Dutch language

2008/9 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Languages

Dutch Nederlands
Pronunciation:	[ˈneːdərlɑnts]
Spoken in:	as native language in the Netherlands, Belgium ( Flanders and Brussels), Suriname, Aruba, Netherlands Antilles, French Flanders (France), Lower Rhine (Germany). as Afrikaans, albeit derived from Dutch, considered a separate standard language, in South Africa and Namibia. notable immigrant minorities in Australia, Brazil, Canada, New Zealand and the United States; small ex-colonial minority in Indonesia. official language of the European Union, the Benelux and the Union of South American Nations
Total speakers:	Native: 23 million: 23 million speakers of Dutch as first language, plus 4 million with Dutch as second language, there are also 7 million speakers of Afrikaans as first language, plus 10 million with Afrikaans as second language Total: 27 million (Dutch: 23/27 mill., Afrikaans: 7/17 mill.)
Ranking:	40 of 6,000 languages on world list. Other estimates: 48 (depending on counting method); 37 (according to the Nederlandse Taalunie)
Language family:	Indo-European   Germanic    West Germanic     Low Franconian     Dutch
Writing system:	Latin alphabet ( Dutch variant)
Official status
Official language in:	Aruba  Belgium  Netherlands  Netherlands Antilles  Suriname Benelux  European Union Union of South American Nations
Regulated by:	Nederlandse Taalunie ( Dutch Language Union)
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	nl
ISO 639-2:	dut (B)	nld (T)
ISO 639-3:	nld
Dutch-speaking world
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Dutch ( Nederlands ) 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. Sometimes called the smallest world language, it is closely related to other West Germanic languages (e.g., English, West Frisian and German) and somewhat more remotely to the North Germanic languages. Dutch is a descendant of several Frankish dialects, that were spoken in the High Middle Ages and Early Modern Times, and to a lesser extent from the Frisian language, that was spoken by the original inhabitants of Holland (see Hollandic). Dutch is the parent language of several Dutch-based creole languages as well as of Afrikaans, one of the official languages of South Africa and the most widely understood in Namibia. Dutch and Afrikaans are to a very large extent mutually intelligible, although they have separate spelling standards and dictionaries and have separate language regulators. Standard Dutch (Standaardnederlands) is the standard language of the major Dutch-speaking areas and is regulated by the Nederlandse Taalunie (Dutch Language Union). Dutch is also an official language of the European Union and the Union of South American Nations.

Dutch grammar also shares many traits with German, especially in syntax, 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.

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.

Names

In English the language of the people from the Netherlands and Flanders is referred to as Dutch; or sometimes as Netherlandic, a term with multiple meanings. 'Dutch' as a word is derived from Middle Dutch duutsch, dūtsch and applied originally to continental Germanic speakers, be it of Dutch or German (cf. Pennsylvania Dutch). By 1600, it had come to be used exclusively for the language (spoken in Flanders and the current Netherlands) and the people of the Dutch (only the people from the region now the modern Netherlands). The exclusive use of Dutch for the Netherlands occurred after the Netherlands became a united, independent state and the focus of English commercial rivalry

The origin of the name Nederlands

In Dutch, the language is called Nederlands (literally: Netherlandish), which derives from the name Nederland. The origin of the word Netherlands is Germanic, but not so much the name itself. This name is usually explained as drawn from the geographical situation of the region, de Nederlanden (the Low Countries), situated on the Northern European Plain. But this probably is not the whole story. It might be observed, that the specification neder- today sounds German rather than Dutch, and is cognate with German nieder as opposed to ober- ('upper'). This leaves us with the question to which oberland the Netherlands are thought to be opposed. At least partly, the answer lies in the perspective of the 16th Century Hapsburg rulers, who possessed territories both in the Low Countries and in Austria. But already their 15th C. Burgund predecessors seem to have coined the name in French, for comparable reasons. Thus, the name Nyderlande or noz pays d'embas was born . Between 1348 and 1566 the Netherlands formed part of the duchy of Burgundy (as the Burgundian Netherlands) and later the Habsburg Empire (as the Seventeen Provinces). The Southern Provinces were known as the Spanish Netherlands or later as the Austrian Netherlands.

From Nederduitsch to Nederlands

The language was previously called Nederduitsch (Lower German), as illustrated by the following 17th century Dutch text:

Neemt hy voor in Nederduitsch , zijn moederlijcke tale te zingen; des hoeft hy zich zoo luttel te schamen als de Hebreen, Griecken, Latijnen ... Wat onze spraeck belangt, die is, sedert weinige jaren herwaert, van bastertwoorden en onduits allengs geschuimt, en gebouwt, en geeft den leerling nu veel vooruit

["If he decides to sing in Dutch, his mother tongue, he needs to be no more ashamed of it than the Hebrews, Greeks, Romans ... As concerns our own language, in recent years it has been cleansed of loan words and un-Dutch usage, improved, and now gives the pupil great advantage"] Joost van den Vondel, Aenleidinge ter Nederduitsche Dichtkunste, 1650.

Though in use since the 1250s, it did not become the main form until the 19th century when it largely outgrew the earlier and more common names: (northern) Duyts [or later: Nederduits] and (southern) Diets ( Dietsch)

Flemish

The term Flemish is used to describe the majority of Dutch dialects of Belgium. It is derived from the name of the County of Flanders (Latin: pagus flandrensis), from Middle Dutch vlāmisch, vlemesch "Fleming, Flemish person" (cf. Old Norse flæmskr). It has historically been used in contradistinction to Hollander (cf. southern vs. northern), though the various dialects of Flanders are dialects of Dutch as well.

History

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 [hi] 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 [te] 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.

Classification

• Indo-European languages
  • Germanic
    • West Germanic
      • Low Frankish languages or Dutch → Nederlands
        • (Afrikaans, Dutch Creole languages)

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 continua, 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, 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 "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 and the Netherlands Antilles. 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%) claim sufficient fluency 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 Netherlands, 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, a nation of 16.4 million people. In the province of Friesland and a small part of Groningen, Frisian is also recognized, but this language is only spoken by some hundreds of thousands of Frisians. In the Netherlands there are many different dialects, but these are often overruled and replaced by the language of the media, school, government etc (i.e., Standard Dutch). Immigrant languages are Indonesian, Turkish, Moroccan Berber, Papiamento, and Sranan. 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 (the other 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.

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. French-speakers have linguistic rights in 12 municipalities with language facilities.

Brussels

Dutch and French speaking Brussels

The place of Dutch in Brussels (yellow)

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, which reinforces the bilingual situation. Their bilingualism is often more hidden, just like it is in a city such as Cape Town with respect to Afrikaans and 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 German as well. There are four municipalities near the Dutch-French Language border where Dutch-speakers have special linguistic rights, known in Dutch as Edingen, Komen-Waasten, Moeskroen and Vloesberg. 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 are part of this area ( Baelen, Plombières and Welkenraedt) do not belong to municipalities with language facilities, but facilities can be instituted by the federal government on the request of a majority in the municalities' councils.

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 their 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. The Dutch spoken there is sometimes considered to be like Jamaican English. In 2005, Suriname became a member of the Nederlandse Taalunie ( Dutch Language Union).

International organisations

Dutch is, apart from the Dutch Language Union (NTU) itself, an official language of the European Union, the Benelux, the Belgium-Luxembourg Economic Union and the Union of South American Nations. It is used unofficially in the Caribbean Community. Afrikaans is a working language in the Southern African Development Community.

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 the majority of South Africa's white population, a total of 4,7 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 population (more than 1 million). Afrikaans originated from modern Dutch (17th century-present) and is very similar to "European Dutch", the speakers of modern Dutch and of Afrikaans have only minor 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 beyond 1961.

Before the United Kingdom took control of South Africa from the Netherlands in 1814, the Afrikaans language (which was not 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 Cape Dutch settlers moved North ( 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.

Bilingual sign in South Africa

Bilingual warning signs in South Africa

In 1925 the Afrikaans language was recognized as one of South Africa's official languages, alongside Dutch and English. The Afrikaans New Testament was published in 1927 and the first Afrikaans Bible was issued in 1933. This had an influence in consolidating the Afrikaans language. Dutch was only formally de-recognized 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 some time. The distinction of Afrikaans from the Dutch language appeared to be in danger just after the Second World War when a great number of Dutch immigrants chose South Africa as their new homeland. The Afrikaans language survived the new influx of Dutch speakers, however, 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, albeit (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.

A Dutch speaker can usually read Afrikaans easily, and to a slightly 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 teach Afrikaans and Dutch as a one-language study, and the only monument to the Dutch language can be found in South Africa.

Other (historical) names of Afrikaans are the following:

• 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

Dutch dialects are remarkably diverse. The Netherlands have quite a lot different regions and various dialects. To a less degree, the same applies to Flanders. A special series on Dutch dialects provides detailed information on this subject.

Sounds

Dutch devoices all consonants at the ends of words (e.g. a final /d/ becomes [t]), which presents a problem for Dutch speakers when learning English. This is partly reflected in the spelling: the singular of huizen (houses) becomes huis, and that of duiven (doves) becomes duif. The other cases, viz. "p"/"b" and "d"/"t" are always written with the voiced consonant, although a devoiced one is actually pronounced, e.g. sg. baard (beard), pronounced as baart, has plural baarden and sg. rib (rib), pronounced as rip has plural ribben.

Because of assimilation, often the initial consonant of the next word is also devoiced, e.g. het vee (the cattle) is /(h)ətfe/. This process of devoicing is taken to an extreme in some regions (Amsterdam, Friesland) with almost complete loss of /v/,/z/ and /ɣ/. Further south these phonemes are certainly present in the middle of a word. Compare e.g. logen and loochen /loɣən/ vs. /loxən/. In the South (i.e. Zeeland, Brabant and Limburg) and in Flanders the contrast is even greater because the g becomes a palatal. ('soft g').

The final 'n' of the plural ending -en is often not pronounced (as in Afrikaans where it is also dropped in the written language), except in the North East (Low Saxon) and the South West (West Flemish) where the ending becomes a syllabic n sound.

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 (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, and in normal speech the number of phonemes is usually reduced to 6 because of assimilation of 'tstsch' to 'stsch', or even to 5 by many speakers who pronounce the cluster 'schr' as 'sr').

Vowels

The vowel inventory of Dutch is large, with 14 simple vowels and four diphthongs. The vowels /eː/, /øː/, /oː/ are included on the diphthong chart because they are actually produced as narrow closing diphthongs in many dialects, but behave phonologically like the other simple vowels. [ɐ] (a near-open central vowel) is an allophone of unstressed /a/ and /ɑ/.

IPA chart Dutch monophthongs
IPA chart Dutch diphthongs

Dutch Vowels with Example Words

Symbol	Example
IPA	IPA	orthography	English translation
ɪ	kɪp	kip	'chicken'
i	bit	biet	'beetroot'
ʏ	ɦʏt	hut	'cabin'
y	fyt	fuut	'grebe'
ɛ	bɛt	bed	'bed'
eː	beːt	beet	'bite'
ə	də	de	'the'
øː	nøːs	neus	'nose'
ɑ	bɑt	bad	'bath'
aː	zaːt	zaad	'seed'
ɔ	bɔt	bot	'bone'
oː	boːt	boot	'boat'
u	ɦut	hoed	'hat'
ɛi	ɛi, ʋɛin	ei, wijn	'egg', 'wine'
œy	œy	ui	'onion'
ʌu	zʌut, fʌun	zout, faun	'salt', 'faun'

Consonants

IPA chart Dutch consonants

	Bilabial	Labio- dental	Alveolar	Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Plosive	p b		t d			k g1		ʔ ²
Nasal	m		n			ŋ
Fricative		f v ³	s z ³	ʃ ʒ 4		x ɣ ³	ʁ 5	ɦ
Approximant		ʋ 6			j
Lateral			l

Where symbols for consonants occur in pairs, the left represents the voiceless consonant and the right represents the voiced consonant.

Notes: