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error: ISO 639 code is required (help) Dutch (Nederlandsⓘ) is a West Germanic, Low German language spoken by around 24 million people, mostly in the Netherlands and Belgium. The varieties of Dutch spoken in Belgium are also informally called Flemish (Vlaams). The language is sometimes colloquially called Hollands by native speakers although this is becoming less common today. Dutch is sometimes called Netherlandic in English.

History

The West Germanic dialects can be divided according to tribe (Frisian, Saxon, Franconian, Bavarian and Swabian), and according to the extent of their participation in the High German consonant shift (Low German against High German). The present Dutch standard language is largely derived from Low Franconian dialects spoken in the Low Countries that must have reached a separate identity no later than about AD 700.

An early Dutch recorded writing is: "Hebban olla vogala nestas hagunnan, hinase hic enda tu, wat unbidan we nu" ("All birds have started making nests, except me and you, what are we waiting for"), dating around the year 1100, written by a Flemish monk in a convent in Rochester, England. For a long time this sentence was considered to be the earliest in Dutch, but since its discovery even older fragments were found, such as "Visc flot aftar themo uuatare" ("A fish was swimming in the water") and "Gelobistu in got alamehtigan fadaer" ("Do you believe in God the almighty father"). The latter fragment was written as early as 900. Professor Luc De Grauwe from the University of Ghent disputes the language of these stretches of text, and actually believes them to be Old English, so there is still some controversy surrounding them.

Hebban olla vogala...


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 in the 16th century, mainly based on the urban dialect of Antwerp. In 1585 Antwerp fell to the Spanish army: many fled to Holland, strongly influencing the urban dialects of that province. In 1618 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 Low Saxon) dialects, but was mostly based on the urban dialects from Holland.

The word Dutch comes from the old Germanic word theodisk, meaning 'of the people', 'vernacular' as opposed to official, i.e. Latin or later French. Theodisk in modern German has become deutsch and in Dutch has become the two forms: duits, meaning German, and diets meaning something closer to Dutch but no longer in general use (see the diets article). Theodisk survives as tedesco ("German") in modern Italian.

The English word Dutch has also changed with time. It was only in the early 1600s, with growing cultural contacts and the rise of an independent country, that the modern meaning arose, i.e., 'designating the people of the Netherlands or their language'. Prior to this, the meaning was more general and could refer to any German-speaking area or the languages there (including the current Germany, Austria, and Switzerland as well as the Netherlands). For example:

  • William Caxton (c.1422-1491) wrote in his Prologue to his Aeneids in 1490 that an old English text was more like to Dutche than English. In his notes, Professor W.F. Bolton makes clear that this word means German in general rather than Dutch.
  • Peter Heylyn, Cosmography in four books containing the Chronography and History of the whole world, Vol. II (London, 1677: 154) contains "...the Dutch call Leibnitz," adding that Dutch is spoken in the parts of Hungary adjoining to Germany.
  • To this day, descendants of German settlers in Pennsylvania are known as the "Pennsylvania Dutch".

Today some speakers resent the name "Dutch", because of its common root with the name "Deutsch", that is, German.

Dutch is a Germanic language, and within this family it is a West Germanic language. Since it did not experience the High German consonant shift (apart from þ→d), it is sometimes classed as a Low German language, and indeed it is most closely related to the Low German dialects of Northern Germany. There is in fact a dialect continuum which blurs any clear boundary between Dutch and Low German, and the Low Franconian rural dialects of the Lower Rhine are much closer to Hollandic than to standard German. Dividing the West Germanic languages into low and high in this way, however, obscures the fact that Dutch is more closely related to modern standard (high) German than to English.

Dutch is grammatically similar to German, for example in syntax and verb morphology. (For a comparison of verb morphology in English, Dutch and German, see Germanic weak verb and West Germanic strong verb.) Dutch still has grammatical cases, but these have become almost limited to usage in pronouns and set phrases. Technically there is still a distinction between masculine and feminine, but for most practical purposes in the standard language the gender system has collapsed into a dual system of animate (de) and neuter (het). Thus the system of nouns and noun phrases has been greatly simplified in a manner more akin to English than German.

Native Dutch vocabulary (as opposed to loan words) is of common West Germanic stock, and in terms of sound shifts it can be imagined as occupying a position somewhere between English and German.

English Dutch German Remark
eat
cat
town		 eten
kat
tuin (garden)		 essen
Katze
Zaun (fence)		 English and Dutch have kept Germanic t; German has shifted t→s/z/tz
apple
pipe
Scunthorpe		 appel
pijp
dorp (village)		 Apfel
Pfeife
Dorf		 English and Dutch have kept Germanic p; German has shifted p→f/pf
think
brother
thorn		 denken
broeder
doorn		 denken
Bruder
Dorn		 English has kept Germanic þ; Dutch, like German, has shifted þ→d
yesterday
yarn
day		 gisteren
garen
dag		 gestern
Garn
Tag		 Dutch has shifted Germanic g to voiced affricate /γ/; English has shifted further: g→y

Even when written Dutch looks similar to German, however, 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 similar to the <ch> in Swiss German. The rhotic pronunciation of <r> causes some English-speakers to believe Dutch sounds similar to a Northern English accent; this is the reason for Bill Bryson's famous remark that when one hears Dutch one feels one ought to be able understand it. Dutch pronunciation is however difficult to master for Anglophones, many of its diphthongs and gutturals being the greatest obstacles. Germans seem to have an advantage with the Dutch grammar, but suffer the same difficulties as the English when dealing with pronounciation. An exeption on this all are the North Germans, who can read or understand Dutch after a relatively short period of acclimatisation, speaking however remaining a challenge. Dutch is not on the curriculum of German schools, except in some border cities, such as Aachen.

Geographic distribution

Dutch is spoken by most inhabitants of the Netherlands. It is also spoken by most in the Flemish northern half of Belgium, with the exception of Brussels, where it is spoken by a minority of the population, French being the dominant language. (This minority is typically estimated between 10% and 15%.) In the northernmost part of France, Dutch is spoken by a minority and the language is usually referred to as Vlemsch. On the Caribbean islands of Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles, Dutch is used but less so than Papiamento. Dutch is spoken in Suriname, and there are some speakers of Dutch in Indonesia. In South Africa and Namibia a language related to Dutch called Afrikaans is spoken.

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 Dutch Language Union. Afrikaans is an official language in South Africa.

Algemeen Nederlands ('general Dutch', abbreviated to AN) is the standard language as taught in schools and used by authorities in the Netherlands, Flanders, Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles. The Dutch Language Union defines what is AN and what is not, for example in terms of orthography.

Algemeen Nederlands replaced the older name Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands (general civilized Dutch, abbreviated to ABN) when it was no longer considered politically correct. Standaardnederlands (standard Dutch) is also commonly used instead of Algemeen Nederlands.

Dialects

Flemish is the collective term often used for the Dutch dialects spoken in Belgium. It is not a separate language (though the term is often also used to distinguish the standard Dutch spoken in Flanders from that of the Netherlands) nor are the dialects in Belgium more closely related to each other than to the dialects in The Netherlands. The standard form of Netherlandic Dutch differs somewhat from Belgium Dutch or Flemish: Flemish favours older words and is also perceived as "softer" in pronunciation and discourse than Netherlandic Dutch, and some Dutch find it quaint. In contrast, Netherlandic Dutch is perceived as harsh and guttural to Belgians, and some Belgians perceive it as overly assertive, hostile and even somewhat arrogant.

In Flanders, there are roughly four dialect groups: West Flemish, East Flemish, Brabantian and Limburgish. They have all incorporated French loanwords in everyday language. An example is fourchette in various forms (originally a French word meaning fork), instead of vork. Brussels, especially, is heavily influenced by French because roughly 75% of the inhabitants of Brussels speak French. The Limburgish in Belgium is closely related to Dutch Limburgish. An oddity of West Flemish (and to a lesser extent, East Flemish) is that the pronunciation of the "soft g" sound (the voiced velar fricative) is almost identical to that of the "h" sound (the voiced glottal fricative). Some Flemish dialects are so distinct that they might be considered as separate language variants. West Flemish in particular has sometimes been considered as such. It should also be noted that the dialect borders of these dialects do not correspond to present geopolitical boundaries. They reflect much 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 the Dutch province of Zeeland, in a variant called Zeeuws (or Zealandic, in English) and even in a small part of northern France bordering on Belgium near Dunkirk.

The Netherlands also has different dialect regions. In the east there is an extensive Low Saxon dialect area: the provinces of Groningen (Gronings), Drenthe and Overijssel are almost exclusively Low Saxon. Zuid-Gelders is a dialect also spoken in the German land of North Rhine-Westphalia. Limburgish (Limburg (Netherlands)) and Brabantian (Noord-Brabant) fade into the dialects spoken in the adjoining provinces of Belgium. Zealandic of most of Zeeland is a transitional regional language between West Flemish and Hollandic, with the exception of the eastern part of Zealandic Flanders where East Flemish is spoken. In Holland proper, Hollandic is spoken, though the original forms of this dialect, heavily influenced by a Frisian substrate, are now relatively rare; the urban dialects of the Randstad, which are Hollandic dialects, do not diverge from standard Dutch very much. In some rural Hollandic areas more authentic Hollandic dialects are still being used, especially north of Amsterdam. Limburgish and Low Saxon have been elevated by the European Union to the legal status of streektaal (regional language), which causes some native speakers to consider them separate languages. Some dialects are unintelligible to some speakers of Hollandic.

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

By many native speakers of Dutch, both in Belgium and the Netherlands, Afrikaans and Frisian are often assumed to be very deviant dialects of Dutch. In fact, they are two different languages, Afrikaans having evolved mainly from Dutch. There is no dialect continuum between the Frisian and adjoining Low Saxon. A Frisian standard language has been developed.

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

Accents

In addition to the many dialects of the Dutch language many provinces and larger cities have their own accents, which sometimes are also called dialects. Ethnic communities tend to have varying accents: for example many people from the Dutch Antilles or Suriname speak with a "Surinaams" accent, and the Dutch-Moroccan and Dutch-Turkish youth have also developed their own accents, which in some cases are enhanced by a debased Dutch slang with Arabic or Turkish words thrown in, which serves in making their speech nearly unintelligible to some older speakers of standard Dutch.

Derived languages

Afrikaans, a language spoken in South Africa and Namibia, is derived primarily from 17th century Dutch dialects, and a great deal of mutual intelligibility still exists. One who can speak Dutch is usually very able to read and understand Afrikaans.

Sounds

This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

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 some dialects, but behave phonologically like the other simple vowels.

IPA chart Dutch monophthongs
 
IPA chart Dutch diphthongs
Dutch Vowels with Example Words
Symbol Example
IPA IPA orthography English
[[near-close near-front unrounded vowel|ɪ]] bɪt bit 'bit'
i bit biet 'beetroot'
[[near-close near-front rounded vowel|ʏ]] hʏt hut 'cabin'
y fyt fuut 'grebe'
[[open-mid front unrounded vowel|ɛ]] bɛt bed 'bed'
[[close-mid front unrounded vowel|eː]] beːt beet 'bite'
[[mid central vowel|ə]] də de 'the'
[[close-mid front rounded vowel|øː]] nøːs neus 'nose'
[[open back unrounded vowel|ɑ]] bɑt bad 'bath'
[[open front unrounded vowel|aː]] zaːt zaad 'seed'
[[open-mid back rounded vowel|ɔ]] bɔt bot 'bone'
[[close-mid back rounded vowel|oː]] boːt boot 'boat'
u hut hoed 'hat'
ɛi ɛi ei 'egg'
œy œy ui 'onion'
ʌu zʌut zout 'salt'

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/.

3) In some dialects, 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). However, /s/ + /j/ phoneme sequences in Dutch are often realized as [ʃ], like in the word huisje (='little house'). [ʒ] often is realized as [ʃ].

5) The realization of the /r/ phoneme varies considerably from dialect to dialect. In the so-called "standard" Dutch of Amsterdam6, /r/ is realized as indicated here—as the voiced uvular fricative [ʁ]. In other dialects, however, it is realized as the uvular trill [ʀ] or as the alveolar trill [r].

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 realized as [w].

7) The "standard" Dutch as spoken in Amsterdam is not the Amsterdams dialect. Amsterdams dialect is different from standard Dutch in that [z] is replaced by [s] in nearly all cases. The standard Dutch is more accurately described as the Dutch that is spoken by most people in Amsterdam, and is the dominating accent used on television.


Dutch Consonants with Example Words
Symbol Example
IPA IPA orthography English
p pɛn pen 'pen'
b bit biet 'beetroot'
t tɑk tak 'branch'
d dɑk dak 'roof'
k kɑt kat 'cat'
g gol goal 'goal' (sports)
m mɛns mens 'human being'
n nɛk nek 'neck'
[[Velar nasal|ŋ]] ɛŋ eng 'scary'
f fits fiets 'bicycle'
v ovən oven 'oven'
s sɔk sok 'sock'
z zep zeep 'soap'
[[Voiceless postalveolar fricative|ʃ]] ʃɛf chef 'boss, chief'
[[Voiced postalveolar fricative|ʒ]] ʒyʁi jury 'jury'
x ɑxt acht 'eight'
[[Voiced velar fricative|ɣ]] ɣaːn gaan 'to go'
[[Voiced uvular fricative|ʁ]] ʁɑt rat 'rat'
[[Voiced glottal fricative|ɦ]] ɦut hoed 'hat'
[[Labiodental approximant|ʋ]] ʋɑŋ wang 'cheek'
j jɑs jas 'coat'
l lɑnt land 'land / country'
[[Glottal stop|ʔ]] bəʔamə beamen 'to confirm'

Phonology

Dutch devoices all consonants at the ends of words (e.g. a final d sound becomes a t sound; to become 'ents of worts'), which presents a problem for Dutch speakers when learning English.

Because of assimilation, often the initial consonant of the next word is also devoiced, e.g. het vee (the cattle) is /hətfe/. 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 Flanders the contrast is even greater because the g becomes a palatal. ('soft g').

The final 'n' of the plural ending -en is normally not pronounced (as in Afrikaans), 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).

Historical sound changes

Dutch (with the exception of the Limburg dialects) did not participate in the second (High German) sound shifting - compare German machen /-x-/ Dutch maken, English make,

German Pfanne /pf-/, Dutch pan, English pan, German zwei /ts-/, Dutch twee, English two.

It also underwent a few changes of its own. For example, words in -old or -olt lost the l in favor of a diphthong. Compare English old, German alt, Dutch oud. A word like hus with /u/ (English "house") first changed to huus with /y/, then finally to huis with a diphthong that resembles the one in French l'oeil. The phoneme /g/ was lost in favor of a (voiced) velar fricative /ɣ/, or a voiced palatal fricative (in the South: Flanders, Limburg).

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.

The Dutch written grammar has simplified over the past 100 years: cases are now mainly used for the pronouns (for example: ik = I, me = me, mij = me, mijn = my, wie = who, wiens = whose, wier = whose). Nouns and adjectives are not case inflected (except for the genitive of nouns: -(')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 many continental West Germanic dialects.

Inflection of adjectives is a little more complicated: nothing with indefinite (een "a", "an"...), 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 used in certain expressions like de heer des huizes (litt.: the man of the house), etc. These are usually remnants of cases and other inflections no longer in general use today.

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

Like most Germanic languages, Dutch forms left-branching noun compounds, where the first noun modifies the category given by the second, for example: hondehok (eng. 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) always uses the closed form without spaces, for example: boomhuis (eng. tree house). Like English, Dutch allows arbitrarily long compounds, but these are rare. The longest serious entry in the Van Dale dictionary is wapenstilstandsonderhandeling (ceasefire negotiation).

Vocabulary

See the list of Dutch words and list of words of Dutch origin at Wiktionary, the free dictionary and Wikipedia's sibling project

Dutch has more French loanwords than German, but much fewer than English. The number of English loanwords in Dutch is substantial and steadily increasing, especially on the streets and some professions. New loanwords are almost never pronounced as the original English word, or are spelled differently. Like English, Dutch has large numbers words of Greek and Latin origin. There are also some German loanwords, like überhaupt and sowieso. Even though few true loanwords are present, German has had a considerable effect upon the lexicon of the language, mainly by the 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. Most of these forms have become so integral to Dutch that few Dutch notice them; they include words like opname (from German Aufnahme), aanstalten (Anstalten) and many more.

Writing system

Dutch is written using the Latin alphabet, see Dutch alphabet. The diaeresis is used to mark vowels that are pronounced separately, and called trema. In the most recent spelling reform, a hyphen has replaced the trema in a few words where it had been previously used: zeeëend (seaduck) is now spelled zee-eend. The acute accent (accent aigu) 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). The grave accent (accent grave) is used to clarify pronunciation ('hè' (what?, what the ...?), 'appèl' (call for), 'bèta') and in loanwords ('caissière' (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[1], more commonly referred to as the Dikke van Dale ("dik" is Dutch for "fat" or "thick"), or as linguists nicknamed it: De Vandaal (the vandal). However, it is dwarfed by the "Woordenboek der Nederlandsche taal", a scholarly endeavour that took 147 years from initial idea to first edition, resulting in over 45,000 pages.

The semi-official spelling is given by the Woordenlijst Nederlandse taal, more commonly known as "het groene boekje" (i.e. "the green booklet", because of its colour.)

See also

Dutch literature

see Dutch literature

Dutch edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Wikibook [[wikibooks:|]] has a page on the topic of: Dutch
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Dutch pronunciation.

Dictionaries

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