The origin of the Dutch language is unclear, though believed to be around 700 A.D. It is said to have originated from the various Germanic dialects spoken in the Netherlands region, which were of Frankian origin. The language was standardized in the Middle Ages, under the influence of the Burgundian Ducal Court in Dijon.
The process of standardization picked up momentum in the 16th century and the language that emerged had strong roots in the urban dialect of Antwerp. When Antwerp fell into the hands of the Spanish army, many fled to Holland, thereby influencing the urban dialects there. When the time drew near for the first Bible translation into Dutch, the need for a common language that could be understood by people from across the country, became inevitable. A common language was therefore created, consisting elements from various dialects, though mostly based on the urban dialects of Holland.
The word ‘Dutch’ comes from the Old Germanic word ‘Theodisk’ which means ‘of the people’ or ‘vernacular’, as opposed to official, which was Latin and later, French. In modern German, Theodisk became Deutsch and in Dutch, it split into two forms – Duits, which means German and Diets, which is closer to Dutch but no longer in use.
Spoken by over 22 million people as a native language and over 5 million people as a second language, Dutch is a West Germanic language, and is the parent language of several Creole languages apart from Afrikaans – one of the official languages of South African and the most widely understood language in Namibia.
Dutch is written in the Latin alphabet, though it has one additional character beyond the standard alphabet. Its vocabulary is predominantly Germanic in origin, even more so than English. It is similar to German, grammatically, such as in syntax and verb morphology. It uses grammatical cases and has three genders – masculine, feminine and neuter, though today, the masculine and feminine have merged to form the common gender, whilst the neuter gender remains as distinct as before.
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