When in 1815 the Northern and Southern Netherlands were merged into a United Kingdom of the Netherlands, the new king, William I, proclaimed Netherlandic to be the new national and administrative language of the whole nation. In the South, where French was a firmly established language, this aroused much opposition.

The principle of “one nation, one language” was a powerful impetus towards the regulation of the standard language – Dutch had to be adapted to its role as a national language, and a government-endorsed standard of spelling, grammar and vocabulary (on the French model) was needed. The beginnings of this policy date back to the years preceding the United Kingdom, when the Netherlands were under French hegemony. In 1804, Matthijs Siegenbeek had published the first official Dutch spelling rules, Verhandeling over de Nederduitsche spelling, ter bevordering van eenparigheid in dezelve (“A treatise on Netherlandic spelling, in furtherance of its uniformity”), followed in 1805 by a dictionary: Woordenboek voor de Nederduitsche spelling (“Dictionary of Netherlandic orthography”). In that year, too, the first – and also the last – official Dutch grammar appeared, the Nederduitsche spraakkunst by P. Weiland, published “by command of the National Government of the Batavian Republic”. This prescriptive grammar remained the authoritative one till at least halfway through the 19th century. Weiland also published the first attempt towards a descriptive-inventorizing dictionary, the 11-volume Nederduitsch taalkundig woordenboek (“Netherlandic linguistic dictionary”, 1799-1811).

In these years, Dutch was made a subject to be taught at schools and universities. In 1796, Leiden University established a chair in “Dutch” rhetoric, with Siegenbeek as its first incumbent. In 1815, all humanities faculties in the country’s universities had a chair in “Dutch literature and rhetoric”, although until 1876 Latin remained the official language used at universities. Secondary schools were also re-organized, new school types being introduced with Dutch as a compulsory subject.

At those educational institutions, the acquisition of the standard language was taught rigorously, dialect speech being actively discouraged. Much attention was paid, too, to the acquisition of a refined pronunciation, in which little or nothing could betray the region from which the speaker hailed. All through the 19th century, pronunciation guides were published, starting with M.J. Adriani’s De prosodist of Woordenlijst voor de uitspraak (“The prosodist, or a word-list for pronunciation”, 1819). And even as late as 1935, Queen Wilhelmina could, in her speech from the throne and on the authority of her government, plead “that the pure pronunciation of our language should become a matter of government concern”.

While the speakers did their best (for the sake of social mobility) to unlearn all forms of dialect speech, the world of scholarship in the second half of the century began to develop an interest in the vernacular, its folk tales and popular culture, which were thought to reflect the nation’s authentic pre-civilized culture. This resulted in the first descriptions of Dutch dialects and the first large-scale dialect enquiries.

In addition to practical measures to promote the Dutch language, a moral offensive was launched as well. It was felt that the study and cultivation of the native language elevated the nation’s civilization and improved society. In the first quarter of the 19th century, we see the appearance of tracts like Siegenbeek’s Betoog over den rijkdom en de voortreffelijkheid der Nederduitsche taal (“Treatise on the opulence and excellence of the Netherlandic language”), which invoked the existence of strong links between national character and national language. Language, people and nation became a triad, as can be seen from the programmatic title of Barthold Lulofs’s inaugural address at Groningen University in 1815, Over de noodzakelijkheid van de beoefening der eigene taal en letterkunde voor de zelfstandigheid en den roem van eene natie (“On the necessity of using the native language and literature for the sake of the nation’s independence and reputation”). One topic in this lecture, which (against the ethnocentric assumptions of the new German philology) was to recur regularly over the course of the century, was the assertion that Dutch was not a bastard descendant of German, but an unmixed, original language.

Nationalism went hand in hand with purism, at first directed against French influence, later (under the shadow of German Vormärz and post-1848 nationalism, with its expansionist views towards the Low Countries) against German. Purist dictionaries were published, of which Siegenbeek’s Lijst van woorden en uitdrukkingen met het Nederlandsch taaleigen strydende (“List of words and expressions at odds with the linguistic character of Netherlandic”, 1847), directed against Germanisms, was the most influential. In 1931, the society Onze Taal (“Our language”) was founded for “the promotion of the purity of the Dutch language, specifically, at this juncture, with regard to Germanisms”. This was a reference to the apprehension, growing at the time, that the Germanization of the Dutch vocabulary might be a prelude to political annexation.

In Flemish-speaking Belgium, French remained the dominant threat. In 1895, the Algemeen Nederlandsch Verbond (“Pan-Netherlandic Association”) was founded in Brussels in order to promote Netherlandic language and culture and to stimulate all forms of collaboration between the Netherlands and Flanders. In the field of language, it specifically declared a war on Gallicisms and also maintained ties with the Afrikaner Boers of southern Africa (whose local dialect, Afrikaans, at the time was in the process of branching off from its Netherlandic origins).

The names for the language varied in the course of the century and along different lines of development in the northern and southern halves of the language area. The established pre-1800 term was Nederduits or “Low German”. In the North, it was replaced (briefly) by Hollands (“Hollandish”) and then by Nederlands (“Netherlandic”). In Belgium, that last term (reminiscent of the country from which it seceded in 1830) was adopted only reluctantly and tardily, and the older, subsisting Nederduits was replaced primarily by the alternative appellation Vlaams (“Flemish”). A neologism Diets (to refer to the Netherlandic common to both Flemish-speaking Belgium and The Netherlands) came into fashion in certain circles after 1850 but was used either to refer to the medieval language or to the ideals of Greater Netherlandism.

Dutch-Flemish collaboration in language matters dates back to 1849, when a Congress on Netherlandic Language and Literature was held – the first in a long, still-ongoing series. On this occasion, a decision was taken to commence the compilation of the historical, Grimm-style Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal (WNT, “Dictionary of the Netherlandic language”); the task was entrusted to Matthias de Vries and L.A. te Winkel. The dictionary was to be normative, the quotations to be selected from the best authors so that they could serve as instances of good linguistic usage. Te Winkel devised a new spelling for the WNT, as the Siegenbeek orthography had met with a great deal of criticism: De grondbeginselen der Nederlandsche spelling (“Principles of Netherlandic spelling”, 1863). It was introduced as the official standard in Belgium in 1864, and in the Netherlands in 1883. The motto adorning the first volume of the WNT summarizes the 19th-century tenets which motivated it: “Its language is the soul of a nation, it is the nation itself.”