The Dutch language belongs to the West Germanic family of languages, which has influenced other languages from the same family, such as English and German. It has also been noted by Dutch language scholars that there are some characteristics of the language derived to a great extent from Frankish dialects that were used in conversation from the 11^th century to the end of 18^th century. There are also some traces of Frisian dialects that were spoken by inhabitants of Holland before the 12^th century.

Dutch is spoken by almost 30 million people, spread throughout several nations, around the world. The Dutch language has official status in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Aruba, Dutch Antilles, Suriname and Belgium. Dutch is also an official language the European Union, the Benelux economic union and among the Unions of South American Nations.

Dutch dialects

Standard Dutch is the language that is taught in schools and used in the media by the government authorities in the Netherlands. In addition to Standard Dutch, there are several other dialects of the Dutch language. The elder generations of the Netherlands only speak in Danish dialects while younger people mainly speak Standard Dutch.

Some Dutch dialects include: Dutch Low Saxon, Limburgish, Brabantian, Hollandic, Zealandic, West Flemish, East Flemish, French Flemish and Pella Dutch.

Dutch Low Saxon is spoken in the Dutch provinces of Groningen, Drenthe, Guelderland and Overijssel. Limburgish is spoken in the region closest to Germany and has the status of an official regional dialect. Brabantian is further classified into different sub-dialects. It is used in conversation in areas of the Netherlands bordering Belgium. Hollandic is an important Dutch dialect. It is spoken in West Friesland, Scheveningen, Katwijk and Goeree Overflakkee.

Some characteristics of Dutch language

Dutch is most similar to German, in terms of sentence structure and vocabulary. In Dutch, bigger sentences are broken into smaller ones like in German. Also in German, each small sentence follows different rules of grammar. The Dutch language follows a unique style of placing verbs in sentences. The primary verb is placed at the beginning of the sentence and the rest are all placed at the end.

The nouns in the Dutch language are written with an ending suffix “je”(for singular) and “jes”(for plural).

There are at least 175,000 main words in Dutch. These words are both Greek and Latin in origin. In recent years, Standard Dutch has accepted several loanwords from English. This has mainly happened due to the extensive use of English, on the Internet and in different types of media.