Dutch language

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Dutch Nederlands
Pronunciation:	[ˈneːdərlɑnts]
Spoken in:	as native language in the Netherlands, Flanders and Brussels (Belgium), Suriname, Aruba, Netherlands Antilles, French Flanders (France), Lower Rhine (Germany). as colonial language, or as Afrikaans in South Africa, Namibia, Indonesia. notable immigrant minorities in Australia, Brazil, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.
Total speakers:	Native: 31 million: 23 million speakers of Dutch as first language, plus 4 million with Dutch as second language, and 7 million speakers of Afrikaans as first language, plus 10 million with Afrikaans as second language [1] Total: ca. 30/44 million (Dutch: 23/27 mill., Afrikaans: 7/17 mill.)
Ranking:	40 of 6,000 languages on world list.[2] Other estimates: 48 (depending on counting method); 37 (according to the Nederlandse Taalunie[1])
Language family:	Indo-European  Germanic   West Germanic    Low Franconian     Dutch
Writing system:	Latin alphabet (Dutch variant)
Official status
Official language in:	Aruba  Belgium  European Union  Netherlands  Netherlands Antilles Union of South American Nations  Suriname
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 (help·info)) 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 it's called the world smallest major 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 Old Frankish and is the parent language of Afrikaans, one of the official languages of South Africa and the most widely understood in Namibia. Dutch and Afrikaans are to a very large extent mutually intelligible, although they have separate spelling standards and dictionaries and have separate language regulators. There are also several Dutch Creole languages or languages which are influenced by Dutch. 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.

Contents 1 Names 2 History 3 Classification 4 Geographic distribution 4.1 Official status 5 The Netherlands 6 Belgium 6.1 Flanders 6.2 Brussels 6.3 Wallonia 7 Suriname 8 Afrikaans in South Africa and Namibia 9 Dialects 10 Sounds 10.1 Vowels 10.2 Consonants 10.3 Historical sound changes 11 Grammar 12 Vocabulary 13 Writing system 14 Dutch as a foreign language 14.1 Pronunciation 14.2 Consonant clustering 15 Popular misconceptions 15.1 The language of Flanders 15.2 Dutch as a German dialect 15.3 Low Dietsch 15.4 Relation to English 15.5 Pennsylvania Dutch 15.6 Dutch, not Deutsch 16 See also 17 References 18 External links 18.1 Dictionaries

[edit] Names

Main article: Names for the Dutch language

The Dutch refer to their language as Nederlands (Netherlandish)^[3]. This name is drawn from the name of the country, Nederland (Low Country), but only since the 19th century replaced the earlier and more common names: (northern) Nederduits and (southern) Diets (Dietsch), the latter dropped due to its popular association and connotation with fascist ideologies.

In English, however, the language and people are still referred to as Dutch, a word derived from Middle Dutch duutsch, dūtsch but applied originally to continental Germanic speakers, be it of Dutch, Low German, or German proper (cf. Pennsylvania Dutch). By 1600, it had come to be used exclusively for the Dutch after the Netherlands became a united, independent state and the focus of English commercial rivalry^[4]

The term Flemish is used to describe the majority of Dutch dialects of Belgium and is derived through Old Norse flæmskr from Middle Dutch vlāmisch, vlemesch "Fleming, Flemish person". It has historically been used in contradistinction to Hollander, though the various dialects of Flanders are dialects of Dutch as well.

[edit] History

Main article: History of Dutch

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

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

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

• 450/500–1150 Old Dutch (First attested in the Salic Law)
• 1150–1500 Middle Dutch (Also called "Diets" in popular use, though not by linguists)
• 1500–present Modern Dutch (Saw the creation of the Dutch standard language and includes contemporary Dutch)

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

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

"Irlôsin sol an frithe sêla mîna fan thên thia ginâcont mi, wanda under managon he was mit mi" (Old Dutch)

"Erlossen sal [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.

[edit] 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 continuums, but they are gradually becoming extinct.

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

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

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

[edit] 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: [2], 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.

[edit] Official status

Dutch is an official language of the Netherlands, Belgium, Suriname, Aruba, Netherlands Antilles, and the Union of South American Nations. The Dutch, Flemish and Surinamese governments coordinate their language activities in the Nederlandse Taalunie ('Dutch Language Union'). Dutch was an official language in South Africa up until 1961 (it had fallen into disuse after Afrikaans became an official language in 1925). A noticeable minority of the inhabitants of New Zealand, 16,347 (0.4%) are sufficiently fluent in Dutch to carry on an everyday conversation.^[5]

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.

[edit] The Netherlands

Dutch is the official and foremost language of the Netherlands, a nation of 16.4 million people. In the province of Friesland, Frisian is also recognized, but this language is only spoken by some hundreds of thousands of Frisians. In the Netherlands there are a lot of different dialects, but they are often overruled and replaced by the language of the media, school, government etc, Standard Dutch. Immigrant languages are Indonesian, Turkish, 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.

[edit] Belgium

Language situation in Belgium

Dutch and French speaking Brussels

The place of Dutch in Brussels (yellow)

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.

[edit] Flanders

See also: Flemish (linguistics)

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.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Brussels

Main article: Francization of Brussels

In Brussels Capital Region both Dutch and French are official languages. Many of the inhabitants are bilingual, but French is the dominant language of the city. Immigrants mostly adopt French as their language. Daily commuting from Flanders amounts to 250,000 people, which reinforces the bilingual situation. ^[6] Their bilingualism is often more hidden, just like it is in a city such as Cape Town with respect to Afrikaans and English.^{[citation needed]} 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.

[edit] Wallonia

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

[edit] Suriname

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

[edit] Afrikaans in South Africa and Namibia

One of the 11 official languages of South Africa, Afrikaans is derived from Dutch and is the mother tongue of about 15% of South Africa's population, a total of 6 million people. It is also spoken or understood by more than 10 million other speakers. It has official status in Namibia as well, where it is understood by 60% of the country (more than 1 million). Afrikaans originated from modern Dutch (17th century-present) 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 wasn't called or considered Afrikaans at that time) was exposed to a steady stream of Dutch language influence, and the two languages were therefore almost identical. The differentiation and major changes from Dutch, started when the 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:

• 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)

[edit] Dialects

Main article: Languages of the Netherlands

An overview of the minority languages, regional languages and dialects spoken in the three countries of the Benelux is to be found in the main article.

Main article: 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.

[edit] Sounds

Main article: Dutch phonology

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 of and 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 'tschst' to 'schst', or even to 5 by many speakers who pronounce the cluster 'schr' as 'sr').

[edit] 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'

[edit] 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:

1) [g] is not a native phoneme of Dutch and only occurs in borrowed words, like goal.

2) [ʔ] is not a separate phoneme in Dutch, but is inserted before vowel-initial syllables within words after /a/ and /ə/ and often also at the beginning of a word.

3) In some dialects, notably that of Amsterdam, the voiced fricatives have almost completely merged with the voiceless ones, and /v/ is usually realized as [f], /z/ is usually realized as [s], and /ɣ/ is usually realized as [x].

4) [ʃ] and [ʒ] are not native phonemes of Dutch, and usually occur in borrowed words, like show and bagage (baggage). And even then they are usually realized as [sʲ] and [zʲ] respectively. However, /s/ + /j/ phoneme sequences in Dutch are often realized as [sʲ], like in the word huisje (='little house'). In dialects that merge s and z /zj/ often is realized as [sʲ].

5) The realization of the /r/ phoneme varies considerably from dialect to dialect. In "standard" Dutch, /r/ is realized as [r]. In many dialects it is realized as the voiced uvular fricative [ʁ] or even as the uvular trill [ʀ].

6) The realization of the /ʋ/ varies considerably from the Northern to the Southern and Belgium dialects of the Dutch language. In the South, including Belgium, it is sometimes realized as [w]. Some, mainly Hollandic, dialects nearly pronounce it like [v].

Dutch Consonants with Example Words

Symbol	Example
IPA	IPA	orthography	English translation
p	pɛn	pen	'pen'
b	bit	biet	'beetroot'
t	tɑk	tak	'branch'
d	dɑk	dak	'roof'
k	kɑt	kat	'cat'
g	goːl	goal	'goal' (sports)
m	mɛns	mens	'human being'
n	nɛk	nek	'neck'
ŋ	ɛŋ	eng	'scary'
f	fits	fiets	'bicycle'
v	oːvən	oven	'oven'
s	sɔk	sok	'sock'
z	zeːp	zeep	'soap'
ʃ	ʃaːɫ	sjaal	'shawl'
ʒ	ʒyːʁi	jury	'jury'
x	ɑxt	acht	'eight'
ɣ	ɣaːn	gaan	'to go'
r	rɑt	rat	'rat'
ɦ	ɦut	hoed	'hat'
ʋ	ʋɑŋ	wang	'cheek'
j	jɑs	jas	'coat'
l	lɑnt	land	'land / country'
ɫ	ɦeːɫ	heel	'whole'
ʔ	bəʔaːmən	beamen	'to confirm'

[edit] Historical sound changes

Dutch (with the exception of the Limburg dialects) did not participate in the second Germanic (High German) Sound Shift - compare German machen /-x-/ Dutch maken, English make, German Pfanne /pf-/, Dutch pan, English pan, German zwei /ts-/, Dutch twee, English two.

Dutch underwent a few changes of its own. For example, words in -old or -olt lost the l in favor of a diphthong as a result of vocalisation. Compare English old, German alt, Dutch oud.

Germanic */uː/ turned into /y/ through palatalization, which sound in turn became a diphthong /œy/, spelt 〈ui〉. Long */iː/ also diphthongized to /ɛi/, spelt 〈ij〉.

The phoneme /ɡ/ became a voiced velar fricative /ɣ/, or a voiced palatal fricative /ʝ/ (in the South: Flanders, Limburg).

[edit] Grammar

Main article: Dutch grammar

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

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

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

een mooi huis (a beautiful house)

het mooie huis (the beautiful house)

mooie huizen (beautiful houses)

de mooie huizen (the beautiful houses)

een mooie vrouw (a beautiful woman)

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

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

boom (tree) - boompje

ring (ring) - ringetje

koning (king) - koninkje

tien (ten) - tientje (a ten euro note)

Like most Germanic languages, Dutch forms noun compounds, where the first noun modifies the category given by the second, for example: hondenhok (doghouse). Unlike English, where newer compounds or combinations of longer nouns are often written in open form with separating spaces, Dutch (like the other Germanic languages) either uses the closed form without spaces, for example: boomhuis (Eng. tree house) or hyphenated: VVD-coryfee (outstanding member of the VVD, a political party). Like German, Dutch allows arbitrarily long compounds, but the longer they get, the less frequent they tend to be. The longest serious entry in the Van Dale dictionary is wapenstilstandsonderhandeling (ceasefire negotiation). Leafing through the articles of association (Statuten) one may come across a 30-letter VERTEGENWOORDIGINGSBEVOEGDHEID (right of representation). Sometimes hottentottensoldatententententoonstellingsterreinen (hottentot soldiers tents exhibition terrains) is jocularly quoted as the longest Dutch word (note the four times consecutive ten), but outside this usage it actually never occurs. Notwithstanding official spelling rules, some Dutch people nowadays tend to write the parts of a compound separately, which is sometimes dubbed “the English disease” or "de Engelse ziekte".^[7][8]

[edit] Vocabulary

Main articles: Wiktionary:Category:Dutch language, Wiktionary:Category:Dutch derivations, and Wiktionary:List of Romanic words in the Dutch language with a Germanic alternative

The Dutch vocabulary is one of the richest in the world and comprises at least 186,000 headwords.^[9]

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

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

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

[edit] Writing system

Main articles: Dutch alphabet and Dutch orthography

Dutch is written using the Latin alphabet. It has a relatively high proportion of doubled letters, both vowels and consonants. This is due to the formation of compound words and also to the spelling devices for distinguishing the many vowel sounds in the Dutch language. An example of five consecutive doubled letters is the word voorraaddoos (supply box).

The diaeresis (Dutch: trema) is used to mark vowels that are pronounced separately. In the most recent spelling reform, a hyphen has replaced the diaeresis in compound words (i.e., if the vowels originate from separate words, not from prefixes or suffixes), e.g. zeeëend (seaduck) is now spelled zee-eend.

The acute accent occurs mainly on loanwords like café, but can also be used for emphasis or to differentiate between two forms. Its most common use is to differentiate between the indefinite article 'een' (a, an) and the numeral 'één' (one); also 'hé' (hey, also written 'hee').

The grave accent is used to clarify pronunciation ('hè' (what?, what the ...?, tag question 'eh?'), 'bèta') and in loanwords ('caissière' (female cashier), 'après-ski'). In the recent spelling reform, the accent grave was dropped as stress sign on short vowels in favour of the accent aigu (e.g. 'wèl' was changed to 'wél').

Other diacritical marks such as the circumflex only occur on a few words, most of them loanwords from French.

The most important dictionary of the modern Dutch language is the Van Dale groot woordenboek der Nederlandse taal,^[10] more commonly referred to as the Dikke van Dale ("dik" is Dutch for "fat" or "thick"). However, it is dwarfed by the 45,000-page "Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal", a scholarly endeavour that took 147 years from initial idea to first edition.

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

[edit] Dutch as a foreign language

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

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

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

[edit] Pronunciation

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

Another issue with pronunciation is the "ch"-sound, which Dutch native speakers pronounce as /x/. It has no counterpart in English. Particularly the voiced equivalent /ɣ/ is rare among other European languages. Anglo-Saxons sometimes make fun of this feature of the Dutch language, and even speakers of Dutch who are well aware of this phonological speciality sometimes ironise it — for example Tom Meyer, a radio commentator, used to say on air that "Dutch isn't a language; it's a disease of the throat."

There is a well-known Second World War anecdote in which the name of Dutch town Scheveningen was used as a Shibboleth by the Dutch Resistance, as there is also no phonetic counterpart of this word-initial combination in German. Native German speakers will pronounce the consonant cluster sch in Scheveningen as /ʃ/ (as in the English word short), while Dutch native speakers will pronounce it as /sx/. According to the legend, this linguistic difference provided an excellent instrument to uncover German spies in the ranks of the Dutch resistance. It is a nice, Hans Brinker-like story, well-known, but little more than that. It rather shows a deeply felt need for the Dutch to ready contrast themselves with Germans. The linguistic significance of this articulatory problem for foreigners, however, stays beyond doubt.

[edit] Consonant clustering

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

[edit] Popular misconceptions

[edit] The language of Flanders

Main article: Flemish (linguistics)

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

The actual differences between the spoken standard language of Dutch and Belgian speakers are comparable to the differences between American and British English or the German spoken in Germany and Austria. In other words, most differences are rather a matter of accent than of grammar. Some of these differences are recognized by the Taalunie and major dictionaries as being interchangeably valid, although some dictionaries and grammars may mark them as being more prevalent in one region or the other.

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

[edit] Dutch as a German dialect

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

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

[edit] Low Dietsch

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

[edit] Relation to English

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

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

[edit] Pennsylvania Dutch

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

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

[edit] Dutch, not Deutsch

The resemblance of the English-language word 'Dutch' (referring to the language spoken in the Netherlands and Flanders) and the German-language word Deutsch (meaning the language spoken in Germany, Austria, and much of Switzerland) is not accidental, since both derive from the Germanic word thioda (of the people).

Until roughly the 16th century, speakers of all the varieties of West Germanic from the mouth of the Rhine to the Alps had been accustomed to refer to their native speech as 'the people's language', that is to say, Dietsch or Duitsch in Middle Dutch, and what would eventually stabilize as Deutsch further south.

English-speakers took the word Duitsch from their nearest Germanic-speaking neighbours in the Low Countries, and having anglicized it as Dutch, used it to refer to those neighbours and to the language they spoke. Meanwhile, however, especially after their secession from the Holy Roman Empire (i.e. Germany) in 1648, the Dutch began increasingly to refer to their own language as Nederlandsch (from which today's Nederlands) in distinction from the people and speech of the Empire itself – Duitsch (now Duits) – with the result that 'Dutch' and Deutsch now refer to two different languages.

[edit] See also

• Dutch grammar
• Dutch orthography
• Dutch name
• Dutch literature
• Old Frankish
• Old Dutch
• Middle Dutch
• Meuse-Rhenish
• Low Dietsch
• Bargoens
• Dutch influence on German
• Dutch linguistic influence on military terms
• List of English words of Dutch origin
• Dutch-based creole languages
• French Flemish

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• History of the Dutch Language
• Ethnologue report for Dutch
• Sampa for Dutch
• Dutch 101 - Basic information on the Dutch language as well as translations and videos.
• Learning dutch - with thousands of sound files.
• Dutch and Afrikaans with Japanese translation incl.sound files

[edit] Dictionaries

• Collection of Dutch bilingual dictionaries
• John and Grayson's Dutch Dictionary
• LookWAYup Dutch to English Dictionary
• Majstro Dutch/English Dictionary

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