Thread:User talk:CodeCat/Edits on Dutch pronounciation/reply (3)

I'm not preferring any variant. There is no such thing as "northern Dutch", "southern Dutch", "Netherlands Dutch" or "Belgian Dutch" to begin with. There are just different regional varieties, and choosing a single particular variety as "the" standard for either the Netherlands or Belgium, like you are suggesting, would be POV. Recommended pronunciations can be included of course, that's not a problem. But what I disagree with is labelling them simply "Netherlands" and such. That's just wrong, but moreover it horribly skews the picture that readers might get. Contrasting "Netherlands" versus "Belgium" gives the impression that the national border is a linguistic border separating these two varieties, which is not true of course. But contrasting "north" and "south" is not much better. What about northwest versus northeast? Or southwest versus southeast? There are big differences in pronunciation there too. We shouldn't be using labels that give an overly simplistic picture of things.

That said, the one thing that all these varieties generally do share, is that they have the same set of phonemes. Whether someone says /ç/, /x/ or /χ/ doesn't matter, anyone anywhere in the Dutch language area would understand them as being the same. Maybe the article Diaphoneme would be useful to you.