Un bietje lope schume in de Onderstad

Nimwèègs, a variety of Cleverlandish spoken in Nijmegen, has been subject to extensive sociolinguistic inquiry. Today, most remaining speakers reside in the so-called Onderstad and are active in the building of a new linguistic identity with the organization of cultural events, alongside the promotion of the local football team (N.E.C.). In this study, we focus on the social motivations behind the use of Nimwèègs in this community. We conducted linguistic fieldwork and collected Frog Story narrations with 14 participants using the MPI Fieldkit. We identified 24 variables, based on previous studies (Berns 2002Berns, Jan. 2002. Zuid-Gelderse dialecten. Den Haag: Sdu Uitgevers.; van Hout 1989Hout, Roeland van. 1989. De structuur van taalvariatie: Een sociolinguïstisch onderzoek naar het stadsdialect van Nijmegen. Dordrecht: Foris Publications.; van Hout, Roelofs & van Stijn 2006Hout, Roeland van, Jan Roelofs & Leo van Stijn. 2006. Kie(k) däör, wà räör: Woordenboek van het Nimweegs dialect. Nijmegen: Dekker v.d. Vegt.). We then ran a Bayesian multivariate regression model based on only 13 of these variables, to assess the interaction between these and social variables. These models indicated that certain Nimwèègs features were used more frequently if speakers were members of the Nimwèègs Movement, potential interactions between gender and language use were also found.