The Foundation has established an Academic Advisory Board, consisting of distinguished linguists who perform an advisory role and who promote various aspects of our work. Their help is crucial to the further development of the Foundation's lexicographic projects. The participation of such distinguished linguists assists us in obtaining support from interested parties and in raising funds within Limburg, so that our project may eventually be completed. In this regard, we would like to hear from linguists with a particular interest in Limburgish and/or regional and minority languages, who are willing to collaborate on this project.

We are honoured that Professor Orrin W. Robinson (Stanford University), Professor John McWhorter (Manhattan Institute, New York) and Associate Professor Michiel de Vaan (Leiden University) have graciously accepted membership on the Academic Advisory Board.

Orrin W. Robinson has been a professor in the Department of German Studies at Stanford University since 1982. He received his BA from Stanford University and was awarded his MA and PhD at Cornell University. Part of his PhD research examined the phonology of Limburgish.
Professor Robinson is a member of both the Executive Committee of the American Society for Germanic Linguistics and the Advisory Board of the American Journal of Germanic Linguistics and Literatures. In addition, he is also a referee for Routledge, Stanford University Press and Cambridge University Press, as well as several linguistic journals in the area of Germanic studies. In 2007 Professor Robinson kindly agreed to become a member of our Academic Advisory Board.
Old English and its Closest Relatives: A Survey of the Earliest Germanic Languages, published by Stanford University Press in 1992, is one of Professor Robinson's many published works. One of the chapters in this book deals with theWachtendonck Codex, one of the earliest texts written in Limburgish.

John H. McWhorter is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He received a PhD in linguistics from Stanford University in 1993 and was appointed Associate Professor at UC Berkeley after having taught at Cornell University.
John McWhorter writes and comments extensively on race, ethnicity and cultural issues for the Manhattan Institute’s Center for Race and Ethnicity. Moreover, he is a noted linguist and the author of The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language, which describes how the world's languages arise, change, and intermingle, and also of Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music in America and Why We Should, Like, Care. In addition, he has written a book on dialects and Black English, entitled The Word on the Street, and three books on Creole languages.
Because of his interest in regional and minority languages and their preservation, John McWhorther also kindly agreed to become a member of our Academic Advisory Board in 2007.

Michiel de Vaan is Associate Professor at the University of Leiden. His research focuses on how language changes and what language tells us about the history of its speakers. All Indo-European languages from Celtic in the west to Sanskrit in India are his field of study. His PhD was on the Avestan language (the language of Zoroaster), he researches the oldest texts in Albanian and has written an etymological dictionary of the Latin language: Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic languages (2008).
Michiel de Vaan is one of the co-authors of the new Etymologisch woordenboek van het Nederlands (‘Etymological dictionary of the Dutch language’) from before the year 1200.
Regularly, Michiel de Vaan publishes on the etymology of Limburgish words, the draw tone and push tone in Limburgish and older forms of the Limburgish language. Moreover, he is a board member of the Vereniging voor Limburgse Dialect- en Naamkunde (‘Organisation for Limburgish Dialectology and Onomastics’). At Leiden University he has lectured twice on Limburgish, but unfortunately this has not led to a boom in Limburgish studies in Holland...
Because of his interest in Limburgish, Michiel de Vaan kindly agreed to become a member of our Academic Advisory Board in November 2008.