Dutch ( , ) is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken by about 25 million people as a first language and 5 million as a second language and is the third most spoken Germanic language. In Europe, Dutch is the native language of most of the population of the Netherlands and Flanders (which includes 60% of the population of Belgium). "1% of the EU population claims to speak Dutch well enough in order to have a conversation." (page 153). Dutch was one of the official languages of South Africa until 1925, when it was replaced by Afrikaans, a separate but partially mutually intelligible daughter language of Dutch. Afrikaans, depending on the definition used, may be considered a sister language, spoken, to some degree, by at least 16 million people, mainly in South Africa and Namibia, and evolving from Cape Dutch dialects.
In South America, Dutch is the native language of the majority of the population of Suriname, and spoken as a second or third language in the multilingual Caribbean island countries of Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten. All these countries have recognised Dutch as one of their official languages, and are involved in one way or another in the Dutch Language Union. The Dutch Caribbean municipalities (St. Eustatius, Saba and Bonaire) have Dutch as one of the official languages. In Asia, Dutch was used in the Dutch East Indies (now mostly Indonesia) by a limited educated elite of around 2% of the total population, including over 1 million indigenous Indonesians,Groeneboer, K (1993) Weg tot het westen. Het Nederlands voor Indie 1600–1950. Publisher: KITLEV, Leiden. until it was banned in 1957, but the ban was lifted afterwards. About a fifth of the Indonesian language can be traced to Dutch, including many loan words. Indonesia's Civil Code has not been officially translated, and the original Dutch language version dating from colonial times remains the authoritative version. Up to half a million native speakers reside in the United States, Canada and Australia combined, and historical linguistic minorities on the verge of extinction remain in parts of France and Germany.
Dutch is one of the closest relatives of both German and English, and is colloquially said to be "roughly in between" them. Dutch, like English, has not undergone the High German consonant shift, does not use Germanic umlaut as a grammatical marker, has largely abandoned the use of the subjunctive, and has levelled much of its morphology, including most of its case system. Features shared with German, however, include the survival of two to three grammatical genders – albeit with few grammatical consequences – as well as the use of modal particles, final-obstruent devoicing, and (similar) word order. Dutch vocabulary is mostly Germanic; it incorporates slightly more Romance loans than German, but far fewer than English.
Name
In Belgium, the Netherlands and Suriname, the native official name for Dutch is See also: (historically before the Dutch orthographic reforms). Sometimes ("Flemish") is used as well to describe Standard Dutch () in Flanders, whereas ("Hollandic") is occasionally used as a colloquial term for the standard language in the central and northwestern parts of the Netherlands.
English uses the adjective Dutch as a noun for the language of the Netherlands and Flanders. The word is derived from Proto-Germanic . The stem of this word, , meant "people" in Proto-Germanic, and was an adjective-forming suffix, of which is the Modern English form. was its Latinised formW. Haubrichs, "Theodiscus, Deutsch und Germanisch – drei Ethnonyme, drei Forschungsbegriffe. Zur Frage der Instrumentalisierung und Wertbesetzung deutscher Sprach- und Volksbezeichnungen". In: H. Beck et al., Zur Geschichte der Gleichung "germanisch-deutsch" (2004), 199–228 and used as an adjective referring to the Germanic vernaculars of the Early Middle Ages. In this sense, it meant "the language of the common people". The term was used as opposed to Latin, the non-native language of writing and the Catholic Church.Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 2nd revised edn., s.v. "Dutch" (Random House Reference, 2005). It was first recorded in 786, when the Bishop of Ostia writes to Pope Adrian I about a synod taking place in Corbridge, England, where the decisions are being written down "" meaning "in Latin as well as common vernacular".M. Philippa e.a. (2003–2009) Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands [diets]Cornelis Dekker: The Origins of Old Germanic Studies in the Low Countries ;
According to a hypothesis by De Grauwe, In northern West Francia (i.e. modern-day Belgium) the term would take on a new meaning during the Early Middle Ages, when, within the context of a highly dichromatic linguistic landscape, it came to be the antonym of *walhisk (Romance-speakers, specifically Old French).Peter Polenz: Geschichte der deutschen Sprache. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2020, p. 36. The word, now rendered as (Southwestern variant) or (Central and Northern Variant), could refer to the Dutch language itself, as well as a broader Germanic category depending on context. During the High Middle Ages "/" was increasingly used as an umbrella term for the specific Germanic dialects spoken in the Low Countries, its meaning being largely implicitly provided by the regional orientation of medieval Dutch society: apart from the higher echelons of the clergy and nobility, mobility was largely static and hence while "Dutch" could by extension also be used in its earlier sense, referring to what today would be called Germanic dialects as opposed to Romance dialects, in many cases it was understood or meant to refer to the language now known as Dutch.L. De Grauwe: Emerging Mother-Tongue Awareness: The special case of Dutch and German in the Middle Ages and the early Modern Period (2002), p. 98–110.
In the Low Countries or its early modern Dutch form Duytsch as an endonym for Dutch gradually went out of common use and was gradually replaced by the Dutch endonym . This designation (first attested in 1482) started at the Burgundian court in the 15th century, although the use of , , , and ("nether" or "low") to refer to the area known as the Low Countries goes back further in time, with the Romans referring to the region as Germania Inferior ("Lower" Germania). See J. Verdam, Middelnederlandsch handwoordenboek (The Hague 1932 (reprinted 1994)): "Nederlant, znw. o. I) Laag of aan zee gelegen land. 2) land aan den Nederrijn; Nedersaksen, -duitschland." neder- corresponds with the English nether-, which means "low" or "down". See Online etymological dictionary. Entry: Nether. It is a reference to the Low Countries' downriver location at the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta near the North Sea.
From 1551, the designation received strong competition from the name (literally "Low Dutch", Dutch being used in its archaic sense covering all continental West Germanic languages). It is a calque of the aforementioned Roman province Germania Inferior and an attempt by early Dutch grammarians to give their language more prestige by linking it to Roman times. Likewise, ("High German") and ("Upper-landish") came into use as a Dutch exonym for the various German dialects used in neighboring German states. Use of was popular in the 16th century but ultimately lost out over during the close of the 18th century, with establishing itself as the Dutch exonym for German during this same period.
In the 19th century Germany saw the rise of the categorisation of dialects, with German dialectologists terming the German dialects spoken in the mountainous south of Germany as ("High German"). Subsequently, German dialects spoken in the north were designated as ("Low German"). The names for these dialects were calqued by Dutch linguists as and . As a result, no longer serves as a synonym for the Dutch language. In the 19th century, the term "" was revived by Dutch linguists and historians as well, as a poetic name for Middle Dutch and its literature.M. Janssen: Atlas van de Nederlandse taal: Editie Vlaanderen, Lannoo Meulenhoff, 2018, p. 30.
History
Old Dutch can be discerned more or less around the same time as Old English (Anglo-Saxon), Old High German, Pre-Old Frisian, and Old Saxon. These names are derived from the modern standard languages. In this age no standard languages had yet developed, while a perfect West Germanic dialect continuum remained present; the division reflects the contingent future contribution dialect groups would have to the later languages. The early form of Dutch was a set of Franconian dialects spoken by the Salian Franks in the 5th century. These happened to develop through Middle Dutch to Modern Dutch over the course of fifteen centuries. During that period, they forced Old Frisian back from the western coast to the north of the Low Countries, and influenced or even replaced Old Saxon spoken in the east (contiguous with the Low German area). On the other hand, Dutch has been replaced in adjacent lands in present-day France and Germany. The division into Old, Middle and Modern Dutch is mostly conventional, since the transition between them was very gradual. One of the few moments when linguists can detect something of a revolution is when the Dutch standard language emerged and quickly established itself. The development of the Dutch language is illustrated by the following sentence in Old, Middle and Modern Dutch: (Old Dutch) (Middle Dutch) (Modern Dutch, same word order) (Modern Dutch, default word order) He will deliver my soul in peace from those who approach me, because, amongst many, he was with me (English)
Origins
Among the Indo-European languages, Dutch is grouped within the Germanic languages, meaning it shares a common ancestor with languages such as English, German, and the Scandinavian languages. All Germanic languages are subject to the Grimm's law and Verner's law sound shifts, which originated in the Proto-Germanic language and define the basic features differentiating them from other Indo-European languages. This is assumed to have taken place in approximately the mid-first millennium BCE in the pre-Roman Northern European Iron Age. This long-standing, well-known article on the languages can be found in almost any edition of Britannica.
The Germanic languages are traditionally divided into three groups: East (now extinct), West, and North Germanic. They remained mutually intelligible throughout the Migration Period. Dutch is part of the West Germanic group, which also includes English, Scots, Frisian, Low German (Old Saxon) and High German. It is characterised by a number of phonological and morphological innovations not found in North or East Germanic.
Frankish (3rd–5th centuries)
The Frankish language itself is not directly attested, the only possible exception being the Bergakker inscription, found near the Dutch city of Tiel, which may represent a primary record of 5th-century Frankish. Although some place names recorded in Roman texts such as (modern Dutch: , English: "mudflat"), could arguably be considered as the oldest single "Dutch" words, the Bergakker inscription yields the oldest evidence of Dutch morphology. However, interpretations of the rest of the text lack consensus.
The Franks emerged in the southern Netherlands (Salian Franks) and central Germany (Ripuarian Franks), and later descended into Gaul. The name of their kingdom survives in that of France. Although they ruled the Gallo-Romans for nearly 300 years, their language, Frankish, became extinct in most of France and was replaced by later forms of the language throughout Luxembourg and Germany in around the 7th century. It was replaced in France by Old French (a Romance language with a considerable Old Frankish influence).