Dutch language

The Dutch language is a West Germanic one. About 23 million people speak Dutch, mostly 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 (i.e. English, Frisian and German) and (to a lesser degree) the North Germanic languages. Dutch is a descendant of Old Frankish and is the parent language of Afrikaans, official language of South Africa. Dutch and Afrikaans are to a large extent mutually intelligible, although they have different spelling standards and dictionaries and have different 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 easier morphology caused by deflexion, which puts it closer to English. Dutch has three genders, masculine, feminine and neuter. However, according to some interpretations these are only two, common and neuter, which is similar to the gender systems of Continental Scandinavian languages.

The consonant system of Dutch did not suffer the High German consonant change 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 reasonably complex consonant clusters. Dutch is noted for the prominent use of velar fricatives often picked up on as a source of amusement or satire.
Dutch vocabulary is mainly Germanic in origin, considerably more so than English. This is to a large part due to the important influence of Norman French on English, and to Dutch patterns of word formation, such as the tendency to form long and very complicated compound nouns, being more similar to those of German and the Scandinavian languages.

Flemish, one of the major dialect groups of Dutch, is spoken in the south-western Netherlands and the north-western part of Belgium. The whole of Dutch variants spoken in Belgium is also called "Flemish" and sometimes claimed to be a different language. Both Belgium and the Netherlands adhere to Standard Dutch. The difference between Belgian and Netherlandic Dutch is comparable to the difference between American and British English, though only pronunciation-wise since both countries use the same written standard.

Names of the Dutch language

The language is called Nederlands in the Dutch language. Because of the history of both the Netherlands, Belgium as well as the Dutch language, the names that other peoples have chosen to use to refer to it vary more than for most other languages. Mostly the name is derived either from "Holland" an important historical province, or a translation of "Low Countries", but many other variants exist including those deriving from "Flanders", the ancient Germanic word for "the people" and ancient Germanic tribes living in the region of the Low Countries at the time of the Roman Empire.

History of Dutch

The history of the Dutch language begins around 450–500 AD, after Old Frankish, one of the many Germanic languages, was split by the Second Germanic consonant shift while at the same time the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law led to the development of the direct ancestors of modern Low Saxon, Frisian and English.

The dialects of the North of Old Frankish in general did not participate in either of these two shifts, except for a small amount of phonetic changes, and are hence known now as Old Low Franconian; the "Low" refers to dialects that are not influenced by the consonant shift. Almost every south-eastern dialect of the Franconian languages became part of High, though not Upper, German even though a dialect continuum remained. 

The fact that Dutch did not undergo the sound changes could be the reason why Dutch is sais to be like a bridge between English and German. Within Old Low Franconian there were two groups: Old East Low Franconian and Old West Low Franconian, which is generally known as Old Dutch. East Low Franconian was absorbed by Dutch as it became the dominant form of Low Franconian, although it remains an evident substrate within the southern Limburgish dialects of Dutch. Because the similarity of these two groups, it is often very hard to determine whether a text is Old Dutch or Old East Low Franconian. Consequently, most linguists will generally use Old Dutch synonymously with Old Low Franconian and most of the time can not differentiate.

Dutch, like other Germanic languages, is typically divided into three phases. In the development of Dutch language, these phases were:
450/500–1150 Old Dutch (First attested in the Salic Law).
1150–1500 Middle Dutch (Also known as "Diets", though not by linguists).
1500–present Modern Dutch (Saw the creation of the Dutch standard and contemporary Dutch is included).

The transition between these languages was quite gradual and one of the few moments linguists can detect a revolution is when the Dutch standard language emerged and quickly established itself. Standard Dutch is said to be very similar to most Dutch dialects.

-Translation Dutch-

A process of standardization was started in the Middle ages, above all 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 period. The process of standardization became stronger at the start of the 16th century, principally based on the urban dialect of Antwerp. In 1585 Antwerp fell to the Spanish army: many fled to the Northern Netherlands, particularly the province of Holland, where they influenced the urban dialects of that province. In 1637, a further important step was made towards a unified language, when the first major Dutch Bible translation was made so that people from all over the United Provinces could understand. It used elements from various, dialects but was mostly based on the urban dialects of Holland.