About Dutch

by Pisith Phlong

Number of speakers:
Dutch (also called Nederland), the official language of the Netherlands (Holland) and also an official language of Belgium, is spoken by about 20 million people (approximately 14 million in the Netherlands and about 6 million in Belgium). Outside of those two countries it is spoken by about 410,000 people in the United States, 159,000 people in Canada, 80,000 people in France and 47,000 people in Australia. (Brown, p.16) Dutch serves as the administrative language in Aruba, Netherlands Antilles, and Suriname. In Southeast Asia, Dutch has influences in the Indonesian language, due to the history of Dutch colonization from 1749 to 1942. (Herbert and Milner, p.123-124)

Language group:
Dutch is one of the Western Germanic languages. It belongs to the Germanic subgroup of the Indo-European language family. In Belgium, Dutch is called Flemish. (Brown, p.16)

History of written language and script:
Being in the same group of the Western Germanic language, Dutch shares language similarities to English and German, both scripts and words, which link to the Latin root.

Language:
The history of Dutch language dates back to about the 7th century A.D, from which only a few records have survived. These few old records used the old Latin language mixed with some Old Dutch. The Dutch language is divided into 3 periods:  Old, Middle and modern; 1) The Old period dates from about 700 A.D to 1150 A.D, and very few records of language from this period have been found. One of the important records from this period was the translation of the Psalter. 2) The Middle period is from 1150 A.D to 1500 AD, during which a number of records are still preserved. It is characterized by the influences of Latin and French, and the creation of a number of dictionaries. 3) The modern period is from 1500 A.D onward and it started by forming the foundation of the Amsterdam dialects and the writing of the Dutch grammar by H.L. Spieghel in 1584. It is characterized by the forming of the Modern Standard Dutch based on the dialects from the North and the South and Utrecht region of the Netherlands. It gained popularity as it replaced the other dialects of the other provinces. Though Dutch was influenced by a few languages with word loans such as from English, Germany and French during the later periods, Dutch still preserves a number of old words in its vocabulary borrowed from its Germanic and Romance origins. (Strazny, p.274-275)

Scripts:
Both spoken and written Dutch were influenced by Latin. Words are formed using an alphabet very similar to Latin. Its history of writing goes back centuries to the 13th century with the adaptation of the Medieval Latin dictionary in order to produce glossaries that helped people studying Latin and the Bible. Some examples from this period are Glossaria of Bern in about 1225 A.D, Haarlem in about 1440 A.D and Trier of 14th century, and they are arranged in Latin alphabetic order. From 15th to 16th century, a number of bilingual, multilingual and thesaurus dictionaries were prepared to assist students to study Latin. One of the examples was the Dutch-Latin dictionary, Dictionarium Latinogermanicum by Antonius Schoru in 1542. From the 17th century, Latin became less targeted in the Low Countries due to the fact that Dutch became more widely used in different regions of the Netherlands. The number of bilingual dictionaries between Dutch and another language became predominant, especially Dutch-French dictionaries. Some examples of these were Etymologicum of Kiliaan, Dictionaire Flameng-François (1582) and Dictionaire François-Flameng (1579) by M. Sasbout, Dictionaire ou Promptuaire Flameng-François and François-Flameng by E. E. Mellema in 1587, and Le Grand Dictionaire François-Flameng: Den Schat der Duytscher Tale in 1618. From the 19th century, the modern Dutch dictionaries were created with the scientific approach to historical lexicography with several editions. Some of the important dictionaries of the modern Dutch are Van Dale’s Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal, Koenen’s Woordenboek Nederlands and Kramers Woordenboek Nederlands. (Brown, p.20-21)

Other Dialects: 
There are numerous Dutch dialects varied according to the geographical variation. 28 dialects are recognized and they are divided into six major groups: 1) The central-west dialects, includes all provinces of North and South Holland, Utrecht, and parts of Gelderland and the Zeeland Isles. 2) The central-southern dialects, spoken in the Netherlands province of North Brabant and the area around Limburg, and in the Belgium provinces of Antwerp, Brabant, and East Flanders. 3) The northeastern dialect (called Saxon), spoken in Groningen, Drenthe, Overijsel and the eastern part of Gelderland. 4) The northwestern dialects, spoken in North Holland above the IJsselmeer, the non-Frisian Wadden islands, the coastal stretch of Holland province, and the South Holland islands away from Goeree and Overflakkee. 5) The southeastern dialects (called Eastern Low Franconian), spoken in Belgian and Dutch Limburg and some villages in north Brabant. 6) The southwestern dialects, spoken in Belgian province of West Flanders, French-Flenders, Zeeland and the island of Goeree and Overflakkee in the province of South Holland. (Strazny, p. 274; Brown, p.19)

Comparison to other Western languages:
Like other Western languages, Dutch words are formed by the consonants and vowels and the sentence structure is arranged in Subject-Verb-Object. Dutch morphology is similar to English in the loss of the inflectional ending and case endings, while its syntax of words, clauses and phrases are similar to German. For these reasons, it is said that Dutch is half similar to English and Germany. (Frawley, p.469)

References:

Brown, K. Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Volume 4. (2nd ed.). Elsevier: Oxford, 2006.
Frawley, W. J. International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Vol. 1. (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Herbert, P. and Milner, A. Southeast Asia, Languages and Literatures. University of Hawaii Press: Honolulu, 1989.
Strazny, P. Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Vol. 1. New York: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2005.