14 Facts About Tweants

Tweants is a group of non-standardised, closely related Westphalian, Dutch Low Saxon dialects, descending from Old Saxon.

Tweants is part of the larger Low Saxon dialect continuum, spreading from the Veluwe region in the middle of the Netherlands to the German-Polish border.

In general, all varieties of Tweants follow a Subject-Verb-Object word order in main clauses, and Subject-Object-Verb in subordinate clauses.

Tweants follows a number of general Low Saxon rules in verb inflection, including the singular pluralis; plural verb forms receive the same inflection as the second person singular.

Tweants has long been looked down upon, and is generally considered a low-prestige language, often equalled with farm-specific jargon.

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Speakers of Tweants generally tend to be a little more indirect than speakers of Dutch.

Tweants is neither used structurally nor taught mandatorily in schools.

Up until recently, Tweants was, and still is, believed to impede proper acquisition of Standard Dutch, which dominates all parts of Dutch public life.

Those parents were used to speaking Tweants, which influenced especially their pronunciation of Dutch, and to a lesser extent their syntax and choice of vocabulary.

Recently, Tweants has enjoyed a resurgence because of an increasing tolerance for and pride in local culture, including local language.

The increasing interest in Tweants is expressed by writers, musicians and local media, and people have been inspired to start speaking and teaching Tweants again.

Tweants is often seen as an easy vehicle for carrying jokes, and there are relatively many local revues who use Tweants for comic effect, effectively enhancing the idea that it isn't a serious language.

Tweants wrote the scenario for the movie The Marriage Escape, which was the first movie ever to be predominantly spoken in Tweants and became the third best visited film in the Netherlands in 2020.

Reverend Anne van der Meijden, a long-standing promoter of the use of Tweants, has translated the Bible into Tweants on the basis of the original languages.