Frans Van Coetsem

Frans (Camille Cornelis) Van Coetsem (April 14, 1919 – February 11, 2002) was a Belgian (Flemish) linguist. After an academic career in Flanders and the Netherlands he was appointed professor at Cornell University in 1968, and consequently he emigrated to the USA, where, after a few years, he chose to become a naturalized American citizen.

Frans Van Coetsem was born on April 14, 1919, in Geraardsbergen, a small town in the southeastern part of the province of East Flanders, on the Franco-Dutch language border. His native language was the (Dutch) dialect of Geraardsbergen. At a very early age he lost both his parents, and the aunt and uncle who raised him sent him to a French-language boarding school. After finishing high school in 1939, he attended a Nivelles “régendat” (a type of teacher training college below university level), yet another French-language school. But he was dissatisfied with the education he was getting and in 1941 he broke it off and switched to the Catholic University of Leuven to study Germanic philology. (At the time “Germanic philology” included Dutch, English and German languages and literatures, as well as a number of courses in philosophy and history.) Even before graduating he worked as an interpreter for the British armed forces during the Allieds’ invasion of Germany. He graduated in 1946; his undergraduate thesis dealt with the sounds and the morphology of his native Geraardsbergen dialect. Less than a year later, on April 30, 1947, he married his childhood sweetheart. His Ph.D. thesis, which he defended in 1952, was also devoted to the sounds and the morphology of the Geraardsbergen dialect; his thesis supervisor was L. Grootaers.

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