Willy Smedts

A horrible little booklet. Mindbogglingly boring in its sixties approach to prescriptivist attitude, "Dag in dag uit" offers a dry and more or less haphazardly selected list of "common errors" in Dutch as it is spoken in Flanders, and suggests alternatives acceptable in standard Netherlandic Dutch. Both the deprecated usage and the suggested alternatives are illustrated with decidedly unfunny examples.

The selection leans heavily towards errors common in the regiolect of Flemish Brabant and in legalese, rendering the book essentially useless for outsiders. Furthermore, only lexical items are covered; syntactical and stylistic issues (which would require a thoughtful explanation) have been completely avoided.

It's not that I automatically disapprove of any prescriptivist book; but the approach taken here is so thoroughly arrogant and (dare I say it) unentertaining, that it completely defeats the purpose of the book: to teach Flemings to use the standard, written language, and to give some insight in why they ought to be conversant in Standard Dutch. If it weren't on the list of required study materials for both first-year Dutch undergrads and second-year law undergrads, no one would buy this snobbish little exercise in finger-wagging.… (más)