Dutch language

and Belgium.[9]

For other uses of Dutch, see Dutch (disambiguation).

The Dutch language has been known under a variety of

names. In Middle Dutch, which was a collection of dialects, dietsc was used in Flanders and Brabant, while diets or duutsc was in use in the Northern Netherlands.[10]
It derived from the Old Germanic word theudisk, one of
the rst names ever used for the non-Romance languages
of Western Europe, meaning (pertaining to the language)
of the people, that is, the native Germanic language. The
term was used as opposed to Latin, the non-native language of writing and the Catholic Church.[11] In the rst
text in which it is found, dating from 784, it refers to the
Germanic dialects of Britain.[12] In the Oaths of Strasbourg (842) it appeared as teudisca to refer to the Germanic (Rhenish Franconian) portion of the oath.

Dutch ( Nederlands ) is a West Germanic language

that is spoken in the European Union by about 23 million people as a rst languageincluding most of the
population of the Netherlands and about sixty percent of
that of Belgiumand by another 5 million as a second
language.[2][3][5][6]
Outside of the Low Countries, it is the native language
of the majority of the population of Suriname, and also
holds ocial status in the Caribbean island nations of
Aruba, Curaao and Sint Maarten. Historical minorities remain in parts of France and Germany, and to a
lesser extent, in Indonesia,[n 1] while up to half a million native speakers may reside in the United States,
Canada and Australia combined.[n 2] The Cape Dutch dialects of Southern Africa have evolved into Afrikaans, a
mutually intelligible daughter language[n 3] which is spoken to some degree by at least 16 million people, mainly
in South Africa and Namibia.[n 4]

Until roughly the 16th century, speakers of all the varieties of the West Germanic languages from the mouth
of the Rhine to the Alps had been accustomed to refer to
their native speech as Dietsch, (Neder)duyts or some other
cognate of theudisk. This let inevitably to confusion since
similar terms referred to dierent languages. Therefore,
in the 16th century, a dierentiation took place. Owing
to Dutch commercial and colonial rivalry in the 16th and
17th centuries, the English term came to refer exclusively
to the Dutch. A notable exception is Pennsylvania Dutch,
which is a West Central German variety called Deitsch by
its speakers. Jersey Dutch, on the other hand, as spoken
until the 1950s in New Jersey, is a Dutch-based creole.

Dutch is one of the closest relatives of both German and

English[n 5] and is said to be roughly in between them.[n 6]
Dutch, like English, has not undergone the High German consonant shift, does not use Germanic umlaut as a
grammatical marker, has largely abandoned the use of the
subjunctive, and has levelled much of its morphology, including the case system.[n 7] Features shared with German
include the survival of three grammatical gendersalbeit
with few grammatical consequences[n 8] and the use of
modal particles,[7] nal-obstruent devoicing, and V2 with
subjectobjectverb word order.[n 9] Dutch vocabulary is
mostly Germanic and incorporates more Romance loans
than German but fewer than English.[n 10]

In Dutch itself, Diets went out of common use - although

Platdiets is still used for the transitional LimburgishRipuarian dialects in the north-east of Belgium. Nederlands, the ocial Dutch word for Dutch, did not become rmly established until the 19th century. This designation had been in use as far back as the end of the
15th century, but received competition from the more
popular terminology Nederduits, Low Dutch, for sev1 Name
eral reasons. One of them was it reected a distinction
with Hoogduits, High Dutch, meaning the language spoMain article: Names for the Dutch language
ken in Germany. The Hoog was later dropped, and thus,
Duits narrowed down in meaning to refer to the German
While Dutch generally refers to the language as a whole, language.
Belgian varieties are sometimes collectively referred to The term Nederduits, however introduced new confuas Flemish. In both Belgium and the Netherlands, the na- sion, since the non standardised dialects spoken in the
tive ocial name for Dutch is Nederlands, and its dialects north of Germany came to be known as Niederdeutsch
have their own names, e.g. Hollands Hollandish, West- as well, and thus the Duits reference in the name was
Vlaams Western Flemish, Brabants Brabantian.[8] dropped, leading to Nederlands as designation to refer
The use of the word Vlaams (Flemish) to describe to the Dutch language. The repeated use of Neder (or
Standard Dutch for the variations prevalent in Flanders low) to refer to the Dutch language is a reference to
and used there, however, is common in the Netherlands
1

HISTORY

the Netherlands downriver location at the RhineMeuse

Scheldt delta near the North Sea, harking back to Latin
nomenclature, e.g. Germania Inferior.[13][14][15] See also:
Netherlands (toponymy).

History

Main article: History of the Dutch language

Three Germanic dialects were originally spoken in the
Low Countries: Frisian in the north and along the western
coast; Saxon in the east (contiguous with the Low German area); and Franconian in the centre and south. It is
the Franconian dialects that is designated as Old Dutch,
and that would develop in Middle Dutch and later ModMap of the Pre-Roman Iron Age culture(s) associated with Protoern Dutch. The division in these development phases is Germanic, ca 50050 BCE. The area south of Scandinavia is the
mostly conventional, since the transition between them Jastorf culture.
was very gradual. One of the few moments linguists
can detect somewhat of a revolution is when the Dutch
standard language emerged and quickly established itself.
The development of the Dutch language is illustrated by
the following sentence in Old, Middle and Modern Dutch:
Irlsin sol an frithe sla mna fan thn thia gincont mi, wanda under managon he was mit mi (Old
Dutch)
Erlossen sal [hi] in vrede siele mine van dien die
genaken mi, want onder menegen hi was met mi
(Middle Dutch)
Verlossen zal hij in vrede ziel mijn van degenen die
[te] na komen mij, want onder menigen hij was met
mij (Modern Dutch, same word order)
Hij zal mijn ziel in vrede verlossen van degenen die
mij te na komen, want onder menigen was hij met
mij (Modern Dutch, default word order)[16]

The distribution of the primary Germanic dialect groups in

He will deliver my soul in peace from those who at- Europe in around AD 1:
tack me, because, amongst many, he was with me North Germanic
North Sea Germanic, or Ingvaeonic
(English)[17]

2.1

Origin

Within the Indo-European language tree, Dutch is

grouped within the Germanic languages, which means it
shares a common ancestor with languages such as English, German, and Scandinavian languages. All Germanic languages are united by subjection to the sound
shifts of Grimms law and Verners law which originated
in the Proto-Germanic language and dene the basic
dierentiating features from other Indo-European languages. This assumed to have originated in approximately the mid-rst millennium BCE in Iron Age northern Europe.[18]

Weser-Rhine Germanic, or Istvaeonic

Elbe Germanic, or Irminonic
East Germanic

The Germanic languages are traditionally divided into

three groups: West, East and North Germanic.[19] They
remained mutually intelligible throughout the Migration
Period. Dutch is together with English and German part
of the West Germanic group, that is characterized by a
number of phonological and morphological innovations
not found in North and East Germanic.[20] The West
Germanic varieties of the time are generally split into
three dialect groups: Ingvaeonic (North Sea Germanic),
Istvaeonic (Weser-Rhine Germanic) and Irminonic (Elbe

2.4

Middle Dutch

Germanic). It appears that the Frankish tribes t primarily into the Istvaeonic dialect group with certain Ingvaeonic inuences towards the northwest, still seen in
modern Dutch.

2.2

The Frankish language

Main article: Frankish language

A Frankish identity emerged and so did their Frankish
or Franconian language. The language itself is poorly attested. A notable exception is the Bergakker inscription,
found near the Dutch city of Tiel, which may represent a
primary record of 5th-century Frankish. Although some
placenames recorded in Roman texts could arguably be
considered as the oldest Dutch single words, like vadam
(modern Dutch: wad, English: mudat), the Bergakker
inscription yields the oldest evidence of Dutch morphology, but there is no consensus on the interpretation of the
rest of the text.[21]

Area in which Old Dutch was spoken

velopments on its own, like nal-obstruent devoicing in

a very early stage. In fact, by judging from the nd at
Bergakker, it would seem that the language already experienced this characteristic during the Old Frankish peThe Franks emerged in the southern Netherlands (Salian riod.
Franks) and central Germany (Ripuarian Franks), and Attestations of Old Dutch sentences are extremely rare.
later descended into Gaul where they gave their name to The oldest one rst recorded has been found in the Salic
it: France. Although they ruled the Gallo-Romans for law. From this Frankish document written around 510
nearly 300 years, their language, Frankish, went extinct the oldest sentence has been identied as Dutch: Maltho
in most of France and also in all of Germany in around thi afrio lito (I say to you, I free you, serf) used to free
the 7th century. It was replaced in France by Old French a serf. Another old fragment of Dutch is Visc ot af(a Romance language with a considerable Old Frankish tar themo uuatare (A sh was swimming in the water).
inuence), and in Germany mostly by Alemannic Ger- The oldest conserved larger Dutch text is the Utrecht bapman.
tismal vow (776-800) starting with Forsachistu diobolae
However, the Old Franconian language did not die out [...] ec forsacho diabolae (Do you forsake the devil? [...]
completely. Around the same time as it begins to decline I forsake the devil). Probably the most famous sentence
in France and Germany it remained in the Low Countries, Hebban olla vogala nestas hagunnan, hinase hic enda tu,
and evolved into what we know call Old Low Franconian, wat unbidan we nu (All birds have started making nests,
also known as Old Dutch. in fact, Old Frankish could except me and you, what are we waiting for), is dated
mostly be reconstructed from Old Dutch and Frankish around the year 1100, written by a Flemish monk in a
convent in Rochester, England.
loanwords in Old French.

2.3

Old Dutch

Main article: Old Dutch

Old Low Franconian or Old Dutch is regarded as the
primary stage in the development of a separate Dutch
language. The Low in Old Low Franconian refers to
the Frankish spoken in the Low Countries where it was
not inuenced by the High German consonant shift, as
opposed to Central and high Franconian in Germany.
The latter would as a consequence evolve with Allemanic
into Old High German. At more or less the same time The Utrecht baptismal vow Forsachistu diobolae...
the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law led to the development
of Old Saxon, Old Frisian (Anglo-Frisian) and Old English (Anglo-Saxon). Hardly inuenced by either devel- 2.4 Middle Dutch
opment, Old Dutch remained close to the original language of the Franks, the people that would rule Europe Main article: Middle Dutch
for centuries. The language however, did experienced de-

Old Dutch naturally evolved into Middle Dutch. The year

1150 is often cited as the time of the discontinuity, but
it actually marks a time of profuse Dutch writing and
during this period a rich Medieval Dutch literature developed. There was at that time no overarching standard
language; Middle Dutch is rather a collective name for
a number of closely related dialects whose ancestor was
Old Dutch. But they were all mutually intelligible. In
fact, since Dutch is a rather conservative language, the
various literary works of that time today are often very
readable for modern-day speakers.
The most notable dierence between Old and Middle
Dutch is in a feature of speech known as vowel reduction. Round vowels in word-nal syllables are rather frequent in Old Dutch, in Middle Dutch, such are leveled to
a schwa.
The Middle Dutch dialect areas were aected by political boundaries. The sphere of political inuence of a
certain ruler often also created a sphere of linguistic inuence, with the language within the area becoming more
homogenous. Following the contemporary political divisions they are in order of importance:

CLASSIFICATION

the Oversticht territories of the episcopal principality of

Utrecht and adjacent parts of Guelders. It did play a modest part in the formation of the standard Dutch language
in later periods.

2.5 Modern Dutch

A process of standardisation started in the Middle Ages,
especially under the inuence of the Burgundian Ducal
Court in Dijon (Brussels after 1477). The dialects of
Flanders and Brabant were the most inuential around
this time. The process of standardisation 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 ed to the Northern Netherlands, where the Dutch Republic declared its independence from Spain. They particularly inuenced the urban
dialects of the province of Holland. In 1637, a further
important step was made towards a unied language,[22]
when the Statenvertaling, the rst major Bible translation
into Dutch, was created that people from all over the new
republic could understand. It used elements from various, even Dutch Low Saxon, dialects but was predominantly based on the urban dialects of Holland of post 16th
century.[23]

Flemish with the County of Flanders at its centre. It

had been inuential during the earlier Middle Ages
(the Flemish expansion) but lost prestige to the In the Southern Netherlands (now Belgium and
neighbouring Brabantian in the 13th century.
Luxembourg) developments were dierent.
Under
Spanish,
then
Austrian,
and
then
French
rule
standard the Brabantian dialect, spoken primarily in the
Duchy of Brabant and adjacent parts. It was isation of Dutch language came to a standstill. The
an inuential dialect during most of the Middle state, law, and increasingly education used French, yet
Ages, during the so-called Brabantian expansion more than half the Belgian population were speaking a
in which the inuence of Brabant was extended out- Dutch dialect. In the course of the nineteenth century
the Flemish movement stood up for the rights of Dutch,
wards into other areas.
mostly called Flemish. But in competing with the
the Hollandic dialect, which had the County of Hol- French language the variation in dialects was a serious
land as its heartland, where originally Old Frisian disadvantage. Since standardisation is a lengthy process,
was spoken. The people mixed with Frankish set- Dutch-speaking Belgium associated itself with the
tlers from Flanders and Brabant and a new Frankish standard language that had already developed in the
dialect with a Frisian substrate was created. It was Netherlands over the centuries. Therefore, the situation
less inuential during most of the Middle Ages but in Belgium is essentially no dierent from that in the
became more so in the 16th century during the Hol- Netherlands, although there are recognisable dierences
landic expansion, in the time the Eighty Years War in pronunciation, comparable to the pronunciation
took place in the Southern Netherlands.
dierences between standard British and standard
the Limburgish language, spoken by the people in American English. In 1980 the Netherlands and Belgium
the modern-day provinces of Dutch and Belgian concluded the Language Union Treaty. This treaty lays
Limburg, and adjacent lands in Germany. It was down the principle that the two countries must gear their
over time tied to dierent political areas and is language policy to each other, among other things, for a
therefor the most divergent of the dialects. It was common system of spelling.
even partly inuenced by the High German consonant shift and is the most distant to the later developed standard language to which it contributed little.
It was however the earliest Middle Dutch dialect that
developed a literary tradition.
Since it has Old Saxon and not Low Franconian (Old
Dutch) as ancestor, Dutch Low Saxon is strictly speaking not an Middle Dutch dialect. It was spoken in

3 Classication
Indo-European languages
Germanic
West Germanic
Low Franconian

4.1

First dichotomy

The simplied relation between the West Germanic languages.

Dutch
Afrikaans, Dutch-based creoles

Dutch belongs to its own West Germanic sub-group,

West Low Franconian, paired with its sister language
Limburgish, or East Low Franconian. Closest relative
is the mutual intelligible daughter language Afrikaans.
Other West Germanic languages related to Dutch are
German, English and the Frisian languages, and the non
standardised languages Low German and Yiddish. Dutch
stands out in combining a small degree of Ingvaeonic
characteristics (occurring consistently in English and
Frisian and reduced in intensity from 'west to east'
over the continental West Germanic plane) with mostly
Istvaeonic characteristics, of which some of them are also
incorporated in German. Unlike German, Dutch (apart
from Limburgish) has not been inuenced at all by the
'south to north' movement of the High German sound
shift, and had some changes of its own.[24] The cumulation of these changes resulted over time in separate, but
related standard languages with various degrees of similarities and dierences between them. For a comparison
between the West Germanic languages, see the sections
Morphology, Grammar and Vocabulary.

Dialects

Main article: Dutch dialects

Low Saxon in the Netherlands

4.1 First dichotomy

In the east there is a Dutch Low Saxon dialect area,
comprising the provinces of Groningen, Drenthe and
Overijssel, and parts of the province of Gelderland as
well. The IJssel river roughly forms the linguistic watershed here. This group, though not being Low Franconian
and being close to neighbouring Low German, is regarded
as Dutch, because of a number of reasons. From the
14th to 15th century onward, its urban centers (Deventer,
Zwolle and Kampen as well as Zutphen and Doesburg)
where increasingly inuenced by the Westerly avoured
written Dutch and became a linguistically mixed area.
From the 17 century onward, it was gradually integrated
into the Dutch language area.[25] In other words, this
group is Dutch synchronically but not diachronically.
Dutch Low Saxon used to be at one end of a dialect continuum with Low German dialects, however the national
border has given way to dialect boundaries coinciding
with a political border, because the traditional dialects are
strongly inuenced by the national standard varieties.[26]
Cross-the-border dialects now separated by a plain gap
includes also South Guelderish / Limburgish at the Dutch
side of the border and Low Rhenish at the German side
of the border.[27]

Dutch dialects are primarily the dialects that are both

cognate with the Dutch language and are spoken in the
same language area as the Dutch standard language. 4.2 Extension across the borders
Dutch dialects are remarkably diverse and are found in
the Netherlands and northern Belgium.
Gronings, spoken in Groningen (Netherlands), as
The province of Friesland is bilingual. The West Frisian
well as the closely related varieties in adjacent East
language, distinct from Dutch, is spoken here along with
Frisia (Germany), has been inuenced by the Frisian
standard Dutch and the Stadsfries dialect. A (West)
language and takes a special position within the Low
Saxon Language.
Frisian standard language has also been developed.

4 DIALECTS
South Guelderish (Zuid-Gelders) is a dialect spoken
in Gelderland (Netherlands) and in adjacent parts of
North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany).
Brabantian (Brabants) is a dialect spoken in
Antwerp, Flemish Brabant (Belgium) and North
Brabant (Netherlands).
Limburgish (Limburgs) is spoken in Limburg (Belgium) as well as in Limburg (Netherlands) and extends across the German border.
West Flemish (Westvlaams) is spoken in West Flanders (Belgium), the western part of Zeelandic Flanders (Netherlands) and historically also in French
Flanders (France).
East Flemish (Oostvlaams) is spoken in East Flanders (Belgium) and the eastern part of Zeelandic
Flanders (Netherlands).

4.3

Holland and the Randstad

In Holland, Hollandic is spoken, though the original

forms of this dialect (which were heavily inuenced by
a Frisian substratum and, from the 16th century on, by
Brabantian dialects) 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 dierence 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. Another group of dialects based on Hollandic is that
spoken in the cities and larger towns of Friesland, where
it partially displaced West Frisian in the 16th century and
is known as Stadsfries (Urban Frisian).

4.4

Minority languages

Limburgish has the status of ocial regional language

(or streektaal) in the Netherlands and Germany (but not
in Belgium). It receives protection by chapter 2 of the
European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.
Limburgish has been inuenced by the Rhinelandic varieties like the Colognian dialect, and has had a somewhat
dierent development since the late Middle Ages.
Dutch Low Saxon has also been elevated by the Netherlands (and by Germany) to the legal status of streektaal
(regional language) according to the European Charter
for Regional or Minority Languages.
Gronings is very much alive in the province of Groningen,
although it is not so popular in the city of the same name. Dutch dialects and their peripheries to the West (French Flemish)
The West Flemish (Vlaemsch) dialect is listed as a mi- and to the East (Meuse-Rhenish)
nority language in France, however only a very small
and aging minority of the French-Flemish population still
Belgium didn't choose to list any dialect as a minority lanspeaks and understands West Flemish.

4.7

Sister and daughter languages

guage, because of the already complicated language situ- sounds, diering a lot from the surrounding villages. The
ation that appears in the country.
Brussels dialect combines Brabantian with words adopted
from Walloon and French.

4.5

Recent use

Some Flemish dialects are so distinct that they might be

considered as separate language variants, although the
strong signicance 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 reect older, medieval divisions. The Brabantian dialect
group, for instance, also extends to much of the south of
the Netherlands, and so does Limburgish. West Flemish
is also spoken in Zeelandic Flanders (part of the Dutch
province of Zeeland), and by older people in French Flanders (a small area that borders Belgium).

Dutch dialects and regional languages are not spoken

as often as they used to be. Recent research by Geert
Driessen shows that the use of dialects and regional languages among both Dutch adults and youth is in heavy decline. In 1995, 27 percent of the Dutch adult population
spoke a dialect or regional language on a regular basis,
while in 2011 this was no more than 11 percent. In 1995,
12 percent of the primary school aged children spoke a
dialect or regional language, while in 2011 this had declined to 4 percent. Of the three ocially recognized
regional languages Limburgish is spoken most (in 2011
among adults 54%, among children 31%) and Dutch Low
Saxon least (adults 15%, children 1%); Frisian occupies 4.7
a middle position (adults 44%, children 22%).

4.6

Flanders

In Flanders, there are four main dialect groups:

Brabantian, including the dialects of Antwerp and
Brussels, West Flemish, including French Flemish, East
Flemish and Limburgish.
The dierent dialects show many sound shifts in different vowels (even shifting between diphthongs and
monophthongs), and in some cases consonants also shift
pronunciation. For example, an oddity of West Flemings (and to a lesser extent, East Flemings) is that, the
voiced velar fricative (written as g in Dutch) shifts to
a voiced glottal fricative (written as h in Dutch), while
the letter h in West Flemish becomes mute (just like
in French). As a result, when West Flemish try to talk
Standard Dutch, they're often unable to pronounce the
g-sound, and pronounce it similar to the h-sound. This
leaves f.e. no dierence between held (hero) and geld
(money). Or in some cases, they are aware of the problem, and hyper-correct the h into a voiced velar fricative
or g-sound, again leaving no dierence.

Sister and daughter languages

Many native speakers of Dutch, both in Belgium and the

Netherlands, assume that Afrikaans and West Frisian are
dialects of Dutch but are considered separate and distinct
from Dutch: a daughter language and a sister language,
respectively. Afrikaans evolved mainly from 17th century Dutch dialects, but had inuences from various other
languages in South Africa. However, it is still largely
mutually intelligible with Dutch. (West) Frisian evolved
from the same West Germanic branch as Old English and
is less akin to Dutch.

5 Geographic distribution
See also: Dutch diaspora

Dutch is an ocial language of the Netherlands proper,

Belgium, Suriname and the Dutch Antilles: Aruba,
Curaao and Sint Maarten. Dutch is also an ocial language of several international organisations, such as the
European Union, Union of South American Nations [29]
and the Caribbean Community. At an academic level,
Dutch is taught in about 175 universities in 40 counNext to sound shifts, there are ample examples of suftries. About 15,000 students worldwide study Dutch at
x dierences. Often simple sux shifts (like switching
university.[30]
between -the, -ske, -ke, -je, ...), sometimes the suxes
even depend on quite specic grammar rules for a certain dialect. Again taking West Flemish as an example. 5.1 Europe
In that language, the words ja (yes) and nee (no) are
also conjugated to the (often implicit) subject of the sen- In Europe, Dutch is the majority language in the Nethertence. These separate grammar rules are a lot more di- lands (96%) and Belgium (59%) as well as a minority
cult to imitate correctly than simple sound shifts, making language in Germany and northern France's French Flanit easy to recognise people who didn't grow up in a certain ders, where it is in the ultimate stage of language death.
region, even decades after they moved.
Though Belgium as a whole is multilingual, the two reDialects are most often spoken in rural areas, however, gions into which the country is divided (Flanders, frana lot of cities have a distinct city dialect. For exam- cophone Wallonia, bilingual Brussels and small 'facility'
ple, the city of Ghent has very distinct g, e and r zones) are largely monolingual. The Netherlands and Bel-

gium produce the vast majority of music, lms, books

and other media written or spoken in Dutch.[31] Dutch is
a monocentric language, with all speakers using the same
standard form (authorized by the Dutch Language Union)
based on a Dutch orthography employing the Latin alphabet when writing. In stark contrast to its written uniformity, Dutch lacks a prestige dialect and has a large dialectal continuum consisting of 28 main dialects, which
can themselves be further divided into at least 600 distinguishable varieties.[32][33]
Outside of the Netherlands and Belgium, the dialect
around the German town of Kleve (South Guelderish)
both historically and genetically belongs to the Dutch
language. In Northeastern France, the area around
Calais was historically Dutch-speaking (West Flemish)
of which an estimated 20,000 daily speakers. The cities
of Dunkirk, Gravelines and Bourbourg only became predominantly French-speaking by the end of the 19th century. In the countryside, until World War I, many elementary schools continued to teach in Dutch, and the Catholic
Church continued to preach and teach the catechism in
Flemish in many parishes.[34]
During the second half of the 19th century Dutch was
banned from all levels of education by both Prussia and
France and lost most of its functions as a cultural language. In both Germany and France the Dutch standard
language is largely absent and speakers of these Dutch
dialects will use German or French in everyday speech.
Dutch is not aorded legal status in France or Germany,
either by the central or regional public authorities and
knowledge of the language is declining among younger
generations.[35]
As a foreign language, Dutch is mainly taught in primary and secondary schools in areas adjacent to the
Netherlands and Flanders. In French-speaking Belgium,
over 300,000 pupils are enrolled in Dutch courses, followed by over 23,000 in the German states of Lower
Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia, and about 7,000
in the French region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais (of which
4,550 are in primary school).[36] At an academic level, the
largest number of faculties of neerlandistiek can be found
in Germany (30 universities), followed by France (20 universities) and the United Kingdom (5 universities).[36][37]

5.2

Asia and Australasia

GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION

tant of which is the Erasmus Language Centre (ETC) in

Jakarta. Each year, some 1,500 to 2,000 students take
Dutch courses there.[41] In total, several thousand Indonesians study Dutch as a foreign language.[42] Owing to centuries of Dutch rule in Indonesia, many old documents
are written in Dutch. Many universities therefore include Dutch as a source language, mainly for law and history students.[43] In Indonesia this involves about 35,000
students.[30]
Unlike other European nations, the Dutch chose not to
follow a policy of language expansion amongst the indigenous peoples of their colonies.[44] In the last quarter of
the 19th century, however, a local elite gained prociency
in Dutch so as to meet the needs of expanding bureaucracy and business.[45] Nevertheless, the Dutch government remained reluctant to teach Dutch on a large scale
for fear of destabilising the colony. Dutch, the language
of power, was supposed to remain in the hands of the
leading elite.[45]
After independence, Dutch was dropped as an ocial
language and replaced by Malay. Yet the Indonesian
language inherited many words from Dutch: words
for everyday life as well as scientic and technological
terms.[46] One scholar argues that 20% of Indonesian
words can be traced back to Dutch words,[47] many of
which are transliterated to reect phonetic pronunciation
e.g. kantoor (Dutch for oce) in Indonesian is kantor, while bus (bus) becomes bis. In addition, many Indonesian words are calques on Dutch, for example, rumah
sakit (Indonesian for hospital) is calqued on the Dutch
ziekenhuis (literally house of the sick), kebun binatang
(zoo) on dierentuin (literally animal garden), undangundang dasar (constitution) from grondwet (literally
ground law). These account for some of the dierences
in vocabulary between Indonesian and Malay.
5.2.2 Australasia
After the declaration of independence of Indonesia,
Western New Guinea, the 'wild east' of the Dutch East
Indies, remained a Dutch colony until 1962, known as
Netherlands New Guinea.[48] Despite prolonged Dutch
presence, the Dutch language is not spoken by many
Papuans, the colony having been ceded to Indonesia in
1963.

Immigrant communities can be found in Australia and

New Zealand. The 2006 Australian census showed
5.2.1 Asia
36,179 people speaking Dutch at home.[49] At the 2006
New Zealand Census, 26,982 people, or 0.70 percent of
Despite the Dutch presence in Indonesia for almost 350 the total population, reported to speak Dutch to sucient
years, as the Asian bulk of the Dutch East Indies, the uency that they could hold an everyday conversation.[50]
Dutch language has no ocial status there[38] and the
small minority that can speak the language uently are
either educated members of the oldest generation, or em- 5.3 Americas
ployed in the legal profession,[39] as some legal codes are
still only available in Dutch.[40] Dutch is taught in var- In contrast to the colonies in the East Indies, from the
ious educational centres in Indonesia, the most impor- second half of the 19th century onwards, the Nether-

5.4

Africa

9
Martin Van Buren, the eighth President of the United
States, spoke Dutch as his rst language and is the only
U.S. President to have spoken a language other than English as his rst language. Dutch prevailed for many generations as the dominant language in parts of New York
along the Hudson River. Another famous American born
in this region who spoke Dutch as a rst language was
Sojourner Truth.

The location of Suriname in South America

According to the 2000 United States census, 150,396

people spoke Dutch at home,[61] while according to the
2006 Canadian census, this number reaches 160,000
Dutch speakers.[62] At academic level, 20 universities offer Dutch studies in the United States.[36][63] In Canada,
Dutch is the fourth most spoken language by farmers, after English, French and German,[64] and the fth
most spoken non-ocial language overall (by 0.6% of
Canadians).[65]

5.4 Africa
The location of the Dutch Caribbean in the southern Caribbean

Main article: Afrikaans

The largest legacy of the Dutch language lies in South
lands envisaged expansion of Dutch in its colonies in
the West Indies. Until 1863, when slavery was abolished in the West Indies, slaves were forbidden to speak
Dutch. However, as most of the people in the Colony of
Surinam (now Suriname) worked on Dutch plantations,
this reinforced the use of Dutch as a means for direct
communication.[45][51]
In Suriname today, Dutch is the sole ocial language,[52]
and over 60 percent of the population speaks it as a
mother tongue.[5] Dutch is the obligatory medium of
instruction in schools in Suriname, even for non-native
speakers.[53] A further twenty-four percent of the population speaks Dutch as a second language.[54] Suriname
gained its independence from the Netherlands in 1975
and has been an associate member of the Dutch Language Union since 2004.[55] The lingua franca of Suriname, however, is Sranan Tongo,[56] spoken natively by
The distribution of Afrikaans across South Africa: proportion of
about a fth of the population.[31][57]
the population speaking Afrikaans in the home

In Aruba, Curaao and Sint Maarten, all parts of the

Kingdom of the Netherlands, Dutch is the ocial language but spoken as a rst language by only 7% to 8%
of the population,[58] although most native-born people
on the islands can speak the language since the education
system is in Dutch at some or all levels.

Africa, which attracted large numbers of Dutch, Flemish

and other northwest European farmer (in Dutch, boer)
settlers, all of whom were quickly assimilated.[66] The
long isolation from the rest of the Dutch-speaking world
made the Dutch as spoken in Southern Africa evolve into
[67]
In 1876, the rst Afrikaans
In the United States, an almost extinct dialect of Dutch, what is now Afrikaans.
newspaper
called
Die
Afrikaanse
Patriot was published in
Jersey Dutch, spoken by descendants of 17th-century
[68]
the
Cape
Colony.
Dutch settlers in Bergen and Passaic counties, was still
spoken as late as 1921.[59] Other Dutch-based creole lan- European Dutch remained the literary language[67] until
guages once spoken in the Americas include Mohawk the start of the 1920s, when under pressure of Afrikaner
Dutch (in Albany, New York), Berbice (in Guyana), nationalism the local African Dutch was preferred over
Skepi (in Essequibo, Guyana) and Negerhollands (in the the written, European-based standard.[66] In 1925, secUnited States Virgin Islands). Pennsylvania Dutch is not tion 137 of the 1909 constitution of the Union of South
a member of the set of Dutch dialects and is less mislead- Africa was amended by Act 8 of 1925, stating the word
Dutch in article 137 [...] is hereby declared to include
ingly called Pennsylvania German.[60]

10

6 PHONOLOGY

Afrikaans.[69][70] The constitution of 1983 only listed

English and Afrikaans as ocial languages. It is estimated that between 90% to 95% of Afrikaans vocabulary
is ultimately of Dutch origin.[71][72]
Both languages are still largely mutually intelligible, although this relation can in some elds (such as lexicon,
spelling and grammar) be asymmetric, as it is easier for
Dutch speakers to understand written Afrikaans than it is
for Afrikaans speakers to understand written Dutch.[73]
Afrikaans is grammatically far less complex than Dutch,
and vocabulary items are generally altered in a clearly patterned manner, e.g. vogel becomes vol (bird) and regen becomes ren (rain).[74] In South Africa, the number of students following Dutch at university, is dicult
to estimate, since the academic study of Afrikaans inevitably includes the study of Dutch.[30] Elsewhere in the
world, the number of people learning Dutch is relatively
small.
See also: Dierences between Afrikaans and Dutch

tem did not undergo the High German consonant shift

and has a syllable structure that allows fairly complex
consonant clusters. Dutch also retains full use of the velar
fricatives that were present in Proto-Germanic, but lost
or modied in many other Germanic languages. Dutch
has nal-obstruent devoicing: at the end of a word,
voicing distinction is neutralised and all obstruents are
pronounced voiceless. For example, goede (good) is
/ud/ but the related form goed is /ut/. Dutch shares
with German Final-obstruent devoicing (Du brood [brot]
and German Brot vs Eng bread).
Voicing of pre-vocalic initial voiceless alveolar fricatives
occurs, although less in Dutch than in German (Du zeven,
Germ sieben [z] vs. Eng seven and LG seven [s]), and also
the shift in // > /d/. Dutch shares only with Low German
the development of /xs/ > /ss/ (Du vossen, ossen and LG
Vsse, Ossen vs. Germ Fchse, Ochsen and Eng foxes,
oxen), and also the development of /ft/ /xt/ though it is
far more common in Dutch (Du zacht and LG sacht vs.
Germ sanft and Eng soft, but Du kracht vs. LG/Germ
kraft and Eng cognate craft).

It is the third language of South Africa in terms of

Notes:
native speakers (~13.5%),[75] of whom 53 percent are
Coloureds and 42.4 percent Whites.[76] In 1996, 40 per [] is not a separate phoneme in Dutch, but is incent of South Africans reported to know Afrikaans at
serted before vowel-initial syllables within words afleast at a very basic level of communication.[77] It is the
ter /a/ and // and often also at the beginning of a
lingua franca in Namibia,[66][78][79] where it is spoken naword.
tively in 11 percent of households.[80] In total, Afrikaans
is the rst language in South Africa alone of about 6.8
The realization of /r/ phoneme varies considerably
million people[75] and is estimated to be a second lanfrom dialect to dialect and even between speakers
[81]
guage for at least 10 million people worldwide,
comin the same dialect area. Common realisations are
[5]
pared to over 23 million and 5 million respectively, for
an alveolar trill [r], alveolar tap [], uvular trill [],
[2]
Dutch.
voiced uvular fricative [], and alveolar approximant
Dutch colonial presence elsewhere on the black continent,
[].
notably Dutch Gold Coast, was too ephemerous not to be
The realization of // also varies somewhat by area
wiped out by prevailing colonizing European successors.
and speaker. The main realisation is a labiodenBelgian colonial presence in Congo and Rwanda-Urundi
tal approximant [], but some speakers, particularly
(Burundi and Rwanda, held under League of Nations
in the south, use a bilabial approximant [] or a
mandate and later UN trust) left little (Flemish) Dutch
labiovelar approximant [w].
legacy, as French was the main colonial language.

Phonology

Main article: Dutch phonology

For further details on dierent realisations of phonemes,
dialectal dierences and example words, see the full article at Dutch phonology.

6.1

Consonants

Unlike other Germanic languages, Dutch doesn't have

phonological aspiration of consonants[82] . Like English,
Dutch did not participate in the second consonant shift.
Like most Germanic languages, the Dutch consonant sys-

The lateral /l/ is slightly velarized postvocalically in

most dialects, particularly in the north.[83]
/x/ and // may be true velars [x] and [], uvular []
and [] or palatal [] and []. The more palatal realisations are common in southern areas, while uvulars
are common in the north.
Some northern dialects have a tendency to devoice
all fricatives regardless of environment. This is particularly common with // but can aect others as
well.
// and // are not native phonemes of Dutch, and
usually occur in borrowed words, like show and
bagage ('baggage').
/a/ is not a native phoneme of Dutch and only occurs
in borrowed words, like garon.

6.4

Phonotactics

6.2

Vowels

11
the most common diphthong along with /i y/. All three
are commonly the only ones considered unique phonemes
in Dutch. The tendency for native English speakers is to
pronounce Dutch names with /i/ (written as ij or ei) as
/a/, (like the English vowel y) which does not normally
lead to confusion among native listeners, since in a number of dialects (e.g. in Amsterdam[84] ) the same pronunciation is heard.

Like English, Dutch did not develop i-mutation as a morphological marker and shares with most Germanic languages the lengthening of short vowels in stressed open
syllables, which has led to contrastive vowel length that
is used as a morphological marker. Dutch has an extensive vowel inventory. Vowels can be grouped as back
rounded, front unrounded and front rounded. They are
In contrast, /i/ and /i/ are rare in Dutch, and occur only
also traditionally distinguished by length or tenseness.
in some words. The long/tense diphthongs, while they
Vowel length is not always considered a distinctive fea- are indeed realised as proper diphthongs, are generally
ture in Dutch phonology, because it normally co-occurs analysed phonemically as a long/tense vowel followed by
with changes in vowel quality. One feature or the other a glide /j/ or //. All diphthongs end in a close vowel (/i
may be considered redundant, and some phonemic anal- y u/). They are grouped here by their rst element.
yses prefer to treat it as an opposition of tenseness. However, even if not considered part of the phonemic opposition, the long/tense vowels are still realised as phonet- 6.4 Phonotactics
ically longer than their short counterparts. The changes
in vowel quality are also not always the same in all di- The
syllable
structure
of
Dutch
is
alects, and in some there may be little dierence at all, (C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C). Many words, as in Enwith length remaining the primary distinguishing feature. glish, begin with three consonants; for example, straat
And while it is true that older words always pair vowel /strat/ (street). There are words that end in four consolength with a change in vowel quality, new loanwords have nants, e.g., herfst /rfst/ 'autumn', ergst /rxst/ 'worst',
reintroduced phonemic oppositions of length. Compare interessantst 'most interesting', sterkst /strkst/ 'strongest',
zonne(n) [zn] (suns) versus zone [zn] (zone) the last three of which are superlative adjectives.
versus zonen [zon(n)] (sons), or kroes [krus] (mug)
The highest number of consonants in a single cluster is
versus cruise [krus] (cruise).
found in the word slechtstschrijvend /slxtstsxrivnt/
Notes:
'writing worst' with 7 consonant phonemes. Similar is
angstschreeuw /stsxreu/ scream in fear, with six
The distinction between /i y u/ and /i y u/ is only in a row.
slight, and may be considered allophonic for most
purposes. However, some recent loanwords have
introduced distinctively long /i y u/, making the 6.5 Polder Dutch
length distinction marginally phonemic.
A notable change in pronunciation has been occurring in
The long close-mid vowels /e o/ are realised as younger generations in the provinces of Utrecht, North
slightly closing diphthongs [e o] in many north- and South Holland, which has been dubbed Polder
ern dialects.
Dutch by Jan Stroop.[85] These speakers pronounce
ij/ei, ou/au, and ui, which used be pronounced as
The long open-mid vowels / / only occur in a
/i/, /u/, and /y/, increasingly lowered, as [ai], [au],
handful of loanwords, mostly from French.
and [ay] respectively. Instead, /e/, /o/, and // are pro The long close and close-mid vowels are often pro- nounced as diphthongs now, as [i], [u], and [y] renounced more closed or as centering diphthongs be- spectively, which makes this change an instance of a chain
fore an /r/ in the syllable coda. This may occur be- shift.
fore coda /l/ as well.
This change is interesting from a sociolinguistic point of

6.3

Diphthongs

See also: IJ (digraph)

Unique to the development of Dutch is the collaps of
older ol/ul/al + dental into ol + dental, followed by vocalisation of pre-consonantal /l/ and after a short vowel,
creating the diphthong /u/ e.g., Dutch goud, bout and
bout corresponds with Low German Gold, Solt, Bolt; German Gold, Salz, Balt and English gold, salt, bold. This is

view because it has apparently happened relatively recently, in the 1970s, and was pioneered by older welleducated women from the upper middle classes.[86] The
lowering of the diphthongs has long been current in many
Dutch dialects, and is comparable to the English Great
Vowel Shift, and the diphthongisation of long high vowels
in Modern High German, which centuries earlier reached
the state now found in Polder Dutch. Stroop theorizes that
the lowering of open-mid to open diphthongs is a phonetically natural and inevitable development and that
Dutch, after having diphthongised the long high vowels
like German and English, should have lowered the diph-

12

7 GRAMMAR

thongs like German and English as well.

stem. This pattern is not uniform and Dutch distinguishes

Instead, he argues, this development has been articially between 7 classes of strong verbs, of which 5 have an
frozen in an intermediate state by the standardisation of internal variant allowing for 12 dierent patterns of strong
Dutch pronunciation in the 16th century, where lowered verb conjugation.
diphthongs found in rural dialects were perceived as ugly Mixed verbs are verbs which have a weak past tense (by the educated classes and accordingly declared substan- de or -te), but strong past participle (-en) or a strong past
dard. Now, however, in his opinion, the newly auent tense (vowel change), but weak past participle.
and independent women can aord to let that natural de- In Dutch the irregular verbs are the least numerous, but
velopment take place in their speech. Stroop compares most used verb forms.
the role of Polder Dutch with the urban variety of British
English pronunciation called Estuary English.
Among Belgian and Surinamese Dutch speakers and 7.2 Genders and cases
speakers from other regions in the Netherlands, this vowel
Like in English, Dutch has a case system and subjunctive
shift is not taking place.
largely fallen out of use and generalised the dative over the
accusative case for certain pronouns (Du me, je, Eng me,
you,
and LG mi, di vs. Germ mich/mir dich/dir). Dutch
7 Grammar
has also fewer grammatical genders than German (Eng:
none; Du/LG: common and neuter, but not in Belgium
Main article: Dutch grammar
where common/masculine, feminine and neuter is in use).
See also: DT-Manie
Modern Dutch has mostly lost its case system.[87] However, certain idioms and expressions continue to include
Dutch is grammatically similar to German, such as now archaic case declensions. The article has just two
in syntax and verb morphology (for a comparison of forms, de and het, more complex than English, which has
verb morphology in English, Dutch and German, see only the. The use of the older inected form den in
Germanic weak verb and Germanic strong verb). Dutch the dative or accusative as well as use of 'der' in the dahas grammatical cases, but these are now mostly limited tive are restricted to numerous set phrases, surnames and
to pronouns and a large number of set phrases. Inected toponyms.
forms of the articles are also often found in surnames and
In modern Dutch, the genitive articles 'des and 'der'
toponyms.
are commonly used in idioms. Other usage is typically
Standard Dutch uses three genders to dierentiate be- considered archaic, poetic or stylistic. In most circumtween natural gender and three when discerning gram- stances, the preposition 'van' is instead used, followed by
matical gender. But for most non-Belgian speakers, the the normal denitive article 'de' or 'het'. For the idiomatic
masculine and feminine genders have merged to form the use of the articles in the genitive, see for example:
common gender (de), while the neuter (het) remains distinct as before. This gender system is similar to those of
Masculine singular: "des duivels" (litt: of the devil)
most Continental Scandinavian languages. As in English,
(common proverbial meaning: Seething with rage)
but to a lesser degree, the inectional grammar of the language (e.g., adjective and noun endings) has simplied
Feminine singular: het woordenboek der Friese taal
over time.
(the dictionary of the Frisian language)

7.1

Verbs and tenses

When grouped according to their conjugational class,

Dutch has four main verb types: weak verbs, strong verbs,
irregular verbs and mixed verbs.

Neuter singular: de vrouw des huizes (the lady of

the house)
Plural: de voortgang der werken (the progress of
(public) works)

Weak verbs are the most numerous verbs, constituting In contemporary usage, the genitive case still occurs a litabout 60% of all verbs. In weak verbs, the past tense tle more often with plurals than with singulars, as the plural article is 'der' for all genders and no special noun inand past participle are formed with a dental sux:
ection must be taken account of. 'Der' is commonly used
in order to avoid reduplication of 'van', e.g. het merendeel
Weak verbs with past in -de
der gedichten van de auteur instead of het merendeel van
de gedichten van de auteur (the bulk of the authors po Weak verbs with past in -te
ems).
Strong verbs are the second most numerous verb group. There are also genitive forms for the pronoun die/dat
Here the past tense is formed by changing the vowel of the (that [one], those [ones]"), namely diens for masculine

7.4

Diminutives

and neuter singulars and dier for feminine singular and

all plurals. Although usually avoided in common speech,
these forms can be used instead of possessive pronouns
to avoid confusion, these forms often occur in writing .
Compare:

13
conjugated verb is moved into the second position in what
is known as verb second or V2 word order. This makes
Dutch word order almost identical to that of German, but
often dierent from English, which has subjectverb
object word order and has since lost the V2 word order
that existed in Old English.[88]

Hij vertelde van zijn zoon en zijn vrouw. He told An example sentence used in some Dutch language
about his son and his (own) wife.
courses and textbooks is "Ik kan mijn pen niet vinden omdat het veel te donker is", which translates into English
Hij vertelde van zijn zoon en diens vrouw. He told word for word as "I can my pen not nd because it far
about his son and the latters wife.
too dark is", but in standard English word order would be
written "I cannot nd my pen because it is far too dark".
Analogically, the relative and interrogative pronoun wie If the sentence is split into a main and subclause and the
(who) has the genitive forms wiens and wier (corre- verbs highlighted, the logic behind the word order can be
seen.
sponding to English whose, but less frequent in use).
Dutch also has a range of xed expressions that make
use of the genitive articles, which can be abbreviated
using apostrophes. Common examples include "'s ochtends (with 's as abbreviation of des; in the morning) and
desnoods (lit: of the need, translated: if necessary).
The Dutch written grammar has simplied 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 neuter singular), wier (whose: feminine singular; masculine, feminine or neuter plural).
Nouns and adjectives are not case inected (except for
the genitive of proper nouns (names): -s, -'s or -'). In the
spoken language cases and case inections had already
gradually disappeared from a much earlier date on (probably the 15th century) as in many continental West Germanic dialects.
Inection of adjectives is more complicated. The adjective receives no ending with indenite neuter nouns in
singular (as with een /n/ 'a/an'), and -e in all other cases.
(This was also the case in Middle English, as in a goode
man.) Note that ets belongs to the masculine/feminine
category, and that water and huis are neuter.

Main clause: "Ik kan mijn pen niet vinden "

Verbs are placed in the nal position, but the conjugated
verb, in this case kan (can), is made the second element
of the clause.
Subclause: "omdat het veel te donker is "
The verb or verbs always go in the nal position.
In an interrogative main clause the usual word order is:
conjugated verb followed by subject; other verbs in nal
position: "Kun jij je pen niet vinden?" (literally "Can you
your pen not nd?") "Can't you nd your pen?"
In the Dutch equivalent of a wh-question the word order
is: interrogative pronoun (or expression) + conjugated
verb + subject; other verbs in nal position: "Waarom
kun jij je pen niet vinden?" ("Why can you your pen not
nd?") "Why can't you nd your pen?""
In a tag question the word order is the same as in a declarative clause: "Jij kunt je pen niet vinden?" ("You can your
pen not nd?") "You can't nd your pen?""
A subordinate clause does not change its word order:
"Kun jij je pen niet vinden omdat het veel te donker is?"
("Can you your pen not nd because it far too dark is?")
"Can you not nd your pen because its too dark?""

An adjective has no e if it is in the predicative: De soep is

koud.
7.4 Diminutives
More complex inection is still found in certain lexicalized expressions like de heer des huizes (literally, the man Dutch nouns can take endings for size: -je for singular
of the house), etc. These are usually remnants of cases (in diminutive and -jes for plural diminutive. Between these
this instance, the genitive case which is still used in Ger- suxes and the radical can come extra letters depending
man, cf. Der Herr des Hauses) and other inections no on the ending of the word:
longer in general use today. In such lexicalized expresboom (tree) boompje
sions remnants of strong and weak nouns can be found
too, e.g. in het jaar des Heren (Anno Domini), where "ring (ring) ringetje
en is actually the genitive ending of the weak noun. Also
koning (king) koninkje
in this case, German retains this feature. Though the gentien (ten) tientje (a ten-euro note)
itive is widely avoided in speech.
These diminutives are very common. As in German, all
diminutives are neuter. In the case of words like het
meisje" (the girl), this is dierent from the natural genDutch shares with German: Word order. Dutch exhibits der. A diminutive ending can also be appended to an adsubjectobjectverb word order, but in main clauses the verb or adjective (but not when followed by a noun).

7.3

Word order

14

SPELLING AND WRITING SYSTEM

klein (little, small) een kleintje (a small one)

pij (health insurance company) though the shorter ziektekostenverzekeraar (health insurer) is more common.

In Belgian Dutch, diminutives are frequently formed with

-ke(n), being similar to German -chen, but only occur
rarely in writing, instead giving preference to the diminutives using -je.

Notwithstanding ocial spelling rules, some Dutch people, like some Scandinavians and Germans, nowadays
tend to write the parts of a compound separately, a practice sometimes dubbed de Engelse ziekte (the English
disease).[89]

7.5

Pronouns and determiners

Dutch shares with English and Low German the presence 8 Vocabulary
of h- pronouns (Du hij, hem, haar, hun and Eng he, him,
her vs. Germ er, ihn, ihr, ihnen), and the loss of Ger- Dutch vocabulary is predominantly Germanic in origin,
manic -z (which later became -r) in monosyllabic words with an additional share of loanwords of 20%.[90] The
main foreign inuence on Dutch vocabulary since the
(Du/Eng we, LG wi vs Germ wir)
12th century and culminating in the French period has
The reexive pronoun zich (Germ sich) was originally
been French and (northern) French, accounting for an
borrowed from Limburgish, which is why in all other
estimated 6.8%, or more than a third of all loanwords.
Dutch dialects (like in English) the usual reexive is
Latin, that has been spoken for centuries in the south of
hem/haar or z'n eigen.
the Low Countries, and has since then for centuries plaid
a major role as the language of science and religion, follows with 6.1%. High German and Low German, inu7.6 Compounds
ential until the mid of the 19th century, account for 2.7%.
From English, Dutch has taken over words since the middle of the 19th century, as a consequence of the gaining power of Britain and the United States. The share of
English loanwords is about 1.5%, but this number is still
on the increase.[91] Conversely, Dutch contributed many
loanwords to English, accounting for 1.3%.[92]
The main Dutch dictionary is the Van Dale groot woordenboek der Nederlandse taal containing some 268,826
headwords.[93] In the eld of linguistics, the 45,000page Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal is also readily
used. This scholarly endeavor took 147 years to complete
and contains all recorded Dutch words from the Early
Middle Ages onward, making it the largest dictionary in
the world in print with over 430,000 entries.[94]
Dutch language street sign in the Netherlands

Like most Germanic languages, Dutch forms noun

compounds, where the rst noun modies the category
given by the second (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 (boomhuis = tree
house) or inserts a hyphen (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 (ceasere negotiation). Leang through the articles of association (Statuten) one may come across a 30-letter
vertegenwoordigingsbevoegdheid (authorisation of representation). An even longer word cropping up in ofcial documents is ziektekostenverzekeringsmaatschap-

9 Spelling and writing system

Main articles: Dutch orthography and Dutch Braille
The ocial 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 color), is usually accepted
as an informal explanation of the law.
Dutch is written using the Latin script. Dutch uses one
additional character beyond the standard alphabet, the
digraph IJ. It has a relatively high proportion of doubled
letters, both vowels and consonants, due to the formation of compound words and also to the spelling devices
for distinguishing the many vowel sounds in the Dutch
language. An example of ve consecutive doubled let-

15
Dutch-based creole languages
Flemish
French Flemish
Grand Dictation of the Dutch Language
Indo-European languages
Istvaeones
List of English words of Dutch origin
Low Dietsch
Dutch uses the digraph IJ as a single letter. Shown is a bus road
marking.

Low Franconian
Meuse-Rhenish
Middle Dutch
Old Frankish

11 Notes

A comparison of letter frequency between Dutch, English and

German

ters is the word voorraaddoos (food storage container).

The diaeresis (Dutch: trema) is used to mark vowels
that are pronounced separately when involving a pre- or
sux. Whereas a hyphen is used when this problem
occurs in compound words. For example; "benvloed
(inuenced), but zee-eend (sea duck). Generally, other
diacritical marks only occur in loanwords, though the
acute accent can also be used for emphasis or to dierentiate between two forms. Its most common use is to
dierentiate between the indenite article 'een' (a, an)
and the numeral 'n' (one).

10

See also

Bargoens
Dutch braille
Dutch grammar
Dutch Language Union
Dutch linguistic inuence on military terms
Dutch literature
Dutch name
Dutch orthography

[1] In France, a historical dialect called French Flemish

is spoken. There are about 80,000 Dutch speakers in
France; see Simpson 2009, p. 307. In French Flanders,
only a remnant of between 50,000 to 100,000 Flemishspeakers remain; see Berdichevsky 2004, p. 90. Flemish
is spoken in the north-west of France by an estimated population of 20,000 daily speakers and 40,000 occasional
speakers; see European Commission 2010.
A dialect continuum exists between Dutch and German
through the South Guelderish and Limburgish dialects.
In 1941, 400,000 Indonesians spoke Dutch, and Dutch exerted a major inuence on Indonesian; see Sneddon 2003,
p. 161. In 1941, about 0.5% of the inland population
had a reasonable knowledge of Dutch; see Maier 2005,
p. 12. At the beginning of World War II, about one million Asians had an active command of Dutch, while an
additional half million had a passive knowledge; see Jones
2008, p. xxxi. Many older Indonesians speak Dutch as a
second language; see Thomson 2003, p. 80. Some of the
ethnic Chinese in Indonesia speak Dutch amongst each
other; see Tan 2008, pp. 6264, Erdentu & Colombijn 2002, p. 104. Dutch is spoken by smaller groups
of speakers in Indonesia; see Bussmann 2002, p. 83.
Some younger Indonesians learn Dutch as a foreign language because their parents and grandparents may speak
it and because in some circles, Dutch is regarded as the
language of the elite; see Vos 2001, p. 91. At present,
only educated people of the oldest generation, in addition
to specialists who require knowledge of the language, can
speak Dutch uently; see Ammon 2006, p. 2017. Around
25% of present-day Indonesian vocabulary can be traced
back to Dutch words, see Maier 2005, p. 17.
[2] 410,000 in USA, 159,000 in Canada, 47,000 in Australia;
see Simpson 2009, p. 307. Between 200,000 and 400,000
in USA alone; see McGoldrick, Giordano & Garcia-Preto
2005, p. 536.

16

[3] Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see Booij

1995, p. 2, Jansen, Schreuder & Neijt 2007, p. 5,
Mennen, Levelt & Gerrits 2006, p. 1, Booij 2003, p. 4,
Hiskens, Auer & Kerswill 2005, p. 19, Heeringa & de
Wet 2007, pp. 1, 3, 5.
Afrikaans was historically called Cape Dutch; see
Deumert & Vandenbussche 2003, p. 16, Conradie 2005,
p. 208, Sebba 1997, p. 160, Langer & Davies 2005, p.
144, Deumert 2002, p. 3, Berdichevsky 2004, p. 130.
Afrikaans is rooted in 17th century dialects of Dutch;
see Holm 1989, p. 338, Geerts & Clyne 1992, p. 71,
Mesthrie 1995, p. 214, Niesler, Louw & Roux 2005, p.
459.
Afrikaans is variously described as a creole, a partially
creolised language, or a deviant variety of Dutch; see
Sebba 2007, p. 116.
[4] It has the widest geographical and racial distribution of all
ocial languages of South Africa; see Webb 2003, pp. 7,
8, Berdichevsky 2004, p. 131. It has by far the largest
geographical distribution; see Alant 2004, p. 45.
It is widely spoken and understood as a second or third
language; see Deumert & Vandenbussche 2003, p. 16,
Kamwangamalu 2004, p. 207, Myers-Scotton 2006, p.
389, Simpson 2008, p. 324, Palmer 2001, p. 141, Webb
2002, p. 74, Herriman & Burnaby 1996, p. 18, Page &
Sonnenburg 2003, p. 7, Brook Napier 2007, pp. 69, 71.
An estimated 40 percent of South Africans have at least
a basic level of communication in Afrikaans; see Webb
2003, p. 7 McLean & McCormick 1996, p. 333.
Afrikaans is a lingua franca of Namibia; see Deumert
2004, p. 1, Adegbija 1994, p. 26, Batibo 2005, p.
79, Donaldson 1993, p. xiii, Deumert & Vandenbussche 2003, p. 16, Baker & Prys Jones 1997, p. 364,
Domnguez & Lpez 1995, p. 399, Page & Sonnenburg
2003, p. 8, CIA 2010.
While the number of total speakers of Afrikaans is
unknown, estimates range between 15 and 23 million.
Afrikaans has 16.3 million speakers; see de Swaan 2001,
p. 216. Afrikaans has a total of 16 million speakers; see
Machan 2009, p. 174. About 9 million people speak
Afrikaans as a second or third language; see Alant 2004,
p. 45, Proost 2006, p. 402. Afrikaans has over 5 million
native speakers and 15 million second language speakers; see Rguer 2004, p. 20. Afrikaans has about 6 million native and 16 million second language speakers; see
Domnguez & Lpez 1995, p. 340. In South Africa, over
23 million people speak Afrikaans, of which a third are
rst-language speakers; see Page & Sonnenburg 2003, p.
7. L2 Black Afrikaans is spoken, with dierent degrees
of uency, by an estimated 15 million; see Stell 200811,
p. 1.
Dutch and Afrikaans share mutual intelligibility; see
Gooskens 2007, p. 453, Holm 1989, p. 338, Baker &
Prys Jones 1997, p. 302, Egil Breivik & Hkon Jahr 1987,
p. 232. For written mutual intelligibility; see Sebba 2007,
p. 116, Sebba 1997, p. 161.
It is easier for Dutch speakers to understand Afrikaans
than the other way around; see Gooskens 2007, p. 454.
[5] Dutch and English are the closest relatives of German; see
Abraham 2006, p. 124. Dutch is the closest relative of
German; see Czepluch & Abraham 2004, p. 13. Dutch
and English are closely related; see Ingram 1989, p. 494,

12

REFERENCES

Todd 2004, p. 37, Kager 1989, p. 105, Hogg 2002, p.

134, De Bot, Lowie & Verspoor 2005, pp. 130, 166,
Weissenborn & Hhle 2001, p. 209, Crisma & Longobarde 2009, p. 250. Dutch and English are very closely
related languages; see Fitzpatrick 2007, p. 188. Dutch is,
after Frisian, the closest relative of English; see Mallory
& Adams 2006, p. 23, Classe 2000, p. 390, Hogg 2002,
p. 3, Denning, Kessler & Leben 2007, p. 22. English is
most closely related to Dutch; see Lightfoot 1999, p. 22,
and more so than to German; see Sonnenschein 2008, p.
100, Kennedy Wyld 2009, p. 190.
[6] Dutch is traditionally described as morphologically between English and German, but syntactically closer to
German; see Clyne 2003, p. 133. Dutch has been positioned to be between English and German; see Putnam
2011, p. 108, Bussmann 2002, p. 83, Mller 1995, p.
121, Onysko & Michel 2010, p. 210. Typologically,
Dutch takes a midway position between English and German, with a similar word order to that of German, grammatical gender, and a largely Germanic vocabulary. It is
morphologically close to English, and the case system and
subjunctive have largely fallen out of use; see Swan &
Smith 2001, p. 6.
[7] Dutch shares with English its simplied morphology and
the abandonment of the grammatical case system; see
Booij 1995, p. 1, Simpson 2009, p. 309. In contrast
to German, case markings have become vestigial in English and Dutch; see Hogg 2002, p. 134, Abraham 2006,
p. 118, Bussmann 2002, p. 83, Swan & Smith 2001, p.
6. The umlaut in Dutch and English matured to a much
lesser extent than in German; see Simpson 2009, p. 307,
Lass 1994, p. 70, Deprez 1997, p. 251.
[8] Dutch has eectively two genders; see Booij 1995, p.
1, Simpson 2009, p. 309, De Vogelaer 2009, p. 71.
Grammatical gender has little grammatical consequences
in Dutch; see Bussmann 2002, p. 84
[9] Simpson 2009, p. 307, Booij 1995, p. 1 Dutch and German not have a strict SVO order as in English; see Hogg
2002, pp. 87, 134. In contrast to English, which has SVO
as the underlying word order, for Dutch and German this
is SV1 OV2 or (in subordinate clauses) SOV; see Ingram
1989, p. 495, Jordens & Lalleman 1988, pp. 149, 150,
177. Dutch has almost the same word order as German;
see Swan & Smith 2001, p. 6.
[10] Dutch vocabulary has more Germanic words than English
and more Romance words than German; see Simpson
2009, p. 309, Swan & Smith 2001, p. 17. Dutch vocabulary is mostly Germanic; see Swan & Smith 2001, p.
6. Dutch has the most similar vocabulary to English; see
Mallory & Adams 2006, p. 1.
[11] There are 15,700,000 native speakers in the Netherlands.

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14 External links
Dutch language at DMOZ
The Nederlandse Taalunie, Dutch language union
Learn Dutch - Zeer Goed Interactive lessons for
learning Dutch vocabulary and grammar

23

15
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Dutch language Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_language?oldid=706437290 Contributors: Brion VIBBER, Jeronimo, Aidan

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15.2

Images

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