Living Apart Together - language and multiculturalism in The Netherlands

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On Wednesday 27 September, 20.30 hrs, Winternachten and the Insitute of Social Studies presented the first in a series of three paneldiscussions on the future of a multicultural Dutch society. The South African writer Etienne van Heerden, the Dutch author and socio-linguist René Appel and Auma Okwany from Kenia, discussed language politics and multiculturalism in The Netherlands: in search for three ‘commandments’ to deal with 122 languages.

In 'Living Apart Together – language and multiculturalism in The Netherlands', we compared the situation in our country to countries with a long multicultural tradition, notably South Africa and Kenia. In The Netherlands 122 languages are spoken. How tolerant are the Dutch, and how tolerant should they be in allowing the use of other languages from Dutch? What is the extent of Dutch language politics – as far as this exists at all – to the language politics in other multicultural societies? Is there a need for everybody to speak Dutch in public life? And why not give Turkish an official status next to Frisian and Dutch? Could South Africa, with its eleven official languages, be a model for The Netherlands? What rules for everyday speech do we need for a successful multicultural society? During the discussion the participants, together with three students of ISS and the audience, formulated three ‘commandments’ to deal with language in future multicultural society in the Netherlands. The panel was chaired by the Dutch/Moroccan writer Fouad Laroui.

The three commandments that were formulated:
- Thou shalt not be afraid of the tongue of another.
- All languages are equal, but Dutch is more equal.
- We must embrace differences because language diversity is a cultural treasure.

Listen to a sound recording of the whole programme on this page.

Information

Date and time Wednesday 27 September 2006 from 20:30 to 22:30 hrs
Location Korzo grote zaal

Line-up

Fouad Laroui

(Morocco, 1958) in 2013 won  the Prix Goncourt de la Nouvelle for his collection of short stories The Curious Case of Dassoukine's Trousers. Since his debut in 1996 humor has been his weapon against intolerance, both in his novels and in his other work. In his fiction, such as the collection of short stories Poldermarokkanen (2010), the novels Une année chez les Français (2011) and La femme la plus riche de Yorkshire (2011), Laroui describes time and again the collision between North African culture and Western culture. Laroui grew up in Casablanca and studied econometry, mathematics, physics and architecture in Paris. He lectures French literature and Arab culture at the University of Amsterdam.
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René Appel

(1945, Hoogkarspel) studied Dutch and general linguistics. He specialized in language acquisition and socio-linguistics. He focused on second language acquisition from immigrants and the Dutch language education for this group. In 1984 he obtained his doctorate with a thesis on Immigrant children learning Dutch; sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic aspects of second language acquisition. From 1994 untill 2003 he was extraordinary professor 'Acquisition and didactics from Dutch as second language'. He wrote the textbook 'Bilingualism and language contact'. Besides his scientific carier René Appel had the ambition to write fiction. In 1987 he published his first novel Handicap. Since 2003 he is almost fulltime writer.
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Etienne van Heerden

(South Africa, 1954) debuted with a juvenile novel (Matoli), using a farm setting as a microcosm of South Africa’s racial tensions in 1978. His first international breakthrough was the novel Ancestral Voices, which was published in ten languages. It won all the major literary awards in South Africa, and established Van Heerden as the leading novelist of his generation. He went on to publish the novels Casspirs and Camparis, Leap Year and Kikuyu, followed with his major novel The Long Silence of Mario Salviati. Van Heerden also wrote and staged satirical cabarets in the Dutch and German tradition, which was a very effective method of protest during the difficult eighties. Van Heerden teaches at the University of Cape Town, where he is Professor in the School of Languages and Literatures, and chairs the Afrikaans and Dutch Studies Section. He regularly reads his fiction at events such as the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland, the Winter Nights Festival in The Netherlands, the Time of the Writer Festival in Germany, the Zimbabwe Book Fair and other festivals and events internationally. For his most recent novel, 30 Nagte in Amsterdam, in 2010 he received the Hertzog Award, the most important literary award for Afrikaans literature.
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Auma Okwany

is Lecturer in Social Policy at the Institute of Social Studies. She is an educationalist but is also interested in broader issues of social policy including comparative child and youth policy. Auma’s primary field of research is international education reform efforts, particularly factors defining provisioning, access to and participation in the basic education sector for developing countries (with a focus on Eastern Africa). Her areas of teaching and research also include state-civil society interactions in education and child protection, language in education, and urbanization and its effects on childhood and youth.
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Cavy G.

aka CG aka SirCavyG.O aka Cavy-R aka Cavy Rocc aka Cavlar has been a fan of Hiphop music since he was ten. When he was twelve he left Surinam and came to the Netherlands. In highschool he met DNG, who supplied him with the latest tapes. At age sixteen he started writing himself. Occassionally he freestyled for fun but later on he seriously started writing lyrics. Since his rap friends DNG, Diversity and Slowgo shared the same passion they hooked up and started the rap group Coup the Villz.
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