Dutch Language
Dutch is a West Germanic language primarily spoken in the Netherlands and Belgium, with about twenty-seven million speakers worldwide. It evolved from the Old Frankish language around the fifth century CE and shares a close relationship with German. The language has undergone significant development, transitioning from Old Dutch to Middle Dutch around the twelfth century, and eventually standardizing into Modern Dutch by the late 1500s. Today, it is categorized into three primary dialects: Northern Netherlands Dutch, Flemish (spoken in Belgium), and Brussels Dutch.
Dutch also influenced Afrikaans, a language that emerged in South Africa from Dutch spoken by colonizers, though the two are now regarded as distinct. Unique grammatical features in Dutch include a typical subject-verb-object sentence structure, which changes with subordinate clauses. The language retains a presence outside its primary regions, with speakers found in parts of France, Germany, and former Dutch colonies, reflecting its historical reach. Dutch continues to play an important cultural and linguistic role in the areas where it is spoken, as well as in its influence on place names and local languages worldwide.
Dutch Language
Dutch is a West Germanic language spoken primarily in the Netherlands and Belgium. It developed in the late fifth century CE as a relative of German, and today the two languages remain closely related. In the twenty-first century, about twenty-seven million people worldwide speak Dutch.
History and Classification
Dutch is a member of the larger family of West Germanic languages, though it belongs specifically to the West Germanic dialect group West Low Franconian. The group is similar in many ways to the modern German language and can be found on the Rhenish Fan, the spectrum of Germanic dialects that features Dutch at one end and German at the other. The similarities of Dutch to German also can be seen in the Dutch language's name for itself: Duits, which derives from the same source as the word Deutsch, meaning German. In modern times, however, Dutch as the national language of the Netherlands is called Nederlands.
The Dutch language arose from about 450 to 500 CE, when the Germanic language of Old Frankish started to split into multiple dialects. The dialect that developed in the northern Germanic lands is now called Old Low Franconian, which itself later divided into the dialects of Old West Low Franconian and Old East Low Franconian. Old West Low Franconian eventually overcame and replaced its eastern counterpart and today is also referred to as Old Dutch.
The northern Germanic peoples spoke Old Dutch for another six hundred years. In the mid-twelfth century CE, Old Dutch transitioned into what is now called Middle Dutch when the language began incorporating elements from multiple, similar Dutch dialects. These included West Flemish, East Flemish, Hollandic, Limburgish, and Low Saxon. This assorted lingual blend was spoken until the 1500s. Until that time, Middle Dutch had not been standardized with a certain set of rules, so only native speakers could truly understand it.
In 1585, however, Spain conquered the city of Antwerp in the Netherlands' southern neighbor of Belgium, causing many Belgians to flee for safety into Dutch territory. Once in the Netherlands, the foreigners found they could not understand Middle Dutch and began requesting a standardization of the language. Consequently, Dutch grammatical trends were established and were helped along by the first Dutch translation of the Bible, which was composed in a standard Dutch form that used the commonly known Latin alphabet for its letters.
This was how Modern Dutch was formed. It became the Netherlands' standard language in the 1500s, as Middle Dutch gradually fell into disuse. Today, Dutch is spoken in three primary dialects: northern Netherlands Dutch; Flemish, the form of Dutch spoken in the Flanders region of Belgium; and Brussels Dutch, the French-influenced Dutch spoken in the area of Brussels, the capital of Belgium.
In the 1600s, the Dutch spoken by Dutch colonizers in South Africa eventually gave rise to the South African-Dutch language of Afrikaans. Afrikaans was and still is similar to standard Dutch, but the two are regarded as distinct, and each is difficult to understand by speakers of the other language. Though Great Britain colonized South Africa in the 1800s, Afrikaans remained the most widely spoken language there and in fact split into its own dialects as the South African-Dutch people moved inland to escape the British. Today, Afrikaans is one of the official languages of independent South Africa.
Despite the Dutch language's close lingual ties to other Germanic languages, Dutch features several unique grammatical conventions that do not appear in most of its related languages. For example, the order of a standard Dutch sentence is usually subject-verb-object, as in many other Germanic languages. The addition of a subordinate clause to this type of sentence, however, turns the order to subject-object-verb.
In other ways, Dutch can be remarkably similar to a familial language such as English. In both of these languages, adjectives in a sentence are placed directly before the noun they describe. Like English, Dutch also contains a number of irregular verbs and features masculine, feminine, and neutral pronouns. Dutch spoken in the Netherlands tends to blend masculine and feminine pronouns, however, while Flemish, or Belgian Dutch, keeps gender-specific words separate.
Geographic Distribution and Modern Usage
In the twenty-first century, about twenty-two million people worldwide are native Dutch speakers. This includes small groups of people in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. About five million additional people around the world speak Dutch as a second language. Most native speakers are located in the Netherlands, where Dutch is the official language, and Belgium. The citizens of the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Sint Maarten, and Curacao and the South American country of Suriname also speak Dutch due to the Netherlands' colonial history in these areas.
The lingual influence of Dutch as a result of the Dutch Empire's once great reach can still be seen around the world today. Nassau, the capital of the Caribbean island nation of the Bahamas, is a Dutch name. The names of New Zealand and New Amsterdam—the original name of New York, when it was settled by the Dutch—also derive from Dutch. In other parts of the former Dutch imperial world, Dutch dialects that were once popularly spoken have become nearly extinct. For example, in Indonesia, once known as the Dutch East Indies, the Petjo language that was common throughout the capital of Jakarta is now a dead language.
Bibliography
"A Brief History of the Dutch Language." Digital Library for Dutch Literature. Digital Library for Dutch Literature. Web. 13 Aug. 2015. http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/‗low001199601‗01/‗low001199601‗01‗0023.php
Dalby, Andrew. "Dutch." Dictionary of Languages. London: A&C Black Publishers Ltd, 1998, 2004. 158. Print.
"Dutch Language." Effective Language Learning. Effective Language Learning. Web. 13 Aug. 2015. http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/dutch-language
"Dutch Language History." Foreign Translations. Foreign Translations. Web. 13 Aug. 2015. https://www.foreigntranslations.com/languages/dutch-translation/dutch-language-history/