Dutch language

Dutch ({{Audio|nl-Nederlands.ogg|Nederlands}}) is a West Germanic, Low German language spoken by around 24 million people, mostly in the Netherlands and Belgium. The varieties of Dutch spoken in Belgium are also informally called Flemish (Vlaams). The language is sometimes colloquially called Hollands by native speakers although this is becoming less common today. Dutch is sometimes called Netherlandic in English.

Vocabulary

:See the and at Wiktionary, the free dictionary and Wikipedia's sibling project

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Dutch has more French loanwords than German, but much fewer than English. The number of English loanwords in Dutch is substantial and steadily increasing, especially on the streets and some professions. New loanwords are almost never pronounced as the original English word, or are spelled differently. Like English, Dutch has large numbers words of Greek and Latin origin. There are also some German loanwords, like überhaupt and sowieso. Even though few true loanwords are present, German has had a considerable effect upon the lexicon of the language, mainly by the change of German words into words that seem Dutch (so called germanisme), a process probably to be ascribed to the likeness of the two languages. Most of these forms have become so integral to Dutch that few Dutch notice them; they include words like opname (from German Aufnahme), aanstalten (Anstalten) and many more.

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