Colloquial language: linguistic swamp or fertile ground?

That's one way to put it.

André Hazes was brooding on a new song. 'She stood on the platform, I wish that I her could.' His producer pulled the emergency brake: “That's not standard Dutch, André!” To which he spoke the immortal words: “But that's how you say it.” Colloquial language, we call it: language that sprouts where it is spoken. On the street, over the fence. Uninhibited and without rules. Like fresh green between the grey tiles of Dutch.

That brings recognition, but also horror. “The soggy swamp into which our glorious language culture is sinking,” cry the purists. What to do? Embrace it? Or take the blunt hoe to it?

Spraakwater
The spirit of the age clearly isn't choosing tiles. After a summer of drought we know it: fewer tiles means more groundwater. And more groundwater means more greenery. With language it works just the same. Give colloquial language room, and you get 'spraakwater': not a swamp, but the spring from which a colourful language grows.

Linguistic creativity
That Dutch-language song has become so popular has a lot to do with that greening. Extince, Typhoon, De Jeugd van Tegenwoordig: they sing the way we talk. And just like with André back then, the crowd of singalongers grows along, rows deep.

So bluntly put: wherever linguistic creativity rears its head, our culture has nothing to fear. That creativity enriches it, and keeps it from drying out.