Spoken in: native language of Netherlands, Belgium, Flanders, Brussels Capital Region, Walloon muncipalities with facilities, Lowgerman area, Suriname, Aruba, Netherlands Antilles, France (French Flanders), Germany (Low Rhine Country); colonial (also native) language and Afrikaans - South Africa, Namibia, Indonesia; immigrant language - Australia, Brazil, Canada, New Zealand and U.S.A.

Total speakers: native 31 million: 23 million speakers of Dutch as first language, plus 4 million with Dutch as second language, and 7 million speakers of Afrikaans as first language, plus 10 million with Afrikaans as second language.

Language family: Indo-European, Germanic, West Germanic, Low Franconian, Dutch.

Writing system: Latin alphabet (Dutch variant).

Official status
Official language in: Aruba, Belgium, European Union, Netherlands, Netherlands Antilles, Suriname.

Regulated by: Nederlandse Taalunie (Dutch Language Union).

Dutch is a West Germanic language spoken by around 24 million people, mainly in the Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname, but also by smaller groups of speakers in parts of France, Germany and several former Dutch colonies. It is closely related to other West Germanic languages (e.g., English, West Frisian and German) and somewhat more remote to the North Germanic languages. Dutch is a descendant of Old Frankish and is the parent language of Afrikaans, one of the official languages of South Africa and the most widely understood in Namibia. Dutch and Afrikaans are to a large extent mutually intelligible, although they have separate spelling standards and dictionaries and have separate language regulators. Standard Dutch (Standaard Nederlands) is the standard language of the major Dutch-speaking areas and is regulated by the Nederlandse Taalunie ("Dutch Language Union").

Dutch grammar also shares many traits with German, but has a less complicated morphology caused by deflexion, which puts it closer to English. Dutch has officially three genders, masculine, feminine, and neuter, however, according to some interpretations these are reduced to only two, common and neuter, which is similar to the gender systems of most Continental Scandinavian languages.

The consonant system of Dutch did not undergo the High German consonant shift and has more in common with English and the Scandinavian languages. Like most Germanic languages it has a syllable structure that allows fairly complex consonant clusters. Dutch is often noted for the prominent use of velar fricatives (ch and g, pronounced at the back of the mouth), often picked up on as a source of amusement or even satire.

Dutch vocabulary is predominantly Germanic in origin, considerably more so than English. This is to a large part due to the heavy influence of Norman French on English, and to Dutch patterns of word formation, such as the tendency to form long and sometimes very complicated compound nouns, being more similar to those of German and the Scandinavian languages.

One of the major dialect groups of Dutch, Flemish, is spoken in the northwestern part of Belgium. The whole of Dutch variants spoken in Belgium is also often called "Flemish" or Southern vernacular, although it is no separate language. Officially, both the Netherlands and Belgium adhere to Standard Dutch. The difference between Belgian and Netherlandic Dutch is roughly comparable to the difference between American and British English, though only pronunciation-wise as both countries use the same written standard. However, most Flemings, if asked what their mother-tongue is, will answer Dutch and use the word Flemish to refer to their dialect.


Names for the Dutch language

The language is called Nederlands in the Dutch language. Because of the turbulent history of both the Low Countries, Belgium as well as the Dutch language, the names that other peoples have chosen to use to refer to it vary more than for most other languages. The current name "Nederlands" is derived from "Nederland(en)" which means Low Countries", the English name "Dutch" comes from "Diets", the ancient Germanic word for language of the "Diet", i.e. the people, with reference to the ancient Germanic tribes living in the region of the Low Countries at the time of the Roman Empire. The German name for the German language, "Deutsch", as opposed to "Dutch" can confuse the novice.


History of Dutch

The history of the Dutch language begins around AD 450–500, after Old Frankish, one of the many West Germanic tribal languages, was split by the Second Germanic consonant shift while at more or less the same time the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law led to the development of the direct ancestors of modern Dutch Low Saxon, Frisian and English.

The northern dialects of Old Frankish generally did not participate in either of these two shifts, except for a small amount of phonetic changes, and are hence known now as Old Low Franconian; the "Low" refers to dialects not influenced by the consonant shift. The most south-eastern dialects of the Franconian languages became part of High, though not Upper, German even though a dialect continuum remained. The fact that Dutch did not undergo the sound changes may be the reason why some people say that Dutch is like a bridge between English and German. Within Old Low Franconian there were two subgroups: Old East Low Franconian and Old West Low Franconian, which is better known as Old Dutch. East Low Franconian was eventually absorbed by Dutch as it became the dominant form of Low Franconian, although it remains a noticeable substrate within the southern Limburgish dialects of Dutch. Because the two groups were so similar it is often very hard to determine whether a text is Old Dutch or Old East Low Franconian, hence most linguists will generally use Old Dutch synonymously with Old Low Franconian and most of the time do not differentiate.

Dutch, coincidentally like other Germanic languages, is conventionally divided into three phases. In the development of Dutch these phases were:

- 450/500–1150 Old Dutch (First attested in the Salic Law);

- 1150–1500 Middle Dutch (Also called "Diets" in popular use, though not by linguists);

- 1500–present Modern Dutch (Saw the creation of the Dutch standard language and includes contemporary Dutch).

The transition between these languages was very gradual and one of the few moments linguists can detect somewhat of a revolution is when the Dutch standard language emerged and quickly established itself. It should be noted that Standard Dutch is very similar to most Dutch dialects.

The development of the Dutch language is illustrated by the following sentence in Old, Middle and Modern Dutch.

"Irlôsin sol an frithe sêla mîna fan thên thia ginâcont mi, wanda under managon he was mit mi" (Old Dutch)
"Erlossen sal in vrede siele mine van dien die genaken mi, want onder menegen hi was met mi" (Middle Dutch)
(Using same word order)

"Verlossen zal hij in vrede ziel mijn van degenen die na komen mij, want onder velen hij was met mij" (Modern Dutch)
(Using correct contemporary Dutch word order)

"Hij zal mijn ziel in vrede verlossen van degenen die mij te na komen, want onder velen was hij met mij" (Modern Dutch) (see Psalm 55:19)
"He will deliver my soul in peace from those who attack me, because, amongst many, he was with me" (English translation) (see Psalm 55:18)

A process of standardization started in the Middle ages, especially under the influence of the Burgundian Ducal Court in Dijon (Brussels after 1477). The dialects of Flanders and Brabant were the most influential around this time. The process of standardization became much stronger at the start of the 16th century, mainly based on the urban dialect of Antwerp. In 1585 Antwerp fell to the Spanish army: many fled to the Northern Netherlands, especially the province of Holland, where they influenced the urban dialects of that province. In 1637, a further important step was made towards a unified language, when the first major Dutch Bible translation was created that people from all over the United Provinces could understand. It used elements from various, even Dutch Low Saxon, dialects but was predominantly based on the urban dialects of Holland.

Dutch is a Germanic language, and within this family it is a West Germanic language. Dutch did not experience the High German consonant shift (apart from the transition from /θ/ to /d/), and is a Low Franconian language. There was at one time a dialect continuum that blurred the boundary between Dutch and Low Saxon. In some small areas, there are still dialect continuums, but they are gradually becoming extinct.

Dutch is grammatically similar to German, such as in syntax and verb morphology (for a comparison of verb morphology in English, Dutch and German, see Germanic weak verb and Germanic strong verb).

Dutch has grammatical cases, but these are now mostly limited to pronouns and set phrases. Dutch has three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter although masculine and feminine have merged to form the common gender (de), whilst the neuter (het) remains distinct as before. The inflectional grammar of Dutch, for instance in adjective and noun endings, has been simplified over time.

For many English speakers, basic Dutch, when written, looks recognizable, but the pronunciation may be markedly different. This is true especially of the diphthongs and of the letter <g>, which is pronounced as a velar continuant. The rhotic pronunciation of <r> causes some English-speakers to believe Dutch sounds similar to a West Country accent; this is the reason for Bill Bryson's famous remark that when one hears Dutch one feels one ought to be able to understand it. Dutch pronunciation is, however, difficult to master for English speakers, its diphthongs and gutturals being the greatest obstacles.


Geographic distribution

Dutch is spoken by almost all inhabitants of the Netherlands and Flanders (the northern half of Belgium); in Flanders, it is often referred to by the dialect name Vlaams (Flemish). It is also spoken in the bilingual region of Brussels, together with French and other languages. In the northernmost part of France, the Dunkirk arrondissement in the Nord département, Dutch is still spoken as a minority language, also often called Vlaams. On the Caribbean islands of Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles, Dutch is used, but is less common than Papiamento (Aruba, Curaçao, Bonaire) and English (Sint Maarten, Sint Eustatius, Saba). Dutch is spoken as a mother tongue by about 60% of the population in Suriname, most of whom are bilingual with Sranan Tongo or other ethnic languages (2005, Nederlandse Taalunie: , in Dutch). There are also some speakers of Dutch in countries with many Dutch and Flemish immigrants, such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States. In South Africa and Namibia the closely-related language Afrikaans is spoken. There are also a number of Dutch speakers in Indonesia.


Official status

Dutch is an official language of the Netherlands, Belgium, Suriname, Aruba, Netherlands Antilles, and the Union of South American Nations. The Dutch, Flemish and Surinamese governments coordinate their language activities in the Nederlandse Taalunie ('Dutch Language Union'). Dutch was an official language in South Africa up until 1961 (it had fallen into disuse after Afrikaans became an official language in 1925). A noticeable minority of the inhabitants of New Zealand, 16,347 (0.4%) are sufficiently fluent in Dutch to carry on an everyday conversation.

Standaardnederlands or Algemeen Nederlands ('Common Dutch', abbreviated to AN) is the standard language as taught in schools and used by authorities in the Low Countries, Flanders, Suriname, Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles. The Dutch Language Union defines what is AN and what is not.

Since efforts to uplift people came to be considered rather presumptuous, the earlier name Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands ('Common Civilized Dutch') and its abbreviation ABN have been replaced with Algemeen Nederlands and thus AN. The implicit insinuation that people, who spoke dialect or with an accent, were not civilized was thus removed.

The Netherlands

Dutch is the official and foremost language of the Netherlands. Everybody in the country speaks the language, which makes a number of 16.4 million people. In the province of Friesland, Frisian is also recognized, but this language is only spoken by some hundreds of thousands of Frisians. In The Low Countries there are a lot of different dialects, but they are often overruled and replaced by the language of the media, school, government etc, Standard Dutch. Immigrant languages are Indonesian, Turkish, Papiamento, Sranan and Moroccan Arabic. In the second generation these newcomers often speak Dutch as their mother tongue, but sometimes alongside the language of the parents.

Belgium

Belgium is divided along linguistic lines. In the north is the Dutch-speaking Flanders, the south of the country is French-speaking Wallonia. Dutch is one of the main two official languages (and so is French); German is the official language in the main part of the small eastern region of Eupen-Malmédy, the so-called East Cantons, two of which form the German-speaking Community of Belgium with an area of only 854 km², and a population of 73,000. Brussels, the capital and located in Flanders, is officially bilingual but mainly French-speaking. Six Flemish communes located outside the Brussels Region have language facilities for French-speakers. These communes are: Wemmel, Wezembeek-Oppem, Linkebeek, Drogenbos, Kraainem and Sint-Genesius-Rode. Dutch is allowed in some muncipalities in Wallonia, the "faciliteitengemeenten".

Flanders

Flanders is the Dutch speaking northern half of Belgium. Dutch is the official language there, and almost everybody speaks it, which makes a number of 6 million in total. The dialects spoken in Flanders are somewhat more divergent from standard Dutch than those spoken in the Netherlands, despite the fact that standard Dutch is mostly based on 16th century Flemish and Brabantic dialects.

Brussels
In Brussels Capital Region both Dutch and French are official languages. Many of the inhabitants are bilingual, but French is the dominant language of the city. Immigrants mostly adopt French as their language. Daily commuting from Flanders amounts to 250,000 people. Their bilingualism is often more hidden, just like it is in a city as Cape Town with respect to Afrikaans vs. English. Historically, Brussels was Dutch speaking and the indigenous older generation still speaks the city dialect. Brussels Capital Region is surrounded by Flemish territory, where there are municipalities with facilities for French speaking people.

Wallonia

The official language of Wallonia is French and in the Eastern part of the province Liege as well. There are some municipalities near the Dutch-French Language border were Dutch is recognized. French speakers also have facilities in the Flemish Voerstreek region (Fourons) and in Ronse (Renaix). This was settled in 1962, when Dutch as a language became equal to French. In the so-called Low Dietsch language area (Dutch: Platdietse streek) in the province of Liege – an "officially" French speaking area –an old Dutch/German dialect is used, called Low Dietsch (Dutch: Platdiets). The villages that make part of this area do not belong to municipalities with language facilities.

Suriname

Suriname is a South-American country (geographically, but historically, culturally and economically a Caribbean one), which was a Dutch colony until 1975. After Sranan, Dutch is the biggest and most widely spread language in the country. More than 60% of the inhabitants have Dutch as mother tongue. The others speak Dutch very well to very poor, as a second or third language, with their ethnic language as first one, like Javanese, Saramacaans, Aucaans and Indian languages etc. Sranan is used as the lingua franca between those groups, while Dutch is the official language. Since 2005 Suriname has become a member of the Nederlandse Taalunie (Dutch Language Union).

Afrikaans in South Africa and Namibia

One of the 11 official languages of South Africa, Afrikaans is derived from Dutch and is the mother tongue of about 15% of South Africa's population, a total of 6 million people. It is also spoken or understood by more than 10 million other speakers. It has official status in Namibia as well, where it is understood by 60% of the country (more than 1 million). Afrikaans originated from modern Dutch (17th century-present) but is very similar to "European Dutch", the speakers of modern Dutch and of Afrikaans have no problems in communicating with each other.

The Afrikaners or Boers, the Dutch colonists in Southern Africa, had used the same spelling up to 1925. Then the Afrikaners created their own spelling and this (Afrikaans, Dutch for African) replaced official Dutch. In 1925 Afrikaans and Dutch (declared as the same language) became the official language of the Union of South Africa. Dutch was totally replaced by Afrikaans in 1984 in legislation, but Dutch had no government function by 1961.

Before the United Kingdom took control of South Africa from the Low Countries in 1814, the Afrikaans language (which wasn't called or considered Afrikaans at that time) was exposed to a steady stream of Dutch language influence, and the two languages were therefore almost identical. The differentiation and major changes from Dutch started when the Dutch settlers moved deep inland (Trek Boers). In addition, when the UK seized South Africa, the Dutch language spoken in South Africa was practically cut off from other Dutch-speaking areas, allowing the language to differentiate and evolve further.

In 1925 the Afrikaans language was recognized as one of South Africa's official languages, alongside Dutch and English. Dutch was only formally derecognized in South Africa in 1984 (since 1961 it had merited only a mention in the legislation). By that time, however, it had no longer been in everyday official use for a long time. The distinction of Afrikaans from the Dutch language looked perhaps briefly in danger just after the Second World War when a great number of Dutch immigrants chose South Africa as their new homeland. However, the Afrikaans language survived the new influx of Dutch speakers, which might otherwise have turned Afrikaans into a mixed language.

Almost all of the Dutch immigrants and their descendants now speak Afrikaans instead of Dutch, be it (in the case of the Dutch-born parents) with a slight accent because mutual intelligibility still exists. The differences between the two languages are considerably more than e.g. between European Portuguese and Brazilian or European and Latin-American Spanish.

However, a Dutch speaker can usually read Afrikaans easily, and to a lesser degree also orally understand it, especially when one's native dialect is Hollandic, Zealandic, Flemish or Brabantic. Afrikaans can be considered a creole language. South Africans also contributed their part to Dutch literature and Dutch is still a very important colonial language. Universities have Afrikaans and Dutch as one language study and the only monument of the Dutch language can be found in South Africa.

Other (historical) names of Afrikaans are:

- Kaap-Hollands / Kaap-Nederlands (Cape Hollandic/Cape Dutch)
- Zuid-Afrikaans (South African)
- (Zuid-)Afrikaans-Nederlands ((South) African Dutch)
- Afro-Nederlands / Afro-Hollands (Afro-Dutch/Afro-Hollandic)
- Keukennederlands / Kombuistaaltje (Kitchen Dutch/Kitchen language)
- Koloniaal-Nederlands (Colonial Dutch)


Dialects

In Flanders, there are 4 main dialect groups: West Flemish (West-Vlaams), East Flemish (Oost-Vlaams), Brabantian (Brabants), which includes several main dialect branches, including Antwerpian, and Limburgish (Limburgs). Some of these dialects, especially West and East Flemish, have incorporated some French loanwords in everyday language. An example is fourchette in various forms (originally a French word meaning fork), instead of vork. Brussels is especially heavily influenced by French because roughly 85% of the inhabitants of Brussels speak French. The Limburgish in Belgium is closely related to Dutch Limburgish. An oddity of West Flemings (and to a lesser extent, East Flemings) is that, when they speak AN, their pronunciation of the "soft g" sound (the voiced velar fricative) is almost identical to that of the "h" sound (the voiced glottal fricative), thus, the words held (hero) and geld (money) sound nearly the same, except that the latter word has a 'y' /j/ sound embedded into the "soft g". When they speak their local dialect, however, their "g" is almost the "h" of the Algemeen Nederlands, and they do not pronounce the "h". Some Flemish dialects are so distinct that they might be considered as separate language variants, although the strong significance of language in Belgian politics would prevent the government from classifying them as such. West Flemish in particular has sometimes been considered a distinct variety. Dialect borders of these dialects do not correspond to present political boundaries, but reflect older, medieval divisions. The Brabantian dialect group, for instance, also extends to much of the south of the Low Countries, and so does Limburgish. West Flemish is also spoken in part of the Dutch province of Zeeland, and even in a small area near Dunkirk, France that borders Belgium.

The Low Countries also have different dialect regions. In the east there is an extensive Dutch Low Saxon dialect area: the provinces of Groningen (Gronings), Drenthe and Overijssel are almost exclusively Low Saxon. Zuid-Gelders is a dialect also spoken in the German land of North Rhine-Westphalia. Brabantian (Noord-Brabant) fades into the dialects spoken in the adjoining provinces of Belgium. The same applies to Limburgish (Limburg (Netherlands)), but this variant also has the status of official regional language in the Netherlands (but not in Belgium). It receives protection by chapter 2 of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Limburgish has been influenced by the Rhinelandic dialects like the Cologne dialect: Kölsch, and has had a somewhat different development since the late Middle Ages.

Zealandic of most of Zeeland is a transitional regional language between West Flemish and Hollandic, with the exception of the eastern part of Zealandic Flanders where East Flemish is spoken. In Holland proper, Hollandic is spoken, though the original forms of this dialect, heavily influenced by a Frisian substratum, are now relatively rare; the urban dialects of the Randstad, which are Hollandic dialects, do not diverge from standard Dutch very much, but there is a clear difference between the city dialects of Rotterdam, The Hague, Amsterdam or Utrecht.

In some rural Hollandic areas more authentic Hollandic dialects are still being used, especially north of Amsterdam. Limburgish and Dutch Low Saxon have been elevated by the Low Countries (and by Germany) to the legal status of streektaal (regional language) according to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, which causes some native speakers to consider them separate languages.

Another group of dialects based on Hollandic is that spoken in the cities and larger towns of Friesland, where it displaced West Frisian in the 16th century and is known as Stadsfries ("Urban Frisian").

Dutch dialects are not spoken as often as they used to be. Nowadays in The Low Countries only older people speak these dialects in the smaller villages, with the exception of the Low Saxon and Limburgish streektalen, which are actively promoted by some provinces and still in common use. Most towns and cities stick to standard Dutch - although many cities have their own city dialect, which continues to prosper. In Belgium, however, dialects are very much alive; many senior citizens there are unable to speak standard Dutch. In both the Low Countries and Belgium, many larger cities also have several distinct smaller dialects.

Many native speakers of Dutch, both in Belgium and the Low Countries, assume that Afrikaans and West Frisian are 'deviant' dialects of Dutch. In fact, they are different languages, though Afrikaans has evolved mainly from Dutch. In fact, a (West) Frisian standard language has been developed.

Until the early 20th century, variants of Dutch were still spoken by some descendants of Dutch colonies in the United States. New Jersey in particular had an active Dutch community with a highly divergent dialect that was spoken as recently as the 1950s. See Jersey Dutch for more on this dialect. Russia also has some people today who speak Dutch-based dialects.


Dutch phonology

Dutch is a stress language; the stress position of words matters. Stress can occur on any syllable position in a word. There is a tendency for stress to be at the beginning of words. In composite words, secondary stress is often present. There are some cases where stress is the only difference between words. For example vóórkomen (occur) and voorkómen (prevent). Marking the stress in written Dutch is optional, never obligatory, but sometimes recommended.

The syllable structure of Dutch is (C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C). Many words, like in English, begin with three consonants - e.g. straat (street). There are words that end in four consonants - e.g. herfst (autumn), ergst (worst), interessantst (normally: interessant(interesting)) instead of (most interesting), sterkst (strongest) - most of them being adjectives in the superlative form.

The greatest number of consonants in a single cluster can be found in the word slechtstschrijvend (worst writing) with 9 consonants (though there are only 7 phonemes since 'ch' represents a single phoneme).


Dutch grammar

Like all other continental West Germanic languages, Dutch has a word order that is markedly different from English, which presents a problem for some Anglophones learning Dutch. A simple example often used in Dutch language classes and text books is "Ik kan mijn pen niet vinden omdat het veel te donker is" which word-for-word translates to "I can my pen not find because it much too dark is" but actually translates to "I can't find my pen because it's much too dark". This can be explained by saying that the first (main) verb goes at the beginning of the sentence while all the remaining verbs go to the end. It must also be noted that Dutch (like German) often splits larger sentences into smaller ones, each of which can have distinctly different grammatical rules depending on what is actually being said and where the emphasis is placed.

The Dutch written grammar has simplified over the past 100 years: cases are now mainly used for the pronouns, such as ik (I), mij, me (me), mijn (my), wie (who), wiens (whose: masculine or feminine singular), wier (whose: masculine or feminine plural). Nouns and adjectives are not case inflected (except for the genitive of proper nouns (names): -s, -'s or -'). In the spoken language cases and case inflections had already gradually disappeared from a much earlier date on (probably the 15th century) as in all continental West Germanic dialects.

Inflection of adjectives is a little more complicated: nothing with indefinite neuter nouns in singular and -e in all other cases:

- een mooi huis (a beautiful house)
- het mooie huis (the beautiful house)
- mooie huizen (beautiful houses)
- de mooie huizen (the beautiful houses)
- een mooie vrouw (a beautiful woman)

More complex inflection is still found in certain lexicalized expressions like de heer des huizes (literally, the man of the house), etc. These are usually remnants of cases (in this instance, the genitive case which is still used in German, cf. Der Herr des Hauses) and other inflections no longer in general use today. In such lexicalized expressions remnants of strong and weak nouns can be found too, e.g. in het jaar des Heren (Anno Domini), where “-en” is actually the genitive ending of the weak noun. Also in this case, German retains this feature.

Dutch nouns can take endings for size: -je for singular diminutive and -jes for plural diminutive. Between these suffixes and the radical can come extra letters depending on the ending of the word:

- boom (tree) - boompje
- ring (ring) - ringetje
- koning (king) - koninkje
- tien (ten) - tientje (a ten euro note)

Like most Germanic languages, Dutch forms noun compounds, where the first noun modifies the category given by the second, for example: hondenhok (doghouse). Unlike English, where newer compounds or combinations of longer nouns are often written in open form with separating spaces, Dutch (like the other Germanic languages) either uses the closed form without spaces, for example: boomhuis (Eng. tree house) or hyphenated: VVD-coryfee (outstanding member of the VVD, a political party). Like German, Dutch allows arbitrarily long compounds, but the longer they get, the less frequent they tend to be. The longest serious entry in the Van Dale dictionary is wapenstilstandsonderhandeling (ceasefire negotiation). Sometimes hottentottensoldatententententoonstellingsterreinen (hottentot soldiers tents exhibition terrains) is jocularly quoted as the longest Dutch word (note the four times consecutive ten), but outside this usage it actually never occurs. Notwithstanding official spelling rules, many Dutch people nowadays tend to write the parts of a compound separately, which is sometimes dubbed “the English disease” or "de Engelse ziekte".


Vocabulary

The Dutch vocabulary is one of the richest in the world and comprises at least 186,000 headwords.

Like English, Dutch includes words of Greek and Latin origin. Its number of Romance-based loanwords is higher than in German, but much lower than in English. Even more than in English, a Romance alternative exists for many Germanic words, and the Romance word is primarily used in more formal contexts (e.g. "rechtvaardigheid" and "justitie", "verdediging" and "defensie"). Somewhat paradoxically, most loanwords from French have entered into Dutch vocabulary via the Low Countries and not via Belgium, in spite of the cultural and economic dominance exerted by French speakers in Belgium until the first half of the 20th century. This happened because the status French enjoyed as the language of refinement and high culture inspired the affluent upper and upper-middle classes in the Low Countries to adopt many French terms into the language. In Belgium no such phenomenon occurred, since members of the upper and upper-middle classes would have spoken French rather than Frenchify their Dutch. French terms heavily influenced Dutch dialects in Flanders, but Belgian speakers did (and do) tend to resist French loanwords when using standard Dutch. Nonetheless some French loanwords of relatively recent date have become accepted in standard Dutch, also in Belgium, albeit with a shift in meaning and not as straight synonyms for existing Dutch words. For example, "blesseren" (from French blesser, to injure) is almost exclusively used to refer to sports injuries, while in other contexts the standard Dutch verbs "kwetsen" and "verwonden" continue to be used.

Especially on the streets and in many professions, there is a steady increase of English loanwords, rather often pronounced or applied in a different way. The influx of English words is maintained by the dominance of English in the mass media and on the Internet. Unlike some other languages, Dutch adopts these new English terms with little or no resistance. Efforts to develop Dutch alternatives for English loanwords have extremely little success and indeed are often met with derision.

High German had an important influence on Dutch vocabulary in the formation stage of the standard language in the 16th and 17th century. Except for the adverbs überhaupt and sowieso, the few more recent German loanwords are relatively rarely used. However, even though few true loanwords are present, German has had a major effect in the 19th and 20th century upon the lexicon of the language, mainly by the adaptation and change of German words into words that seem Dutch (so-called germanisme), a process probably to be ascribed to the likeness of the two languages. Some of these forms have become so integral to Dutch that few Dutch are aware of their origin; they include words like beduidend (from German bedeutend), aanstalten (from Anstalten).


Writing system

Dutch is written using the Latin alphabet. It has a relatively high proportion of doubled letters, both vowels and consonants. This is due to the formation of compound words and also to the spelling devices for distinguishing the many vowel sounds in the Dutch language.

The official spelling is set by the Wet schrijfwijze Nederlandsche taal (Law on the writing of the Dutch language; Belgium 1946, Netherlands 1947; based on a 1944 spelling revision; both amended in the 1990s after a 1995 spelling revision). The Woordenlijst Nederlandse taal, more commonly known as "het groene boekje" (i.e. "the green booklet", because of its colour), is usually accepted as an informal explanation of the law. However, the official 2005 spelling revision, which reverted some of the 1995 changes and made new ones, has been welcomed with a distinct lack of enthusiasm in both the Low Countries and Belgium. As a result, the Genootschap Onze Taal (Our Language Society) decided to publish an alternative list, "het witte boekje" ("the white booklet"), which tries to simplify some complicated rules and offers several possible spellings for many contested words. This alternative orthography is followed by a number of major Dutch media organisations but mostly ignored in Belgium.


Dutch as a foreign language

The number of non-native speakers of Dutch who voluntarily learn the language is small. Dutch is not geographically widespread and in its home countries The Low Countries and Belgium, most of its speakers are proficient in other European languages. There are far fewer Francophone Belgians who speak Dutch than Flemings who speak French, although quite recently the number of the former is slightly on the rise.

Some non-native residents of the Low Countries and of Belgium have never learned to speak Dutch, probably because of a perception of its difficulties. Moreover, and especially in Belgium, the difference between the standard language and the language people speak (their local dialect or, more often, a version of the standard language heavily influenced by it) can be very important and cause difficulties. In addition, native Dutch speakers themselves are often so linguistically proficient that they will try to help a struggling Dutch learner by replying in his or her own (second) language – usually English, or in Belgium also French. Dutch or Flemish people in contact with foreigners often are eager to show their mastery of foreign languages, in particular English. However, those residents or visitors who do learn some Dutch will be rewarded, not only by the extra fillip this gives to their understanding of Dutch history and culture, but also because it will enable them to converse with people in areas away from the big cities where other languages are less commonly spoken and experience other aspects of the Dutch culture more deeply.

Native speakers of German usually have the biggest advantage of all people when learning Dutch from a grammar and vocabulary point of view but almost always struggle with the pronunciation.


Pronunciation

Pronunciation can be a challenge as many of the Dutch vowel sounds are difficult for non native speakers. Diphthongs such as the "ui" sound in such words as "zuid" (south) or "huis" (house), the "eu" in "keuze" (choice) or "sleutel" (key), and the "ij" sound in words like "mijt" (mite) or "wijn" (wine) present difficulties and even though some of these words are superficially like their English equivalents the correct sound is very different.

Consonant clustering

The morphologic versatility and cohesiveness of Dutch sometimes also produces words that might baffle speakers of other languages due to the high amount of consecutive consonants, such as the word "angstschreeuw" (scream in fear), which has grand total of eight in a row (ngstschr) (although the ng and ch are digraphs). It has to be noted though that the pronunciation of a word can differ greatly from its written form. In this case, "angstschreeuw" actually features 6 consonants (ng-s-t-s-ch-r) originating from two distinct compounded words ("angst" and "schreeuw"), which is reduced further in everyday pronunciation by blending consecutive consonants into one sound - e.g. "ch" and "r".


The language of Flanders

Dutch is the language of government, education, and daily life in Flanders, the northern part of Belgium. There is no officially recognized language called "Flemish", and both the Dutch and Belgian governments adhere to the standard Dutch (Algemeen Nederlands) defined by the Nederlandse Taalunie ("Dutch Language Union").

The actual differences between the spoken standard language of Dutch and Belgian speakers are comparable to the differences between American and British English. Some of these differences are recognized by the Taalunie and major dictionaries as being interchangeably valid, although some dictionaries and grammars may mark them as being more prevalent in one region or the other.

The use of the word Vlaams ("Flemish") to describe Standard Dutch for the variations prevalent in Flanders and used there, is common in the Low Countries and Belgium.


Dutch as a German dialect

The question of what is a language, and what is a dialect, is rather a political and not a linguistic one. Dutch cannot be defined as a German dialect. The Dutch standard language by definition cannot be a dialect of another standard language, in this case Standard German. The dialect group from which Dutch is largely derived, Low Franconian, belongs to the whole of the continental West Germanic dialect set. This whole is sometimes imprecisely indicated by the word "German", but it might as well be called "Dutch". Indeed the Low Franconian dialects and languages are morphologically closer to the original form of Western Germanic than the High German from which standard German is derived. It is quite appropriate to call modern Dutch and High German sister languages, only they are derived not from one and the same common variety, but from cognate mother vernaculars of Continental West Germanic.

No intrinsic quality of the whole of the component dialects favours one standard over the other: both were rivals and historical contingency decided the range of their use. The state border does not reflect dialectal subdivisions. Only since the dialect continuum of continental West Germanic was broken by the 19th century introduction of mass education have the respective ranges been fixed; in the 18th century standard Dutch was still used as the normal written standard in the Lower Rhine, the county of Bentheim and East Frisia, now all part of Germany.


Low Dietsch

Low Dietsch (Dutch: Platdiets, Limburgish: Platduutsj, French: Thiois or Platdutch) is a term mainly used within the Flemish terminology for the transitional Limburgish-Ripuarian dialects of a number of towns and villages in the north-east of the Belgian province of Liege, such as Gemmenich, Homburg, Montzen and Welkenraedt.


Relation to English

Dutch does have a relatively close genetic relationship to the descendants of Middle English (such as English and Scots), since both belong to the West Germanic languages and both lack most or all of the High German consonant shift that characterizes the descendants of Middle High German (such as German and Yiddish).

The Frisian languages, however, are even more closely related to the Middle English descendants than Dutch. Languages and dialects sharing some features found in English and Frisian are referred to as Anglo-Frisian languages or, occasionally, Ingvaeonic languages.


Pennsylvania Dutch

Pennsylvania Dutch, a West Central German variety called Deitsch by its speakers, is not a form of Dutch. The word "Dutch" has historically been used for all speakers of continental West Germanic languages, including, the Dutch people, Flemish, Austrians, Germans, and the German-speaking Swiss. It is cognate with the Dutch archaism Diets, meaning "Dutch", and the German self-designation Deutsch. The use of the term "Dutch" exclusively for the language of Belgium, or for the inhabitants of the Low Countries or some of its former colonies, dates from the early 16th century. The name "Dutch" for the Pennsylvania dialect also stems from the way "Deutsch" is pronounced in the dialect itself.

Pennsylvania Dutch must not be confused with Jersey Dutch as spoken in Upstate New York in former ages, and even until the 1950's in New Jersey, being Dutch-based creole or pidgin languages.


"Dutch" is not "Deutsch"

It would be a mistake for an English speaker to assume a direct similarity for the words Dutch and 'Deutsch', the German word for "German". The word "Dutch" derived from the 16th century Middle Dutch word 'Dietsch' or 'Duitsch', which referred to the Dutch language. Over time, this word has become the modern Dutch word 'Duits', which actually refers to the German language (Deutsch).