My father is West Flemish. I grew up in Limburg at the opposite side of Flanders and it is as if this geographical distance also reflects in the difference within our spoken dialects. Generally speaking, all non-West Flemish Flemings will act like the Western dialect is completely incomprehensible. For myself, I mostly joke that I was raised bilingually. But no, also for me it requires a big effort to understand the different West Flemish dialects (...and don't even start about asking me for the correct pronunciation...).
Still, both on top of my father's desk and in the living room of my grand parents is a collection of beautifully calligraphed proverbs. Not in regular Dutch or what I would describe as "standardized Flemish", no: real West Flemish proverbs and aphorisms written in pronunciation spelling.
As I understand most of the meaning, it is difficult to translate them without losing some of its poetic value. Still, underneath I present some of the proverbs written by father Joris Declercq, also known as Djoos Utendoale. I was quite shocked to notice that there is no Wikipedia-page dedicated to him, so I will use part of this article to tell about him as well.
