Dutch English: tolerable, taboo, or about time too?

Abstract

On keeping versus ‘correcting’ Dutch flavour in English texts. As early as 1992, Cox and Furlong indicated that some already considered English a national language in the Netherlands given how widely it was understood. Likewise, McArthur announced at a 1993 conference in Amsterdam, ‘English is now simply one of your languages, along with Dutch and Frisian.’ Against this backdrop and the increasing momentum of notions of World Englishes, it is no longer far-fetched to consider seriously the proposition of Dutch English emerging as a legitimate variety of the world's lingua franca. That such varieties have emerged in ESL or ‘outer circle’ countries such as India, Nigeria and Singapore is now well established. More controversial is the idea that so, too, could they emerge from traditionally EFL countries once relegated to Kachru's (1982) ‘norm-dependent’ expanding circle (such as the Netherlands and Scandinavia), which are now seen as transitioning – or indeed having already transitioned – to the ‘norm-developing’ realm of ESL.