Dutch

Modern Standard Dutch is the official language of the Netherlands and one of the official languages of Belgium. In the two countries together, the number of speakers is approximately 17 million. The official Dutch name of the language is Nederlands. It is sometimes called Hollands, after the most influential province, and the variety of Dutch that is spoken in Belgium is often, incorrectly, referred to as Flemish (Vlaams). Frisian (Dutch Fries) is a separate language spoken in the north-east of the Netherlands and is in some respects closer to English than to Dutch. Afrikaans, the language of part of the white and mixed-race population of the Republic of South Africa, is derived from Dutch dialects but is now regarded as a separate language. Dutch is also the official language of administration in Surinam (formerly Dutch Guyana) and in the Dutch Antilles but it is not widely spoken there. Some Dutch is still spoken in Indonesia. Dutch-based creole languages have never had many speakers, and the language known as Negerhollands (‘Negro Dutch’) on the Virgin Islands has become virtually extinct. Both Sranan, the English-based creole spoken by a large number of inhabitants of Surinam, and Papiamentu, a Spanish-based creole spoken in the Antilles, have been influenced by Dutch, and Sranan increasingly so. Afrikaans also shows definite features of creolisation. The word Dutch derives from Middle Dutch Diets or Duuts, the name for the (Low)

German vernacular; somewhat confusingly for speakers of English, Duits is now the Dutch name for (High) German. Dialect variation in the Dutch language area is considerable, and a number of geo-

graphical dialects are not mutually intelligible. Ever since compulsory education was introduced uniformity in speaking and writing has increased, though less so in the Belgian area than in the Netherlands. The process of standardisation still continues. The large majority of inhabitants have a fair command of the standard language, but in some areas in the north, the east and the south a number of people are virtually bilingual. Language variation is politically insignificant in the Netherlands, but the situation in Belgium is more complex. After the establishment of the boundaries of the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century, the prestige of Dutch in the southern provinces

Its next to been the subject of bitter controversies, and the language situation is still an important factor in political and cultural life. The boundary between the Dutch-speaking area and the French-speaking area runs from west to east just south of Brussels. In the south-east of the country lives a small German-speaking minority. Minority languages in the Netherlands include Chinese (mostly the Cantonese dialect), Bahasa Indonesia and other forms of Malay, Sranan and, more recently, Turkish and North African dialects of Arabic.