The observations of a voyager: Stephanus Hanewinckel on the dialects of the Meijerij

This paper describes the relatively unknown genre of the travelogues, travel journals in which a dilettante anthropologist author presents information about unknown cultures and regions. Some of these travelogues contain linguistic information that is overlooked so far. In this paper a Dutch author of printed travel journals, Stephanus Hanewinckel, will be introduced. His early dialectological remarks and data will be presented and analyzed. Moreover the history of the Parable of the Prodigal Son as a sample text for dialect comparison will be discussed. The article ends with an edition of Hanewinckel’s early 19th century version of the Parable of the Prodigal Son in a Dutch dialect from the province of North Brabant.