Interesting facts about the language

Dutch is not only the national language of the Netherlands and the Flemish part of Belgium, but is also spoken in Friesland, neighboring parts of Germany, Luxembourg, and the French département of Nord. Dutch is also the official language of the Republic of Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles. It is also widely spoken as a second language in Indonesia and New Guinea, where, however, it is increasingly being replaced by English. A total of around 25 million people speak Dutch as their first language, of which approximately 16 million live in the Netherlands and 6.2 million in Belgium.

Dutch belongs to the Indo-European language family, more specifically to the Germanic subfamily, and within it, together with English, German, Frisian, Afrikaans, and Yiddish, to the West Germanic branch. Together with German, Dutch constitutes, if you want to be precise, the smallest subgroup of the Germanic language family. Dutch and German are closely related and very similar to each other; they are practically "linguistic sisters." Dutch originated from a branch of Low German known as Old Dutch, which was a German dialect for a long time.

Gradually, however, Middle Dutch, which developed from Old Dutch, diverged from German and was alternately influenced – depending on economic and political power – by the Flemish, Brabant, and Dutch dialects. In the 16th century, the resulting Modern Dutch finally emancipated itself from German by developing its own written language. Nevertheless, the two languages are still linked by several Low German and Dutch dialects, creating a continuous transition between the two languages. This is also one reason why the range of variation among Dutch dialects is relatively large today. Due to this close relationship, the basic Dutch vocabulary is also entirely Germanic. However, the Flemish dialect spoken in Belgium contains many loanwords from French due to centuries of French dominance. However, these are not part of the standard language and are not always understood everywhere. Like so many other languages, Dutch cannot escape the influence of modern English terms due to the internationalization of this language.

Dutch pronunciation is very similar to German and very varied; essentially, only vowels and consonants familiar from German are used, although some more Nordic-sounding variants exist, especially among the vowels. The Dutch alphabet consists of 26 letters.