FLEMING, SIR THOMAS English judge, was born at Newport, Isle of Wight, and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1574. He sat in parliament from 1584 to 1601. He was recorder of London , solicitor-general (1595), chief baron of the exchequer (1604), and chief justice of the king's bench (1607). He was one of the judges at the trial of the post-nati in 16o8, siding with the majority of the judges in declar ing that persons born in Scotland after the accession of James I. were entitled to the privileges of natural-born subjects in England. He died on Aug. 7, 1613, at his seat, Stoneham Park, Hampshire. FLEMISH LANGUAGE, THE. Flemish is spoken in the northern half of Belgium and by more than 200,000 persons in the Nord Departement of France, where the boundary formerly ran much farther south. In Belgium its position has not changed much since the middle ages.
The Flemish language owes its existence and its character to the Salian Franks, who settled in the fertile valleys of the Scheldt and Lys, while it is believed that Ripuarians occupied Limburg. Teutonic occupation can be traced to the time of Caesar when the Belgians differed in speech from the other Gauls, most of them being descended from Teutons, who crossed the Rhine long be fore (de Bello Gallico, ii., 4), while Teutonic tribes were living on the left side of the Rhine (ibid., 3) .
Flemish means literally and originally the language or dialect of Flanders. Maerlant quotes it in this sense in his Leven van St. Franciscus, v. 133, together with Duuts, Brabants and Zeeus. It began to be used in writing in the first half of the 13th century. The poem of Reinaert was composed about that time. But very soon literary production became abundant. Maerlant's example shows that the need for a language more generally accessible than a local dialect was already felt. That language was known as "Dietsch." There were, of course, differences between the Dietsch of Flanders, Brabant and Limburg. For instance, uu, the muta tion of ie (cf. "Duutsch" as against "Dietsch") was not used in the first-named province, and people pronounced there du best, hi es, mes—instead of du bist, hi is, mis. In the last-named prov ince, ich, mich were used and mutation was a regular phenomenon. As to the vocabulary, the three provinces were bilingual. Literary influences came chiefly from the south, French words crept in, generally in the form of the neighbouring Picardian dialect, as is shown by the initial sound for example in kasteel, kans, kaatsen. New words were formed by adding French suffixes to Flemish stems and the purity of the language suffered from gallicisms. The chambers of rhetoric aggravated the evil and under the rule of the house of Burgundy, French became compulsory at court and coun cil. At the same time economic changes were in progress. The decadence of Bruges prepared the rise of Antwerp, the hegemony of Flanders shifted in the 16th century to Brabant : Dietsch be came Duutsch or Duytsch. By the end of that century the Dietsch speaking countries were cleft in two, the seven northern provinces fighting successfully for their independence and religious freedom, the south remaining Spanish and Catholic.
As "the unity of a language can be kept up only by free and uniform intercourse between all the members of the community which speak the language," the political and religious estrange ment between the north and the south was a serious threat to the unity of Dietsch. The differentiation would have been enhanced but for the flight from the Spanish tyranny of many thousands who left their homes in Flanders and Brabant and carried to Holland and Zealand their energy, enterprise, science, wealth and habits of speech, the influence of which is only at the present time beginning to be investigated thoroughly. Gradually the language of the Dutch Republic began to be considered in Belgium as that of the enemy and the heretic, and an opposition was cre ated between Dutch and Flemish, so that after the revolution of 183o, when the attempt was made to realize unity of spelling between the two, it was opposed in parliament.
For nearly three centuries Flemish led a stagnant life. It had no cultural centre, like Amsterdam or Paris. It was the language of a nation cut off from its natural relations, while its higher classes and its fellow-citizens spoke French, so that many gallic isms, i.e., literally-translated French expressions, appear in the works of many writers in the past, and are now becoming rarer. The somewhat archaic character of Flemish is thus explained.
Spoken Flemish is mainly dialect—each having its characteristic features. Thus initial h is dropped (except in Limburg), the dif ference between subject and object case has disappeared. Flemish has preserved the old i and u (striven, hues) and ou from al or ol, before dentals, sounds as English oo in book. Brabant with part of east Flanders has diphthongized the three sounds into ai, oi, au. The Germanic ai, au, which have become monophthongs (ee, oo) in written Flemish, sound as diphthongs (ic, ue) ; Limburg has preserved the Germanic u though in the south it has become au, (Vets, haus) and in al, ol followed by a dental, the liquid has been dropped and the vowel lengthened. The dialect of Flanders also preserves the old e-ending of many feminine nouns, suffixes, i-stem adjectives and adverbs. In the novels of Teirlinck one encounters the words vrouwe, ruste, mane, klinke, splete, ziele, katte, geruchte, gezichte, stille, dichte, omhooge instead of vrouw, rust, and so on. Negative sentences have en ... niet, as in French ne . . . pas.
Some of the best authors write for literary purposes an artificial but picturesque language which is neither dialect nor common Flemish. On the other hand, thanks to the literary congresses, the first of which was held in 1849, and to the teaching of the universities, the number of those whose speech differs slightly or not at all from Dutch is increasing year by year.
Algemeen Vlaamsch Idiotikon (Leuven, 1856-7o) ; De Bo, Westvlaamsch Idiotikon (187o-73) ; J. Vercoullie, "De Taal der Vlamingen" in Vlaanderen door de eeuwen beer (1912) ; J. Van Ginneken, Handboek der Nederlandsche Taal i., 118-205 (G. D.)