| Coordinates | 12°58′0″N77°34′0″N |
|---|---|
| Name | Dutch |
| Nativename | Nederlands |
| Pronunciation | |
| Region | originally Western Europe, today also in the Caribbean, South America and to lesser extent in South East Asia. |
| Familycolor | Indo-European |
| Fam2 | Germanic |
| Fam3 | West Germanic |
| Fam4 | Low Franconian |
| Script | Latin alphabet (Dutch variant) |
| Nation | Aruba Belgium Curaçao Netherlands Sint Maarten Suriname Benelux European Union Union of South American Nations |
| Agency | Nederlandse Taalunie (Dutch Language Union) |
| Iso1 | nl |iso2b=dut |iso2t=nld |iso3=nld |
| Map |
Dutch is the parent language of Afrikaans and of several creole languages, most of which are now extinct. The Dutch Language Union coordinates actions of the Dutch, Flemish and Surinamese authorities in linguistic issues, language policy, language teaching and literature.
In English the language of the people of the Netherlands and Flanders is referred to as Dutch; or rarely (usually in technical linguistic contexts) as Netherlandic; Flemish is a term which refers specifically to Belgian Dutch, Dutch as spoken in Belgium.
The origins of the word Dutch go back to Proto-Germanic, the ancestor of all Germanic languages, *þeudiskaz (meaning "national/popular"); a cognate of Old Dutch diets, Old High German duitsch, Old English þeodisc and Gothic þiuda all meaning "(of) the common (Germanic) people". As the tribes among the Germanic peoples began to differentiate, its meaning began to change. The Anglo-Saxons of England for example gradually stopped referring to themselves as þeodisc and instead started to use Englisc, after their tribe. On the continent *theudo evolved into two meanings: Diets (meaning "Dutch (people)"
In Dutch, the language is referred to as Nederlands. It derives from the Dutch word "neder", a cognate of English "nether", both meaning "low" and "neath", and "land" (same meaning in both English and Dutch), a reference to the geographical texture of the Dutch homelands, the westernmost and lowest portion of the Northern European plain.
Dutch is a descendant of several Frankish dialects spoken in the High Middle Ages and Early Modern Times, and to a lesser extent of Frisian, that was spoken by the original inhabitants of Holland. It did not undergo 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.
Since the founding of the Kingdom of Belgium in 1830, Brussels has transformed from being almost entirely Dutch-speaking to being a multilingual city with French as the majority language and lingua franca. This language shift, the Frenchification of Brussels, is rooted in the 18th century but accelerated after Belgium became independent and Brussels expanded past its original boundaries.
Not only is French-speaking immigration responsible for the Frenchification of Brussels, but more importantly the language change over several generations from Dutch to French was performed in Brussels by the Flemish people themselves. The main reason for this was the low social prestige of the Dutch language in Belgium at the time. From 1880 on more and more Dutch-speaking people became bilingual resulting in a rise of monolingual French-speakers after 1910. Halfway through the 20th century the number of monolingual French-speakers carried the day over the (mostly) bilingual Flemish inhabitants. Only since the 1960s, after the fixation of the Belgian language border and the socio-economic development of Flanders was in full effect, could Dutch stem the tide of increasing French use. This phenomenon is, together with the future of Brussels, one of the most controversial topics in all of Belgian politics.
Today an estimated 16 percent of city residents are native speakers of Dutch, while an additional 13 percent claim to have a "good to excellent" knowledge of Dutch.
Immigrant communities can be found in Australia and New Zealand. The 2006 Australian census showed 36,179 people speaking Dutch at home. According to the 2006 census in New Zealand, 16,347 people claim sufficient fluency in Dutch to hold an everyday conversation.
Martin Van Buren, former President of the United States, spoke Dutch as his first language and is the only U.S. President to have spoken a language other than English as his first language. Dutch prevailed for many generations as the dominant language in part of New York State along the Hudson River.
According to the 2000 United States census, 150,396 people spoke Dutch at home, while according to the 2006 Canadian census, this number reaches 160,000 Dutch-speakers. In Canada, Dutch is the fourth most spoken language by farmers, after English, French and German, and the fifth most spoken non-official language overall (by 0.6% of Canadians).
It is the third language of South Africa in terms of native speakers (~13.3%), of whom 53 percent Coloureds and 42.4 percent Whites. In 1996, 40 percent of South Africans reported to know Afrikaans at least at a very basic level of communication. It is the lingua franca in Namibia, where it is spoken natively in 11 percent of households. In total, Afrikaans is the first language for about 6 million and a second language for 10 million people, compared to over 22 million and velar in Belgian dialects. # In some dialects, the voiced fricatives have almost completely merged with the voiceless ones; is usually realized as , in the North is usually realized as , is usually realized as , yet only in the North. In the South is pronounced and is . In the North is usually realized as , whereas in the South the distinction between and has been preserved. # The realization of the phoneme varies considerably from dialect to dialect. In "standard" Dutch, is realized as the alveolar trill . In some dialects it is realized as the alveolar tap , the voiced uvular fricative , the uvular trill , or even as the alveolar approximant . # The realization of the varies considerably from the Northern to the Southern and Belgium dialects of the Dutch language. A number of Belgian dialects pronounce it like a bilabial approximant (). Other, mainly Northern Dutch, dialects pronounce it as a labiodental approximant: . Furthermore, in Suriname it is pronounced . # The lateral is slightly velarized postvocalically.
{| class="wikitable" |+ style="margin-top:1em" | Dutch consonants with example words !colspan=1 align=center|Symbol !colspan=4 align=center|Example |- ! !IPA !orthography !English translation |- | | |pen |'pen' |- | | |biet |'beetroot' |- | | |tak |'branch' |- | | |dak |'roof' |- | | |kat |'cat' |- | | |goal |'goal' (sports) |- | | |mens |'human being' or 'mankind' |- | | |nek |'neck' |- | | |eng |'scary' |- | | |fiets |'bicycle' |- | | |oven |'oven' |- | | |sok |'sock' |- | | |zeep |'soap' |- | | |sjaal |'shawl' |- | | |jury |'jury' |- | (North) | |acht |'eight' |- | (South) | |acht |'eight' |- | (North) | |gaan |'to go' |- | (South) | |gaan |'to go' |- | | |rat |'rat' |- | | |hoed |'hat' |- | | |wang |'cheek' |- | | |jas |'coat' |- | | |land |'land / country' |- | | |heel |'whole' |- | | |beamen |'to confirm' |}
The morphologic versatility and cohesiveness of Dutch sometimes produces words that might baffle speakers of other languages due to the large number of consonant clusters, such as the word () (scream of fear), which has a total of six in a row (ngstschr) (the ng and ch being 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 by some speakers in everyday pronunciation by blending consecutive consonants ("ch" and "r") into one sound. This can go as far as reducing the word to in quick speech of people who normally reduce the schr-sequence to "sr".
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 l-vocalization (compare English old, German alt, Dutch oud), and -ks- sounds were reduced to -s- (compare English Fox, German Fuchs, Dutch Vos).
Germanic fronted to , which in turn became a diphthong , spelt 〈ui〉. Long also diphthongized to , spelt 〈ij〉.
Unusually for a Germanic language (but like some Slavic ones), the phoneme , originally in allophonic variation with , became in every position except after (where it instead merged with into ). It later palatalised to in the South (Flanders, Limburg, Brabant).
This change is interesting from a sociolinguistic point of view because it has apparently happened relatively recently, in the 1970s, and was pioneered by older well-educated women from the upper middle classes. The lowering of the diphthongs has long been current in many Dutch dialects, and is comparable to the English Great Vowel Shift, and the diphthongisation of long high vowels in Modern High German, which have reached the state found in "Polder Dutch" already centuries earlier. It appears that the diphthongisation of the high vowels is part of a trend widespread in the West Germanic languages, which has, however, been artificially frozen in an intermediary state by the standardisation of Dutch pronunciation in the 16th century, where lowered diphthongs found in rural dialects were perceived as ugly by the educated classes and accordingly declared substandard. Stroop compares the role of Polder Dutch with the urban variety of British English pronunciation called Estuary English.
Among Belgian Dutch-speakers, this vowel shift is not taking place, as the diphthongs , and are pronounced as the monophthongs , and .
{|class=wikitable !||colspan=4|Dutch||colspan=4|German |- !!!Masculine singular!!Feminine singular!!Neuter singular!!Plural (any gender) !Masculine singular!!Feminine singular!!Neuter singular!!Plural (any gender) |- !Nominative |de||de||het||de||der||die||das||die |- !Genitive |de||de||het||de||des||der||des||der |- !Dative |de||de||het||de||dem||der||dem||den |- !Accusative |de||de||het||de||den||die||das||die |}
The genitive articles 'des' and 'der' are grammatically correct and understood in Dutch, but are not frequently used and are often considered prosaic or archaic. In most circumstances the preposition 'van' is instead used, followed by the normal definitive article 'de' or 'het'. For the use of the articles in the genitive, see for example:
Dutch also has a range of fixed expressions that make use of the genetive articles, such as for example "'s ochtends" (with 's as abbreviation of des; in the morning) and "desnoods" (lit: of the need, translated: if necessary).
The Dutch written grammar has 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 many 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. Note that water and huis are neuter, the other words in the table are masculine or feminine. (This was also done in Middle English, as in "a goode man".)
{|class=wikitable
! !!Masculine singular
Feminine singular
Plural (any gender)!!Neuter singular
|-
!Definite
(with definite article
or pronoun)
|de mooie huizen (the beautiful houses)
die mooie vrouwen (those beautiful women)||het mooie huis (the beautiful house)
mijn mooie huis (my beautiful house)
dit koude water (this cold water)
|-
!Indefinite
with indefinite article or
no article and no pronoun)
|een mooie vrouw (a beautiful woman)
mooie huizen (beautiful houses)
koude soep (cold soup)||een mooi huis (a beautiful house)
koud water (cold water)
|}
An adjective has no e if it is in the predicative: De soep is koud.
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.
An example sentence used in some Dutch language courses and text books is "Ik kan mijn pen niet vinden omdat het veel te donker is", which translates into English word for word as "I can my pen not find because it far too dark is", but in standard English word order would be written "I can not find my pen because it is far too dark". If the sentence is split into a main and subclause and the verbs highlighted, the logic behind the word order can be seen.
Main clause: "Ik kan mijn pen niet vinden"
Verbs are placed in the final position, but the conjugated verb, in this case "kan" (can), is made the second element of the clause.
Subclause: "omdat het veel te donker is"
The verb or verbs always go in the final position.
These diminutives are very common. As in German, all diminutives are neuter. In the case of words like "het meisje" (the girl), this is different from the natural gender. A diminutive ending can also be appended to an adverb or adjective (but not when followed by a noun). :klein (little, small) - een kleintje (a small one)
Like English, Dutch includes words of Greek and Latin origin. 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.
The most important dictionary of the modern Dutch language is the Van Dale groot woordenboek der Nederlandse taal, more commonly referred to as the Dikke van Dale ("dik" means "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 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 acute accent (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 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.
At an academic level, Dutch is taught in over 225 universities in more than 40 countries. About 10,000 students worldwide study Dutch at university. The largest number of faculties of neerlandistiek can be found in Germany (30 universities), followed by France and the United States (20 each). 5 universities in the United Kingdom offer the study of Dutch. Due to centuries of Dutch rule in Indonesia, many old documents are written in Dutch. Many universities therefore include Dutch as a source language, mainly for law and history students. In Indonesia this involves about 35,000 students.
;Organisations
;Dictionaries
;Learning resources
Category:Languages of Belgium Category:Languages of Saint Martin Category:Languages of the ABC Islands Category:Low Franconian languages Category:Stress-timed languages Category:Netherlands Antilles articles correct after Dissolution
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
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