General
Dutch ( 荷兰语，Nederlands (help·info)) is a West Germanic language spoken by around 23 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. It is closely related to other West Germanic languages (ie. English, Frisian and German) and somewhat more remote 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. Dutch and Afrikaans are to a large extent mutually intelligible, although they have separate spelling standards and dictionaries and have separate language regulators. Standard Dutch (Standaardnederlands) is the standard language of the major Dutch speaking-areas and is regulated by the Nederlandse Taalunie ("Dutch Language Union").
Dutch grammar also shares many traits with German, 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. china3view
The consonant system of Dutch did not undergo the High German consonant shift and has more in common with how English and the Scandinavian languages, especially Swedish and Norwegian, are pronounced. 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 (ch and g, pronounced at the back of the mouth), often picked up on as a source of amusement or even satire.
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.
One of the major dialect groups of Dutch, Flemish, is spoken in the northwestern part of Belgium. The whole of Dutch variants spoken in Belgium is also often called "Flemish" or Southern vernacular, although it is no separate language. Officially, both Belgium and the Netherlands adhere to Standard Dutch. The difference between Belgian and Netherlandic Dutch is roughly comparable to the difference between American and British English, though only pronunciation-wise as both countries use the same written standard. However, most Belgian Flemings, if asked what their mother-tongue is, will give it as Dutch rather than Flemish.
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: [1], in Dutch). There are also some speakers of Dutch in countries with many Dutch and Flemish immigrants, such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States. In South Africa and Namibia the closely-related language Afrikaans is spoken. There are also a number of Dutch speakers in Indonesia.
Official status
Dutch is an official language of the Netherlands, Belgium, Suriname, Aruba, and the Netherlands Antilles. The Dutch, Flemish and Surinamese governments coordinate their language activities in the Nederlandse Taalunie ('Dutch Language Union'). Dutch was an official language in South Africa up until 1961 (it had fallen into disuse after Afrikaans became an official language in 1925). A noticeable minority of the inhabitants of New Zealand, 16,347 (0.4%) are sufficiently fluent in Dutch to carry on an everyday conversation.[3]
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.
External Links:
- (Dutch) Nederlandse Taalunie & Taalunieversum (Dutch Language Union)
- Genootschap Onze Taal
- History of the Dutch Language
- Ethnologue report for Dutch
- Euromosaic - Dutch in France - The status of Dutch in France
- Sampa for Dutch
- Free Dutch Tutorial
- Dutch 101 - Basic information on the Dutch language as well as translations and videos.
- Dutch and Afrikaans with Japanese translation incl.sound files
Dictionaries
- WikiWoordenboek, the Dutch Wiktionary
- Collection of Dutch bilingual dictionaries
- John and Grayson's Dutch Dictionary
- LookWAYup Dutch to English Dictionary
- Majstro Dutch/English Dictionary
- (Dutch) van Dale Onlinewoordenboek
- (Dutch) Woorden-Boek
- Cross-Translation of Dutch to English and French
- Universal dictionary
All information is from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_language
