Zeelandic - Hallmarks

Hallmarks

The main differences from Standard Dutch are the following: Zeelandic has three rather than two grammatical genders, as a result of the fact that it retained the final schwas in feminine words; it kept the monophthongs and for ij and ui rather than breaking them into and ; it umlauted most s into s; it renders the old Germanic and as falling diphthongs ( and ), whereas Dutch merged them with etymological e's and o's; and finally it drops the h.

The present table illustrates these differences (note: the orthography is Dutch):