Dutch (Nederlands) is a West Germanic language spoken by around 24 million peopleFact: date=August 2008, 22 million of which are from the Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname Hoeveel mensen spreken Nederlands als moedertaal? (How many people speak Dutch as mother tongue?), Nederlandse Taalunie, 2005., 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 (e.g., English, West Frisian and German) and somewhat more remotely to the North Germanic languages. Dutch is a descendant of several Frankish dialects, that were spoken in the High Middle Ages and Early Modern Times, and to a lesser extent from the Frisian language (see also: shibboleth of Pier Gerlofs Donia for comparison), that was spoken by the original inhabitants of Holland (see Hollandic). Dutch is the parent language of several Dutch-based creole languages as well as of Afrikaans, one of the official languages of South Africa and the most widely understood in Namibia. Dutch and Afrikaans are to a very large extent mutually intelligible, although they have separate spelling standards and dictionaries and have separate 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 is also an official language of the European Union and the Union of South American Nations.

Dutch grammar also shares many traits with German, especially in syntax, but has a less complicated morphology caused by deflexion, which puts it closer to English. Dutch has officially three genders, masculine, feminine, and neuter; however, according to some interpretations these are reduced to only two, common and neuter, which is similar to the gender systems of most Continental Scandinavian languages.

The consonant system of Dutch did not undergo the High German consonant shift and has more in common with English and the Scandinavian languages. Like most Germanic languages it has a syllable structure that allows fairly complex consonant clusters. Dutch is often noted for the prominent use of velar fricatives.

Dutch vocabulary is predominantly Germanic in origin, considerably more so than English. This is to a large part due to the heavy influence of Norman French on English, and to Dutch patterns of word formation, such as the tendency to form long and sometimes very complicated compound nouns, being more similar to those of German and the Scandinavian languages.

Names

main: Names for the Dutch languagemain: Netherlands (terminology)

In English the language of the people of the Netherlands and Flanders is referred to as Dutch; or rarely as Netherlandic, a term with multiple meanings. 'Dutch' as a word is derived from Middle Dutch duutsch, dūtsch and applied originally to continental Germanic speakers, be it of Dutch, Frisian or German. By 1600, it had come to be used exclusively for the language spoken in Flanders and the current Netherlands. The exclusive use of Dutch for the Netherlands occurred after the Dutch formed an independent state and became the focus of English commercial rivalry.