutch language territory (second half of the 16th century) was the period in which language standardization gradually took shape (Van den Brand 1956). It could, therefore, be expected that the falling apart into two politically separated entities would have dramatic consequences, the more so since as a result of the political evolution, the center of gravity of standardization passed from the South to the North (more or less the present-day Netherlands) which had come out victoriously and as an independent nation from the war against the Spanish rulers. The South (present-day Belgium) remained under Spanish rule, underwent an economic and cultural decline and was soon ruled out as far as its influence on the evolution of Standard Dutch was concerned (Willemyns 1984). An important part of the Southern political and cultural elite fled to the North, depriving the Flemish community of most of its leaders. Its language could only survive on a dialectic level, the more so since, from then on, the affairs of state were run by the successive foreign governors in French. Dutch remained the vehicular language of the majority of the population but it was almost exclusively used in its dialectic form and under a superstructure of French as the language of culture and prestige; southern efforts to keep up with the northern linguistic evolution could not be maintained (De Vries — Willemyns 1993). In the North, though, the large number of (mostly wealthy and influential) southern immigrants accounted for a permanent live contact with Southern Dutch, which was, at that moment still the prestige variety of the language. The written language "created" for the translation of the official Statenbijbel [Bible of the States, 1637] was decidedly "southern" in flavor and became the basis of the subsequent northern written language and writing tradition, thus preventing northern and southern varieties of the language from growing too far apart (Van den Brande 1956). 1.2. During the 17th and 18th centuries the unity of the northern and southern language varieties was, as Suffeleers (1979: 28) puts it, just a "matter-of-fact statement", hardly challenged by anyone. The great poets

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of Holland's "Golden Century", especially Vondel, Hooft, Huygens and Cats appeared to be the important models, highly recommended by 18thcentury Flemish grammarians and poets. The playwrights (the so-called "Rederijkers") too particularly stressed the predominance, both linguistic and literary, of their northern colleagues (Smeyers 1959). 1.3. The "myth of a Flemish language", Suffeleers (1979) claims, was born in 1830 (the year of the "resplit" of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands) mainly through the Flemish "Roman Catholic traditionalists" and their aversion for the Northern Protestant state Belgium had just left. It was indeed the "West-Flemish particularism", led by priests, which was the hard-core nucleus of resistence against "Protestant Holland" and its language variety. According to Gezelle, the most famous 19th-century Flemish poet, the "half Jewish, half heathen High Dutch" endangers the Flemish "soul" even more than French. The Frenchspeakers (both Walloons and Gallicized Flemings) also welcomed the notion of a distinct "Flemish" language: since such a "vernacular" would enjoy no prestige whatsoever it could easily be rejected as a language of administration. 2. In 1830 Belgium became an independent constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system dominated by the bourgeois elite for whom French was a natural choice. Although the constitution proclaimed that the use of language was to be "optional" (Lorwin 1972), in reality French was the only language used in administration and in public life in general both in the French and the Dutch-speaking parts of the country. 2.1. "Independence" had been preceded by a short reunion of Belgium and Holland as one United Kingdom of the Netherlands. This union, although short-lived, was of the utmost importance to the Flemings, who suddenly rediscovered their language for administration, politics, justice and education, areas where it had hardly been used for nearly two centuries. A small group of Flemish cultural leaders and intellectuals especially was very much influenced by both the Dutch standard language and the new linguistic opportunities. After 1830 they were to form the hard core nucleus of the so-called "Flemish Movement", a cultural

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pressure group trying to secure linguistic and cultural rights for the Dutch language in the young Belgian state. After 1830 several problems emerged simultaneously, one of them being that the Dutch language as it had been preserved in 19th century Belgium was not at all prepared to assume the functions its advocates had in mind. It needed standardization, it needed to be transformed into a tool fit to perform all the functions a language has to perform in a modern, industrialized state. The inevitable consequence was a steadily growing rapprochement with the northern norm. In retrospect it is interesting to notice that in spite of clearly opposing views and antagonistic theoretical conceptions, the linguistic output of both integrationists and particularists was not that divergent. Sharing a common aversion to French influence, both groups' language usage grew more "northern" the more they succeeded in getting rid of that influence. It is fascinating to observe, moreover, how this occurred almost unnoticed by both factions. 2.2. At the very beginning, the so-called "Flemish Movement" was anything but a movement. What was eventually to become a mass movement to enhance the linguistic and cultural rights of Belgium's Dutch-speaking majority, initially appeared to be of interest only to a handfull of "taalminnaars en letterkundigen" [mother tongue enthusiasts and men of letters] as they called themselves. The two largest concentrations were to be found in Ghent and Antwerp. During this initial period they were already split over three issues which were going to determine and flavor their struggle for the century to come: — "Orangism" vs. "Belgicism", i. e. opponents and partisans of the resplit of the Dutch language territory after the Belgian "Revolution", which caused the collapse of the Verenigd Koninkrijk der Nederlanden [United Kingdom of the Netherlands], 1814-1830): — anti-clericalism vs. Roman Catholicism, supporters of the liberal and the Catholic parties respectively, the former being opposed to, the latter in favor of religious or clerical interference in state matters; — integrationism vs. particularism, i. e. those in favor and those opposed to linguistic and cultural integration with the Northern Netherlands. The one thing they all had in common was their declared intention to fight the dominance and supremacy of French as the de facto national state language.

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The impact of the second division had not yet reached the extreme importance it was going to acquire later, that of the first one slowly faded away as soon as it became apparent that hopes of undoing the Belgian split became increasingly unrealistic. In any case, during the two decades preceding the "Dutch Congress" these "Orangist" feelings still played a fairly important role and were an important motive for the convening of the Congress. Yet, the fading away of Orangism as a political feeling by no means weakened integrationism. 2.3. In hindsight it becomes apparent that a decisive integrational victory had been gained in the so-called "orthography debate" (Couvreur 1975). Due to the political split and the lack of contact during the period 1585 — 1814 the orthography of Dutch had developed differently in the Southern and the Northern parts of the territory. In the (northern) Netherlands orthography had gradually become rather uniform: the rules laid down by M. Siegenbeek in 1804 and implemented by the grammar of P. Weiland in 1805 were generally (and officially) accepted; consequently, in the North spelling had ceased to be a problem (De Vroede 1950; Couvreur 1975). The southern situation, on the other hand, was rather chaotic (Suffeleers 1979: 19) and felt by the integrationist faction to be a major handicap for the unity of the language across state borders. A committee, led by J. F. Willems (later to be hailed as the "Father of the Flemish Movement") devised a spelling system which was, except for a few details, identical with the one in use in the North. Not only did Willems and his committee succeed in overcoming the heavy resistence of the particularist faction in favor of their "own, Southern" system, they also gained government approval in that their orthography was proclaimed the official one by Royal Decree on January 8, 1844 (Couvreur 1975: 1463). Some 20 years later both The Netherlands and Belgium agreed on a completely indentical orthography known as the "De Vries & Te Winkelsystem" (Couvreur 1975: 1463). Particularism, although by no means discarded, was from then on condemned to be an opposition movement, no longer capable of seriously challenging the integrationist dominance of the Flemish Movement. 2.4. In planning and organizing the "Dutch Congress", the Ghent based Orangist and integrationist faction of which, after Willems' death, F. Snellaert had taken the lead, was actually pursuing a double goal. By

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establishing contact with "men of letters" from the Northern Netherlands they meant to: a) jointly favor "the advancement of the Dutch language and literature", and b) strengthen the Flemish Movement in order to force the Belgian government to enlarge the role and function of Dutch as an official language of the country. In fact, these are but two aspects of one and the same ambition. In trying to rally the Dutch to their cause they hoped to strengthen the integrationist tendency in the Flemish Movement. By thus demonstrating the linguistic unity of Northern and Southern Dutch they intended to use the prestige of the official standard language of the Netherlands in their domestic struggle against Belgian advocates of French. By ingeniously intertwining both issues and simultaneously stressing both corpus and status planning items, the initiators of the Congress could hope, and eventually succeeded in determining the evolution in the direction they believed was the only possible one to guarantee ultimate success (Willemyns 1988b). 2.5. Ultimate success was not to be predicted, though, during the period immediately preceding the Congress. The Dutch in general were rather indifferent to the cause of the Flemish activists (Vanacker 1982) and did not want to interfere in what they considered to be "domestic Belgian policy". Consequently, only a handful of Dutch "men of letters" attended the Congress, determined moreover, to tackle only the first of the two goals mentioned above, i. e. the "advancement of the Dutch language and literature", which they understood in a scholarly way. As far as the language and linguistics were concerned, they wanted to stick to corpus planning and a scientific, not a (language) political approach. On the domestic front the particularists opposed the congress, whereas the acclaimed novelist H. Conscience, who did not oppose, could apparently not afford to attend because of the political cleavage among advocates of the Flemish cause in his hometown Antwerp. 3. The congress started in the morning of August 26, 1849 in the aula of the University of Ghent. The place was presumably chosen because Ghent

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was the major university city in Flanders and because this city was where most of the organizers lived and worked. From a political point of view 1849 was the right moment: by then the problems of the political separation of the former "United Kingdom of the Netherlands" were 2 decades old and in 1839 Holland and Belgium had signed a peace treaty which officially made an end to the "state of war" which had existed from the "Belgian revolution" onwards. Both countries, moreover, had come closer together since both its kings were frightened and shocked by the democratic movement and political uproar in neighboring France, Germany and other European countries in 1848. Hence, it was now "politically safe" to advocate a closer cooperation between Belgians and Dutchmen. The congress was officially convened (and sponsored) by the Nederduitsch Taalverbond and was called the Nederlandsch Congres. All subsequent congresses were called Nederlandsch Taal- en Letterkundig Congres [Dutch Congress on Language and Literature].2

4. The organizing committee consisted of F.-A. Snellaert (Chairman), Ph. Blommaert and J. de Saint-Genois (secretaries) (Handelingen: 4) Apparently the idea of a congress first occurred to the Dutch philologist W. Jonkbloet, who informed Snellaert and Heremans in 1847 (De Vroede 1950: 291). Yet he did not pursue the idea and when the congress finally took place he did not attend (Vanacker 1982: 19 — 20). The one who really took the initiative was Snellaert. He convinced the Vlaemsch Gezelschap to back his idea; the Vlaemsch Gezelschap was a Ghentbased organization "of intellectuals, artists, writers and students" (Vanacker 1982: 21). In its turn it convinced the Nederduitsch Taalverbond to act as the official organizer. The Nederduitsch Taelverbond was a coordinating organization of Flemish literary and cultural societies (Vanacker 1982: 21). In February 1849 they sent out the official invitation for the congress (De Vroede 1950: 291), which was drafted by Snellaert. In Holland it was J. A. Alberdingk Thijm who tried to popularize Snellaert's idea (Vanacker 1982: 21). There is an impressive body of correspondence between Snellaert and Alberdingk Thijm (Deprez 1971), proving that the latter has to be regarded as Snellaert's main correspondent in Holland. The invitations (reprinted in Handelingen: 2 — 4) were mailed to "all who showed interest in the advancement of the Dutch language and literature, both in the Southern and the Northern Netherlands". Almost

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all Flemish newspapers and magazines and three Dutch ones as well published the call for participants (De Vroede 1950: 293). The congress program (reprinted in Handelingen: 4 — 7) was mailed on August 10, 1849. 5. Twenty three "Philologists and men of letters" from the North responded in writing to the invitation. Only some of them actually attended, the others, for different reasons, announcing that they regretted being unable to attend. Some of them sent in a presentation beforehand (De Vroede 1950: 297 — 298). All were very sympathetic to the idea. Also, several Dutch learned societies sent letters of sympathy (listed in De Vroede 1950: 299). Yet, all in, all the number of northern reactions was disappointingly low and the papers they announced were scholarly and had but little to do with the Flemish Movement or the defence of Dutch in Belgium. Flemish reactions, on the contrary, were abundant and all stressed the political issue and the opportunity to discuss "contemporary problems in the language struggle" (De Vroede 1950: 303). H. Conscience wrote from Antwerp that the Flemish activists there were so very divided over philosophic and political issues that he saw only Ghent as fit "to take up the burden of organizing a congress", in order not to let "the Flemish cause disintegrate" (De Vroede 1950: 307). Yet he himself did not attend. 6. Snellaert had written to Alberdingk Thijm that the purpose of the congress was to secure that "the common language would be used in common unity and love" (dat de gemeenschappelijke tael ook gemeenschappelijk, in eendragt en liefde, beoefend wierde) (De Vroede 1950: 294 — 295). This "ideal" was also expressed in the letter of invitation, which stated, among other things that: — "when a nation is split by different governments, one must seek means to give uniform functioning to the different parts of one body" (Handelingen, 2) — "The congress shall provide means to treat of all things aiming at the preservation of the Dutch stock" (Handelingen: 3) Consequently, in his opening speech Snellaert immediately stressed the political significance of the meeting, going beyond the official aim as

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voiced in the letter of invitation: "Since, so far, trying to keep the Netherlanders together with political ties has failed, let us now try to find means to strengthen the ethical ties ("zeedelyke banden"). Let us reach out for each other and help each other mutually" (Handelingen, 13). After Snellaert's opening speech the Dutch hofpredicant [preacher at the Dutch Royal Court] A. des Amories van der Hoeven was appointed chairman. He was assisted by two vice-chairmen (B. Schreuder, from Maastricht, and J. David, from Leuven) and two secretaries (J. A. Alberdingk Thijm, from Amsterdam and Ph. Blommaert, from Ghent) (Handelingen: 22). During the meeting it must have occurred to all participants that what was initially supposed — mainly by the Dutch, though — to be a conference on linguistics and literature, had evolved into a political forum, trying to find a new orientation for the Flemish movement (Vanacker 1982: 27). The papers of the Dutch participants indeed all stressed the scholarly side. Gerth van Wijk's presentation would appear to be the most consequential one since his appeal to compose a new grammar and a complete dictionary "for our common tongue" (Handelingen: 85 — 90) was taken very seriously and eventually implemented. Most of the Flemish presentations stressed political issues concerning the Flemish Movement. Two of them (Sleeckx [Handelingen: 39 — 54] and Jottrand [Handelingen: 62 — 74]) were unusual in that they stressed that the "common people, the lower classes" especially should be involved. This was, in the completely middle-class oriented Flemish Movement of that time, something quite new and provoked lively comment and indignant reactions (Handelingen: 55 — 56). All southern speakers, though, stressed the need to enhance the quality of the language as used in the South and — with one exception — supported the integrationist view that the norm had to be taken from the North. Also, they all implicitly urged the Dutch to participate more actively in the struggle for Dutch in Belgium and to try to influence Northern public opinion, which was largely uninformed and indifferent to the struggle of the southern "taalgenoten" [fellow Dutch speakers]. A first step in that direction should be a massive campaign to inform the Dutch on the linguistic, social and political situation in Belgium. Yet no one saw fit to give a comprehensive overview of the aims, methods and organization of the Flemish Movement, thus probably overestimating the Dutch participants' familiarity with the matter. On the other hand, the Flemish participants made it

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clear that for them scholarly cooperation in literature and philology was only a means, and not the ultimate goal of the congress. The Dutch Chairman Des Amouries van der Hoeven gave the closing speech (Handelingen: 175 — 176) which, according to De Vroede (1950: 316), expressed feelings which "at that moment were shared by only a few of his compatriots". The basic idea expressed was that a difference was to be made between "volkseenheid" [unity of the people(s)] and "staatseenheid" [unity of states]. The former was inspirid by God, the latter by men. Consequently, the "grote mogendheden" [superpowers] had no right, he said, to separate "broedervolken die uit een stam gesprooten, en door eene taal verbonden zijn" [fraternal peoples, originating from the same roots and united by a common language]. At the demand of all the Dutch participants a paper sent in by their compatriot Buddingh was not read. The paper claimed "Hollandish" origin for the famous 13th century "national Flemish" poet, Jacob van Maerlant. This would have conflicted, the Dutch said, with "the spirit of tolerance of the congress" (Handelingen: 149 — 150).

7. One of the most important practical results of the congress was the acceptance and subsequent implementation of Gerth van Wijk's suggestion to compose an extensive dictonary. This was to become the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal [General Dictionary of the Dutch Language]. This dictionary, written in the tradition of the Deutsches Wörterbuch of the Grimm Brothers, was initiated by the Dutch linguist Matthias de Vries. He got his instructions from the second Congress (Amsterdam, 1850) and started to work a few years later (Wils 1956); yet the long lasting lexicographic enterprise has, although nearing its completion, not been finished today; some three dozen volumes have been published so far. From the very beginning financial support was provided by both the Dutch and Belgian governments. Today it is the binational Instituut voor Nederlandse Lexicografie [Dutch lexicographic Institute] at the University of Leiden which is in charge of finishing the dictionary and it hopes to successfully finish production in a few years from now.

8. In Snellaert's opinion the congress was to be a one time event. Yet apparently both the Dutch and the Flemish participants were so enchanted by the event that they decided on the spot to have yet another congress which took place in Amsterdam in September of the following

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HANDELINGEN

NEDERLANDSCH CONGRES, GEUOUDEN TE GENT

DEN 26, 27, 28 EN 29 AUGUSTUS 1849.