Going Dutch

Having chosen to learn Dutch, I soon realised that I knew absolutely nothing about it. Not even any basic words. This meant I had to get into research mode and find out everything I could about this new and mysterious tongue.

Dutch isn't traditionally a language studied at school or college in the UK so I had to do some digging to find infomration. Luckily, a quick online search provided plenty of information and tools and resources (more about those in my next post) that gave me lots of facts. Here are some of them:

• Dutch is spoken by an estimated 25 million people as their native language. Most of them live in the Netherlands and Belgium, although there are other Dutch-speaking communities in Surinam and the Dutch Antilles.
• Dutch is the official language of Flanders in Belgium, which is best known as being the site of some well-known battles from WW1.
• Although not an official language in Germany, Dutch is a popular second language among many Germans.
• Afrikaans, widely spoken in South Africa and Namibia, is derived from Dutch as many Dutch people settled there in the 18th Century.
• English and Dutch are both derived from similar Germanic roots and have many similarities. For instance the English word "apple" is spelt "appel" in Dutch.
• Dutch has TWO definitite articles ("de" and "het") whereas English only has one ("the").
• Dutch nouns are categorised as masculine or feminine. "De" is used with masculine verbs and "het" with feminine ones e.g. de jongen (the boy), het meisje (the girl).
• Dutch is a member of the West Germanic family tree, and as such, is a cousin of English and German and a sibling to Afrikaans. Another cousin is Frisian, a regional minority language spoken in the North of the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany. Dutch is also related to North Germanic language family members, such as Swedish, Danish and Norwegian.